Enhancing college completion rates has become an increasingly important policy intervention in the U.S. In fact, college degrees or certificates have become the prerequisite to hold a sustainable job in today’s labor market (Perdue, 2008). States strive to graduate more college students particularly among the adults aged above sixteen since nearly half of them have a high school diploma or less (Jacobs & Tolbert-Bynum, 2009). Those adults are considered a pool of potential enrollees for college.

With an open access policy, community colleges function as an entry point to enroll most adult undergraduates to achieve the spirit of equality. Yet community colleges fail to fulfill its mission since college completion rates remained stubbornly low in decades even with an over five-time increase in access to community colleges (Rosenbaum, Deil-amen, & Person, 2006). As a result, the issue of degree completion for adult graduates in community college deserves more attention.    

The component of college students is considered a complex group, which makes it difficult to have a clear division either by age or a single feature. This present paper adopted the emerging adulthood theory as the focus of college undergraduates. Specifically, the theory of emerging adulthood proposed by Arnett (2000) defines youths in age 18 to 29. In essence, the emerging adulthood theory is distinguished itself from the general developmental or adult learning theories like Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs or Erikson’s crisis of identify since no specific age range is identified. 

Demographic changes such as the extension of schooling and the median age of marriage facilitate this formation of emerging adulthood in many regions of the world (Arnett, 2000). Realizing this, it is not surprising to see a trend of prolonged persistence in college as reported in Horn & Berger (2004). Apparently, a delayed transition to adult roles may cause individuals to enroll in college longer gradually. Emerging adults represent up to 70% of entrants in colleges (NCES, 2009). As a majority of the college group, the applying of emerging adulthood theory functions not only an instrumental perspective but also a means of reflecting needy strategies for the priority of today’s college students.              

The provision of developmental education is to enhance academic success for students; yet evidence from both state and national data contradicts the promise. Specifically, every four in ten students at community college starting in developmental education cannot complete; furthermore, the ratio of graduation for this group is fewer than one in ten within three years (Complete College America, 2012). As such, studies fail to conclude if there is positive effects of participating in developmental education, given the mixed or indifferent results derived from past research (Bailey, Jeong, & Cho, 2008; Melguizo, Bos, Prather, & Melguizo, 2011). In sum, this paper aims to investigate the impact of developmental education on degree completion, from a time perspective in particular.    

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