Access Assessment Tool

The items in this assessment tool reflect strong practices observed through Aspen’s research and direct engagements with excellent community colleges, which we define as those achieving high and improving levels of student success (1) both while in college and after graduation (2) overall and for students of color and low-income students. The assessment tool is organized into several domains of practice emerging from Aspen’s research and prompts users to rate their institution’s adoption of each item within each domain. Once complete, a summary of scores will allow colleges to identify strengths and weaknesses in specific practices aligned to each item and to observe which domains most need improvement.

In this assessment tool, the term “student success” has the following meaning:

  • Success in college: Students (1) learn and (2) complete credentials.
  • Success after college: Students (1) get good jobs and/or (2) transfer and attain a bachelor’s degree.
  • Equitable outcomes and access: For Black, Hispanic, Indigenous, and low-income students, the college ensures high absolute rates and minimizes gaps in (1) learning and completion outcomes for students in college, (2) transfer and workforce outcomes for students after college, and (3) enrollment of different demographic groups relative to the college’s service area.

Directions: Assess the extent to which your college engages each of the following practices, according to the scoring rubric.

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Domain 1

Vision
College leaders have a clear, prioritized agenda for improving access to the college overall and for students who are less likely to attend college (e.g., working adults, for students of color, students from low-income backgrounds).
The president and senior leadership have adopted a limited set of leading and lagging indicators associated with improving college access (disaggregated by student characteristics) and monitor the metrics frequently.
The president includes access strategies in college goals presented to the board, and the board has adopted annual goals and budget allocations focused on improving access to strong programs.
The college’s prioritized access agenda includes goals for increasing enrollment in programs with strong post-completion value—those that lead directly to a good job or to seamless transfer in a major to a four-year institution.
The college’s prioritized access agenda includes substantial components aimed at addressing inequities in access to college programs with strong post-completion outcomes (e.g., working adults, for students of color, students from low-income backgrounds).
The metrics college leaders use to assess progress include measures of whether students have increasing levels of access to programs that lead to strong transfer and workforce outcomes.

Domain 2

Dual Enrollment and High School Partnerships
College leaders work with district and high school partners to define the purposes of and set goals for expanding college-going and college preparedness (including through dual enrollment) and establish agreements that promote those goals.
The college evaluates equity gaps in college-going rates and dual enrollment participation at its primary feeder high schools and college leaders set targets and strategies to close those gaps.
The college has a dedicated administrative leader to implement high school partnerships (e.g., dual enrollment). The college staff have a trusting relationship with counterparts at high schools and districts and regularly communicate with them about advancing success and equity in college going and dual enrollment.
College recruiters and dual enrollment staff reach out to high schools that are underrepresented among dual enrollment participants and communicate clearly and directly with families about the details and value of dual enrollment.
The college has alternatives to placement testing for students to gain access to dual enrollment.
The college strives to reduce costs for dual enrollment (e.g., tuition, fees, and books) and eliminate transportation barriers to expand access for students from low-income backgrounds.
The college has created program maps that align dual enrollment courses with a long-term plan in specific programs of study (or program clusters).
The college offers support services to dual enrollment students and encourages them to use those resources.
Faculty and staff work to acclimate new dual enrollment students to college expectations.
The college consistently shares data with high school partners to assess outcomes and make improvements.

Domain 3

Adult Student Access
College leaders have goals for expanding access for adults (over 24) to programs that provide strong post-graduation value.
The college has developed strategic partnerships with organizations that serve substantial numbers of unemployed and underemployed adults (e.g., Year Up, Goodwill, and government workforce training centers) to increase their enrollment in high-value programs.
The college has goals and strategies to increase the number of students in noncredit programs (e.g., ABE, ESL, GED) who enter and complete programs of study with strong post-completion outcomes.
The college works with employers to set goals and implement strategies to upskill incumbent employees in low-wage jobs so they can enter higher-wage jobs.
The college consistently monitors the time and modality of courses to assess the degree to which working adults can enroll in and efficiently complete programs of study.
The college has centralized substantial components of course scheduling to increase opportunities for adults to enroll and complete programs of study.
The college offers many short-term programs that lead to living-wage jobs and has a strategy in place to increase adult enrollment in those programs.
The college has developed strategic initiatives to reduce the costs of programs of value so that lower-income adults can afford them.

Domain 4

Access to High-Value Programs
College leaders have categorized all workforce programs according to their likely value in the labor markets, and routinely gather information about which programs result in employment rates in jobs with strong wages.
College leaders have categorized all liberal arts/transfer programs according to the likelihood that students will be able to transfer and earn bachelor’s degrees, and routinely gather information about which programs result in high transfer and bachelor’s attainment outcomes.
College leaders have set goals and the college is implementing strategies to increase the number of students who access and complete high-value workforce and transfer programs and to reduce enrollment in low-value pathways.
The college schedules classes with the goal of increasing enrollment in key courses needed to complete high-value programs.
College advisors (and others who help students choose programs) have information about the post-completion value of different pathways and understand the college’s goals to increase access to high-value programs and reduce enrollment in low-value pathways.
College advisors (and others who help students choose programs) are trained to help students make earlier decisions aligned to entering programs with strong post-completion outcomes and reducing enrollment in low-value pathways.
The college has in place incentives and accountability systems for advisors (and others) to increase the number of students in high-value programs and reduce enrollment in low-value pathways.

Access Assessment Inquiry Guide

This guide aims to help community college leaders craft and review strategic priorities to improve access to both the community college and to its “high-value programs,” meaning those that result in strong workforce outcomes and transfer and bachelor’s attainment rates. The guide’s prompts and questions are designed to be considered alongside (1) data gathered by the college on student outcomes related to access and (2) a summary of responses to Aspen’s access assessment tool, built on research about effective practices in the field. While we anticipate users of this guide will gather additional quantitative and qualitative information, the data and assessment responses—together with this guide—will support leaders in developing specific areas for improvement. 

Access Assessment Inquiry Questions

Which demographic groups in your service area do you enroll at the highest and lowest levels? How do enrollment trends overall compare to those for different groups? Which groups are underserved compared to their percentage of the population? 

Where are your access assessment results strongest and weakest?

  1. In dual enrollment and high school partnerships that seek to expand college-going in your service area and help students get on an academic plan aligned with post-graduation success?
  2. In serving adult students who need access to short-term credentials and other programs that lead to career advancement and higher wages?
  3. In pursuing strong and equitable program-level enrollment, especially in your programs of study that lead to strong wage and/or transfer outcomes? 
     

How are your access and enrollment data connected to your assessment results?

  1. From which high schools do you enroll the most recent graduates? What is the college’s relationship with those high schools? How does it differ from the relationships with high schools that supply fewer students? 
  2. What is the demographic distribution of your dual enrollment students? Which students are least likely to participate? What percentage enroll in your college after high school? What practice strengths and weaknesses from your assessment results might explain these results? 
  3. What are the most concerning inequities in your program-level enrollment, especially in programs with the strongest post-graduation outcomes? Does anything in your assessment results—including in the areas of program recruitment, onboarding, and ensuring timely and strong program choice—explain those inequities?
  4. In which programs are most of your adult learners (i.e., students over the age of 24) enrolled? Are these programs more or less likely to be “high-value” programs than those that enroll fewer adult learners? How could you better advance economic mobility and talent development among adult students? 
     

What do your assessment results, community demographic data, and labor market data tell you about where you need to improve access? 

  1. Are there growing employers and industries that offer good jobs you do and do not have partnerships with? How well are your programs aligned to those jobs?  How could you develop/strengthen those partnerships? 
  2. Do certain geographic parts of your service area have lower education attainment and employment rates than the overall rates? What is your current strategy to educate more individuals living in those areas? 
  3. Who are your strongest workforce and community-based partners? How could they help you advance equitable access for adults in new ways? 
  4. How can you better engage K-12 to expand college access for high-schoolers and young adults in geographic areas with lower education attainment and employment rates?
     

Next Steps

  1. What are the 1-5 most important things you have uncovered about your access and enrollment data? What do you most want to improve?
  2. What are the 1-5 most important things you have uncovered about your access practices from your assessment tool? Among the areas of weakness, what few changes would make the biggest positive difference?
  3. What are the immediate next steps you can take to ensure action on these lessons learned?
     

Access Assessment Data Queries

Enrollment trends: What are the enrollment trends for your college? How do those trends vary by student demographic group including by race/ethnicity, income level, gender, adult vs traditional age? 

College-going rate in service area: What is the overall college-going rate for your community as a whole and by demographic groups? What differences stand out among the different demographic groups?

Enrollment compared to high school and service area demographics: What is the demographic breakdown of your service area considering characteristics such as age, race, gender, income? How does your student population reflect the demographics of your service area? 

Dual enrollment participation and yield: How do the demographics of your dual enrollment students reflect the broader population of your service area? Where are there gaps in who is served? What percentage of your dual enrollment students enrolls at your college after high school?

Enrollment by program (12-month unduplicated enrollment/FTE enrollment): What percentage of your students are in high versus low-value program pathways? In your high-value programs, how does enrollment vary by different student demographics? How does enrollment in high-value programs vary by different student demographics? Where are there gaps? How does enrollment in low-value pathways (e.g., undecided, general studies, workforce programs aligned to low-wage work) vary by different student demographics? Where are there gaps?