Planning Student Paths to Post-Completion Success - A Guide for Using the Community College Program Mapper

Oct 15, 2026

The document argues that community colleges must help students complete programs by ensuring program pathways are clear, feasible, and affordable, leading to good jobs or successful bachelor’s transfers. It emphasizes the importance of an individualized educational plan that maps required courses and learning experiences by sequence and timeline, updated as student goals change. It also introduces a revised Community College Program Mapper, an Excel-based tool that visualizes enrollment pathways and supports data-driven improvements in advising, recruitment, and program design.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages16

Reading Time40 min

AccessFree to download

A Guide for Using the Community College Program Mapper

The Importance of an Individualized Educational Plan

How Colleges Use Program Mapping Data

A N A L Y T I C S Community College Research Center | February 2026 Planning Student Paths to Post-Completion Success: A Guide for Using the Community College Program Mapper By Davis Jenkins, John Fink, and Hana Lahr In our new book, More Essential Than Ever: Community College Pathways to Educational and Career Success (Jenkins, Lahr, et al., 2025), coauthored with Serena C. Klempin and Maggie P. Fay, we argue that if community colleges are to recruit and retain more students, they need to ensure that their programs of study are worth completing in that they enable students to secure good jobs or transfer successfully to bachelor’s programs. Colleges must also ensure that students with many competing obligations can complete their programs in as little time and as affordably as possible. Crucial to accomplishing these aims is helping all entering students explore career and academic interests, choose a program of study, and develop an individualized educational plan aligned to their career and educational goals. As explained in the textbox on the following page, creating an individualized plan is critical for having students develop clarity about their program path and motivating them to complete it. Students and college staff can use these plans to monitor student progress, and colleges can use the plans to schedule classes at times students need them so that students can complete their programs on time, according to their individual timelines. Yet many colleges have difficulty understanding which or how many of their students have individualized educational plans; they also have difficulty in capturing a bird’s eye view of which of their program pathways lead to good jobs and further education for students and which meet local workforce needs. Knowing more about the broad college enrollment picture is critical for thinking about what programs of study should be offered, expanded, and encouraged. It is also helpful in undertaking strategies to help students develop a high-quality, goal-aligned plan. A Guide for Using the Community College Program Mapper The Importance of an Individualized Educational Plan Atthe majority of colleges we have studied in our guided pathways work, most students do not have an educational plan that clearly maps what courses and other required learning experiences they need to take, in what sequence, and on what timeline, to complete a credential that leads to a good job or successful transfer. This is a key reason why many new students drop out within the firstterm or two—they cannot see a path to completing their goals or a feasible timeline for doing so. And without a program plan, too many students who do persist end up taking courses not required to secure a good job or transfer to a bachelor’s program with no excess credits. A key initial step in the educational planning process is choosing a program of study aligned with students’ interests and goals. Colleges typically record students’ intended program major—often the major that students selected on their application—when they enroll so students can be eligible for financial aid. Recording an intended program or major, however, is not the same thing as helping students develop a coherent, actionable plan that aligns coursework to a specific post-completion goal. Moreover, program choice is not usually a one-time decision; it is a process that requires exploration. Yet most colleges do not have a system in place to capture when students want to change their major. As a result, students often change their major without informing an advisor, which means that the college and the student are not on the same page about their goals. As part of early guided pathways reform efforts, many colleges improved information on their websites about program requirements and outcomes. They displayed program maps created by faculty and staff showing what courses students need to take to complete programs. Such maps are helpful, but t

FAQs

Why do community colleges need to improve how students plan their programs?

They must ensure programs are worth completing by enabling students to secure good jobs or transfer successfully, and to help students meet competing obligations with clear, affordable timelines.

What role does an individualized educational plan play in student persistence?

It provides clarity on course sequence and timeline to reach a credential, reducing early dropouts when students cannot see a workable path to their goals.

How does the Community College Program Mapper support colleges in improving student pathways?

Colleges enter program enrollment and demographics into a prebuilt Excel workbook, which generates interactive treemaps, bar graphs, and tables to help them identify which pathways lead to higher-value outcomes and adjust supports, advising, recruitment, and program design.

Oct 15, 2026

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