Two-year colleges are a critical site for the expansion of educational opportunity in the United States. They enroll nearly half of all postsecondary students and are a gateway to higher education for low-income, non-traditional, racial and ethnic minority, and first-generation college students. Degree completion rates in the two-year sector are persistently low, however, especially in community colleges. In order to improve attainment at these colleges, it is important to understand both the obstacles faced by two-year college students and the ways college procedures may influence student experiences.

This dissertation is comprised of five chapters. Chapter 1 provides an introduction to this area of scholarship and a theoretical framing of the research questions. The studies that follow focus on ''informational capital'' and the organizational procedures that govern its availability to students. Chapters 2 and 3 take a comparative approach, analyzing data from a multi-method study of seven public and seven private two-year colleges in a single metropolitan area. Chapter 2 uses student interviews and survey data from these 14 colleges to assess student information and planning problems in different college environments, revealing that many students lack optimal information and information processing skills for college success. All else equal, however, attendance at a private college is associated with increased adequacy of information, fewer mistakes, and less consideration of dropout. Chapter 3 presents analyses of interview data from college personnel to examine the ways in which two-year college faculty make and maintain labor market linkages to provide job information to students. The study then turns to the same student survey analyzed in Chapter 2 to examine relationships between student effort and confidence and their perception of teacher and college job contacts. Chapter 4 uses national longitudinal data to conduct statistical tests of the hypotheses generated in Chapters 2 and 3, attempting to pinpoint the factors that influence two-year college students' degree completion. Chapter 5 presents an integrative discussion of the work, including implications for research, policy, and practice. The analyses point to several areas where enhanced college procedures focusing on information could support student success.