Community colleges are often described as engines of opportunity, and for good reason. They offer affordable, flexible pathways to credentials, careers, and economic mobility, especially for students with low incomes, for parenting students, and for those who are the first in their families to attend college.

But tuition is only one part of the story. For many students, success also depends on whether colleges can help them navigate child care, transportation, access to high-quality food, career decisions, and the many other barriers to staying enrolled and completing a program.

The Urban Institute set out to explore some of the ways colleges are supporting students as part of an effort to inform the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s postsecondary education investment strategy. We wanted to find out more about the approaches community colleges are taking to support student success, focusing on three core areas: career pathways, supportive services, and affordability. A key focus of our inquiry was to understand how colleges are aligning these supports.

To do this, we interviewed community college leaders and administrators about the supports they provide students, how they are integrating those supports, what obstacles they face, and where they see room to grow. Their responses show that many colleges are already moving toward a more connected approach to student success, and with targeted supports, they could accomplish much more.

Connecting career pathways to make college more affordable

One of the clearest themes from the interviews was that strong career pathway strategies can also make college more affordable.

Several colleges described efforts to help students choose a program early, avoid excess credits, and move more efficiently toward credentials that have labor market value. Grand Rapids Community College emphasized front-end career advising so students can make informed decisions from the beginning.

The college is also expanding paid internships and apprenticeships, evidence-based practices that create more opportunities for students to earn income while gaining relevant work experience. For students who cannot afford to pause work while in school, these “earn and learn” models can make participation possible.

Colleges also pointed to the value of short-term credentials that can lead to immediate employment while still connecting to longer-term degree pathways, allowing students to build skills and wages over time.

Using financial support more strategically

Affordability came up in the interviews not just as a question of tuition, but of whether students can manage the full cost of attending college. Colleges described efforts to connect financial aid with emergency assistance, advising, and other supports that help students cover everyday expenses while staying enrolled, reported nationally as a key challenge for students.

Cuyahoga Community College offers holistic financial advising that helps students understand available aid, connect to supportive services, and plan for the financial realities of their time in school. This kind of coordination recognizes that students’ financial challenges are often intertwined with academic progress and persistence.

Strengthening coordination between advising and support services

Interviewees also stressed the importance of linking academic advising, career guidance, and support services instead of expecting students to navigate each system on their own.

Coordinated advising can help students understand their options, solve problems early, and stay on track to completion. A leader at WSU Tech, a two-year college in Wichita Kansas, leaders described an approach in which career pathways, affordability, and student support are integrated from outreach to orientation and ongoing communication. Students are connected to staff in each area, and coordination is supported through shared data tools and a navigation app. A cross-functional care team helps identify students who may need additional support before a small problem turns into a reason to stop out.

What still gets in the way

These examples also made clear that integration does not happen by accident. Colleges that reported making progress tended to have leadership support, better cross-department collaboration, shared student success goals, and data systems that allowed staff to work from the same information. In many cases, this required culture change as much as program design: breaking down silos, redefining roles, and helping teams see student success as a shared responsibility rather than the job of a single office.

But these changes are not always straightforward, and colleges also described major barriers to improving alignment:

• Scale of need: Many students face multiple barriers at once, including housing instability, child care needs, transportation challenges, and food insecurity.
• Funding and staff capacity: Community colleges are asked to meet broad student and workforce needs while often operating with limited resources, which lowers their ability to recruit at all, much less recruit experienced staff who are equipped to support students.
• Data capacity: Integrated support depends on shared access to timely, useful data, and some colleges still face gaps in the information they need to make informed decisions about how to best allocate resources.
• Resistance to change: Coordination across offices can require shifts in culture, roles, and routines that not every institution finds easy to make.
• Scaling what works: Even when colleges have promising practices, moving from a pilot to broader institutional change can be difficult.

Despite these challenges, colleges are experimenting with ways to connect career pathways, affordability, and student supports more intentionally. Philanthropy can help colleges strengthen this type of coordinated infrastructure that undergirds work they are already doing—leadership alignment, shared data, staff development, and cross-functional collaboration—so that promising approaches can become embedded in institutions and are sustained for the long-term benefit of millions of future students.