More than a Number: A Capabilities Framework for Conceptualizing Community College Success

Abstract

Context Community colleges in the United States are increasingly tasked with demonstrating their commitment to improved institutional outcomes even as measures of student success are critiqued for failing to capture the colleges’ diverse missions and student populations. Purpose This paper offers an alternative framework for understanding and evaluating community college student success based on the normative and interdisciplinary capabilities approach. Setting The larger study on which this paper is based took place at a large, diverse community college located in the southwestern United States. Participants The sample for this study consists of 958 e-survey respondents (N = 17,080; response rate 6%), and semi-structured follow-up interviews with a heterogeneous group of 40 community college students. Research Design The study uses mixed methods consisting of a large-scale e-survey, student interviews, participant- and researcher-generated visual methods, and in-depth reviews of the community college and capabilities approach literatures. Results The author used a top-down/bottom-up process to generate a final empirical list of 12 community college capabilities that are informed by both the literature and student voices: practical reason, knowledge and imagination, learning disposition, social relations and networks, respect and recognition, emotional health, bodily health, economic opportunities, love and care, language competency and confidence, autonomy, and refuge. This paper also transparently documents the methodological process the author uses to generate these capabilities to aid both researchers and practitioners in their efforts to help students flourish and thrive as they navigate the higher education landscape. Conclusions The results of this study provide educational researchers and practitioners with a methodological process for developing their own locally sourced understandings of student success. As proposed in this paper, reframing the educational experience around capabilities and capabilities development provides colleges—and education institutions more generally— with a new, more responsive and democratic set of tools to use in understanding all the ways in which community colleges help students build and sustain meaningful lives.