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The Nudge to Finish Up: A National Study of Community College Near-Completion Students

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  • Yu Chen

    (Louisiana State University)

  • Xiaodan Hu

    (Northern Illinois University)

Abstract

Community college near-completion students are community college starters who have accumulated a considerable number of credits but left college without any postsecondary educational credential. This quantitative study examined a nationally representative sample and intended to reveal significant predictors of becoming a community college near-completion student. We adopted Bean and Metzner’s (1985) framework to focus on characteristics of nontraditional college students and Bahr’s (2013) approach to emphasize students’ course-taking patterns. We conducted a latent class analysis to explore students’ course-taking patterns and examined whether different course-taking patterns would predict the likelihood of being a near-completion student using a logistic regression model. Findings indicated the significant role of course-taking patterns in predicting the likelihood of being a community college near completion student. Community college students who have taken and passed a large number of remedial courses are more likely to leave college without a credential. Additional interaction terms in the regression model further revealed the nuances in terms of the influences of course-taking patterns among various student sub-groups. Implications for practice and future research are discussed.

Suggested Citation

  • Yu Chen & Xiaodan Hu, 2021. "The Nudge to Finish Up: A National Study of Community College Near-Completion Students," Research in Higher Education, Springer;Association for Institutional Research, vol. 62(5), pages 651-679, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:reihed:v:62:y:2021:i:5:d:10.1007_s11162-020-09613-9
    DOI: 10.1007/s11162-020-09613-9
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