California Community Colleges: Designing mentoring networks for access to social capital

Successful careers are built on Skills (what you know), Occupational Identity (what you believe you can be) and Social Capital (who you know). Higher-ed spends significant resources in addressing the first, sometimes to the exclusion of the other two - which are difficult and expensive to teach and administer. This research specifically explores how near-peer mentoring programs, rather than a stand-alone opt-in guidance, can be integrated into the instruction/pedagogy by faculty at California community colleges. The research was conducted at 5 California community colleges (Reedley, Porterville, Coalinga, Solano and Glendale). A mixed-methods approach was used to gather social cognitive measures of student self-efficacy, occupational identity and social capital access. Measures were collected using survey instruments at the beginning of the mentoring program, and at its culmination. One of the most consistent measures observed across all the pilots was the increase in student self-efficacy of skills and competencies (3% - 7%) across colleges, geographies, and course formats after the mentoring program. Additionally, the research offers insights in implementing peer and near-peer mentoring programs that improve course completion, with significant instructional (and non-instructional) cost advantages.