What can community colleges do to improve retention rates, graduation rates, and gainful employment, for servicemembers, vets, families?

Discourage meaningless degrees. Persuade students to pursue a discipline that actually leads to a career. Job placement should be the goal, and focus, not enrollment. Unless it leads to a productive career, it's just another student to boost enrollment data. Many would be better served through tech training and the trades, but colleges don't want to hear that. A skilled tech or craftsman can earn as much as one with a post-graduate degree in many cases. GI Bill or other VA benefits apply.

Hello Cpt. Shaulis, please check out the website below. Community support within the college is the best strategy to help veterans acclimate to school and be successful during and after their college years.
http://bcveterans.com/

Community Colleges are really there to produce more skilled members of the work force, especially in CTE programs. The best thing that could happen is to develop partnerships with gaining industry partners to ensure grads get solid and viable follow on employment with an eye to provide the right development, experiences, and opportunities for that grad to become that competent journeyman.

Industry partners need to be consistent in informing those CTE feeder programs what the industry is wanting (and it can't be a journeyman with 3-5 years of experience) through the Advisory Board functions required by most states. Seeing some trends that industry is looking for journeymen only because they do not want to "train" or their bench is too light to train and mentor apprentices. It sidelines recent grads into less than optimal positions with little growth. Really sets students to think "why bother?".