We Need More Behavioral Research at Community Colleges

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Over the past 15 months, I’ve written about many ways in which the thoughtful consideration of behavioral science can change practices in higher education. To name a few, I’ve shared how growth mindsets can improve student outcomes and increase workforce diversity; how STEM students can stay in the pipeline by focusing on communal motives and utility values; and how nudges can connect college students to key resources, from career counseling to food pantries.

As I’ve compiled and synthesized this area of research, I’ve been struck by the overrepresentation of four-year students, notably those from elite universities, in these experimental samples. For instance, take my post from February of this year on self-affirmation interventions. I cite three studies showing that a brief intervention, which allows students to reaffirm their personal values in an educational setting, improves academic performance among Latinos, women in physics, and first-generation students in biology. Although commonplace in psychology not to name where research is conducted, authorship and contextual clues give us a pretty good idea that these studies involved students from Stanford University, the University of Wisconsin, and the University of Colorado.

Now there’s nothing wrong with studying undergraduates at elite, four-year universities, especially when the goal is to reduce inequities based on gender, race, ethnicity, and class. And, as a former academic, I understand why psychologists tend to focus on students from their own campuses (and it’s not just the obvious reason, convenience). Professors spend more time with students than they probably do their own families. If they witness a disparity in performance that seems more to do with a student’s background than their aptitude, it’s second nature to a psychologist to dissect the problem through careful study and devise a solution. And when this happens, we’re all better for it because we can use that knowledge to help the students we care about, whatever the context.

But the argument I want to make is that if psychological researchers want to have the largest impact on student outcomes, they need to focus more time and energy on community colleges. According to the Community College Research Center, 36% of undergraduate students attend two-year colleges, and more than half will leave within three years without earning a credential. More importantly, students who are African American, Hispanic, and come from a lower-income household are significantly more likely to begin college at a two-year institution. While reducing performance gaps at places like Stanford is noble, more substantive changes in equity will come from interventions that help underrepresented students finish community college and either make the leap to a four-year university or enter into a family-sustaining career.

What evidence does exist begins to offer insight into the ways in which we might best help community college students succeed, and how our approach may differ from the one we’d take with four-year students. Well-known work by Ben Castleman and Lindsey Page on preventing “summer melt” through SMS-based reminders and advising has owed its effects primarily to increasing persistence among community college students. My own work to nudge students in the STEM pipeline over the summer to return to community college has produced similar effects. On the contrary, Carnegie Pathways, a successful re-envisioning of developmental math courses that considers student mindsets in its approach, shows greater impact on students at four-year universities than those at community colleges. And a recent test of “cultural mismatch theory” among community college students suggests that first-generation students’ values may be more congruent with those espoused by community colleges (as opposed to four-year universities). This result carries implications for whether interventions that are efficacious at places like Stanford will translate to community colleges.

These studies scratch the surface of how attending a community college may alter what we think we know about the higher education experience, and engender many worthwhile questions. Is stereotype threat pertinent when traditionally underrepresented students aren’t so underrepresented at their community college? How is social belonging relevant to students who are on a non-residential campus, working full-time, and raising families? Are utility value interventions less impactful for students in a vocational track with a clear occupational goal in sight? Only by moving more of our research agenda into the community college environment can we uncover these answers and begin to help those students who may never even step foot onto a four-year campus.

I acknowledge the potential challenges facing psychologists who want to translate their work to community college students, such as a lack of a volunteer participant pool, finding appropriate lab space, engaging with a new IRB, and coordinating offsite research activities. I would dismiss, however, any notion that community colleges lack a culture of research conducive to these kinds of studies. Through innovative partnerships with groups like the Community College Research Center, many community colleges are already fertile ground for research (though often not of the psychological kind). My own work developing and evaluating behavioral interventions for community colleges has shown clearly that these institutions are willing and ready to be a part of the research process and contribute to our shared knowledge of how nudging can help more students achieve their goals. I urge psychological researchers to find these eager, likeminded partners so that we can specify which interventions work best for which students, and continue to reduce inequities in college performance and completion.