Guided Pathways

This two-page document briefly describes the concept and goals of Guided Pathways and also provides two infographics describing the Guided Pathways model.

This five page essay is an overview of the origins of the Guided Pathways movement, published by the Community College Research Center. Notably, this document also provides an extensive bibliography.

This two-page document outlines the Essential Practices and Essential Capacities for institutions implementing Guided Pathways.

This three-page document provides a bulleted overview of the four pillars of the Guided Pathways model.

This 24-page overview describes the barriers to student success created by the way most community colleges are currently organized. It describes the key design features of the guided pathways model, describes the process for implementing it and outlines reasons why college leaders should consider doing so despite the costs involved.

This brief article features the promising early results of Guided Pathways programs.

Provided by the Community College Research Center, this 8 page article proposes three methods for assessing the success of Guided Pathways: Credit Momentum, Gateway Momentum, and Program Momentum.

This 16 page report details the results of a two-day site visit to Wallace State Community College by CCRC researchers. Based on the data collected, the report describes the organizational changes that enabled Wallace State’s exceptional progress in redesigning academic programs, student services, and related support systems using the Guided Pathways model.

A brief overview of Guided Pathways in California including great infographics on the four pillars of Guided Pathways.

This article reports on a study based on student interviews. According to the author: "In this brief, I examine data from 48 interviews with first-year students at City Colleges of Chicago (CCC)—a large urban community college system with seven campuses that since 2010 has been implementing guided pathways—to understand students’ reactions to CCC’s ambitious, system-wide reform."

In the first three sections, we describe essential practices underlying each of these three strategies (outlined in the sidebar to the right). Recognizing that there is still room for even the best current practice to improve, the fourth section of the playbook includes a discussion of “next frontiers” of practice; these are practices that even the high-performing community colleges and universities profiled here have only begun to work on in their continuing efforts to improve outcomes for their students. With that grounding, we then list in the fifth section activities for community colleges and four-year colleges to undertake in order to implement the strategies. The playbook concludes with a synthesis of practitioners’ perspectives on the benefits and challenges associated with state transfer articulation policies.

The research presented here highlights a set of practices, processes, and mindsets that distinguish colleges that are effective at ensuring that diverse students succeed in the labor market and that make a significant, positive difference in their communities.