Early College Credit Programs Positively Impact Student Success

This article presents an exploratory case study examining the effects of different early college credit programs on time to baccalaureate degree attainment at a metropolitan Midwestern United States land grant university. We developed a Cox proportional hazards regression model of a students' time to degree attainment as a function of their participation in different early college credit programs while controlling for each student's preenrollment grade point average (GPA), American College Test (ACT) test score, gender, part or full-time enrollment status, ethnicity, and seasonal (Fall, Spring, or Summer) semester of initial matriculation. The most noteworthy finding of our analysis was that each early college credit program appeared to have a positive and statistically significant impact on reducing the time to degree attainment with all other factors being equal. However, the mechanisms through which these programs affect the time to degree attainment appeared to be differentiated by program.