We launched the Richmond Fed Survey of Community College Outcomes (SCCO) with the goal of understanding how community colleges across the Fifth District serve students and their communities. Traditional metrics to assess the performance of institutions, like the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) graduation rate, are applied uniformly across all sectors of higher education, including community colleges and four-year colleges. Standardized metrics, such as graduation rates, are built for this very reason: Policymakers, researchers, students, and leaders of these institutions want to understand how they perform relative to their peers. As we have written about previously, these metrics may not be well suited to gauge community college success.
Not only are community colleges fundamentally different than their four-year counterparts in mission, offerings, and resource constraints, but they are also as different from one another as the communities they serve. Our unique mix of research, analysis, and engagement with higher education leaders has helped us develop a success metric that strikes a balance between being comparable across community colleges and flexible enough to account for different pathways to success.
We began data collection for the 2024 SCCO in May. Since then, we have received and processed data from individual institutions in Maryland and from community college and higher education systems in North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, and West Virginia. On November 19, we will host a free webinar to share additional findings from the SCCO. In this post, we share a sneak peek of what we're seeing from a preliminary analysis of the outcomes data at the 63 community colleges in our success rate sample.
For the 2024 SCCO, we collected data on enrollment and outcomes during the 2022-2023 academic year. Student success is measured for each school's cohort of students that first enrolled at that institution during the 2019-2020 academic year. It is important to note that these students faced the disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic during their first year of study.1
For more information on how we define success and calculate the Richmond Fed Success Rate, read about our 2023 extended pilot.
Because of the widespread disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic in the spring of 2020, we expected all measures of completion and student success — including our success rates — to be significantly lower for this "COVID class" than other cohorts. However, an early look at the data hints many students found ways to succeed: The combined success rate across the 63 schools in our sample so far is 47.5 percent
One of the primary features of the Richmond Fed Success Rate is the flexibility of success. While one school might succeed at higher rates due to large numbers of students who transfer prior to degree attainment, another school might succeed by having larger numbers of students who attain degrees and certificates.
To illustrate the value of a flexible metric, we compare what success looks like for three Fifth District community colleges in the 2024 survey with nearly identical overall success rates. Because the data are preliminary, we preserve the schools' anonymity, but we summarize key characteristics in the table below:
| Geographic Setting | Approximate Richmond Fed Cohort Size | 2024 Richmond Fed Success Rate (2019-20 cohort) | Latest IPEDS 150% Graduation Rate Range (2018-19 cohort) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| School A | Large suburb | 8,850 | 53.6% | 30-35% |
| School B | Rural | 950 | 54.0% | 40-45% |
| School C | Small city | 1,775 | 54.1% | 30-35% |
Notes: Geographic setting is based on IPEDS Urbanization codes. To preserve institution anonymity, Richmond Fed cohort sizes are rounded to the nearest 25 students, and IPEDS graduation rates are presented as ranges. IPEDS graduation rates are not directly comparable to 2024 Richmond Fed success rates and are presented for context. Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond (FRBR) 2024 SCCO results are preliminary and should be interpreted with caution. Source: FRBR 2024 SCCO, 2022 IPEDS, author's calculations. | ||||
At School B, a rural community college, the majority of successful students were awarded an associate degree within four years. For School C, students who transferred to a four-year institution without earning a degree, certificate, or other credential accounted for the largest share of successful students. School A, which had the highest share of part-time students of the three, had the highest share of students who persisted. These three represent a common trend we see in the data; urban students are more likely to transfer without a credential, while rural students are more likely to earn a degree, diploma or certificate.
These three schools are in different states and vary significantly in size. The communities they serve look quite different both on the ground and in the data. What if we compare three schools with similar 2024 success rates serving different rural areas in the same state?
| Geographic Setting | Approximate Richmond Fed Cohort Size | 2024 Richmond Fed Success Rate (2019-2020 cohort) | Latest IPEDS 150% Graduation Rate Range (2018-2019 cohort) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| School D | Town | 375 | 50.4% | 45-50% |
| School E | Rural | 475 | 50.8% | 30-35% |
| School F | Rural | 350 | 52.1% | 40-45% |
Notes: Geographic setting is based on IPEDS Urbanization codes. To preserve institution anonymity, Richmond Fed cohort sizes are rounded to the nearest 25 students, and IPEDS graduation rates are presented as ranges. IPEDS graduation rates are not directly comparable to 2024 Richmond Fed success rates and are presented for context. Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond (FRBR) 2024 SCCO results are preliminary and should be interpreted with caution. Source: FRBR 2024 SCCO, 2022 IPEDS, author's calculations. | ||||
Schools D, E, and F have 2024 success rates within 1.7 percentage points of each other and are all rural-serving institutions with relatively small cohorts. Still, the breakdown of each success rate into its components shows the differences in how these schools serve their students.
Even among rural schools with similar-sized cohorts, we see distinct differences in how students are achieving success. While successful students are more likely to achieve success by earning an award (associate degree, diploma or certificate) than by transferring or persisting, the distribution of these awards differs. At School D, nearly 25 percent of students in the cohort earned an associate degree while students earning certificates (or diplomas, in rare cases) accounted for the largest share of successful students at schools E and F.
We cannot draw conclusions about what is driving success for individual students using high-level descriptive data on institutions. Even understanding what is behind each community college's success rate can be challenging. However, our conversations with community college leaders and on-the-ground outreach in our district allows us to interpret the results in the context of each school's unique service area and program offerings.
In many cases, the composition of each school's cohort is likely a strong factor in the overall success rate. For this reason, we also break the data down by different student demographic characteristics. For example, full-time students tend to have higher success rates (and IPEDS graduation rates) than part-time students. We also see differences in success rates based on gender, age, and whether a student is using Pell Grants. We can also start to see why some community colleges have relatively low graduation rates: Many students are not graduating with associate degrees but rather earning shorter-term credentials, going on to pursue bachelor's degrees or simply requiring more time to earn a degree or certificate due to attending part time.
We also hear about the critical role that support services play in helping students overcome barriers to success along their academic pathway. Community colleges serve students from all walks of life and are adept at meeting students where they are with the tools they need to succeed. New this year, we are collecting data on these wraparound support services that schools offer to help us better understand the important inputs to student success.
As researchers, our goal with this project is to improve the knowledge and understanding about the role community colleges play in the workforce pipeline. The success rate is just one component of the Richmond Fed SCCO, and we are eager to share what we're learning. Please join us on November 19 to hear more insights from the survey and learn about our plans for national expansion beginning in 2025.
In the 2023 SCCO results, the overall Richmond Fed Success Rate among respondent institutions was 51.8 percent. More specifically, of the degree-seeking students that entered one of the respondent institutions during the 2018-2019 academic year, 51.8 percent had "succeeded" — earned a degree or other award, transferred to a four-year institution without an award, or remained enrolled in good standing — within four years of entering the institution for the first time. While not directly comparable to the IPEDS graduation rate, a comparison showed that the Richmond Fed success rate far exceeded the aggregate 150 percent time-to-completion graduation rate of 29 percent for the same set of schools.
Views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond or the Federal Reserve System.
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Results from the 2024 Survey of Community College Outcomes indicate that Pell Grant recipients from the 2019-2020 cohort had success rates that lagged their non-Pell Grant recipient peers. While both groups earned associate degrees at roughly the same rate, Pell Grant recipients were less likely to transfer to a four-year institution prior to receiving an award.
This post both updates and corrects a previous post about fall 2024 college enrollment: Total undergraduate college enrollment increased 4.5 percent nationwide compared to fall 2023.
