"Community-college students who are low-income and academically unprepared appear to benefit from being placed in effective 'learning communities' where they take classes together and can give each other support, according to a new study," The Chronicle of Higher Education reports. "The study surveyed and tracked the progress of students at 13 community colleges around the nation, comparing about 1,600 low-income and unprepared freshmen who been placed in learning communities, taking remedial classes together, with nearly 2,300 who had not been placed in such groups. It found that the learning-community students were more likely than the others to report feeling engaged in their studies, and they were more positive than the others in their perceptions of how much encouragement they received on their campus and how much they had intellectually progressed. The learning-community students were also significantly more likely than the others to return to college as sophomores, even when compared with students who reported feeling equally academically engaged, the study found."