Results from a focus group-based study released today by the Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation (MDRC) provide insights into how to lower barriers that prevent low-wage workers from enrolling in and successfully completing community college programs — long recognized as important pathways to upward career mobility.
Called Opening Doors: Students’ Perspectives on Juggling Work, Family, and College, the new report distills opinions from a cross-section of current, former, and potential community college students to suggest how policy and program changes on the part of the schools, public agencies, and private employers could make it easier for low-wage working students to earn college credentials. “We know that a growing proportion of jobs in today’s labor market require some postsecondary training and that increased years of schooling are associated with higher earnings,” says Robert Ivry, Senior Vice President of MDRC. “We went right to the consumers — students themselves — to learn from their experiences what could be done to increase access to college and improve retention and graduation rates.”
In the Opening Doors study, MDRC researchers conducted a total of 18 focus groups — one each with current, former, and potential students, respectively, at six community colleges renowned for their innovative programs targeted to nontraditional student populations. The schools participating in the study were Cabrillo College in Aptos, California; LaGuardia Community College in Long Island City, New York; Macomb Community College in Clinton Township, Michigan; Portland Community College in Portland, Oregon; Sinclair Community College in Dayton, Ohio; and Valencia Community College in Orlando, Florida. Among the 131 people who took part in the focus groups, 90 percent were single mothers, many were current or former welfare recipients, and most held low-wage jobs.

Focus group participants spoke poignantly of the efforts they were required to make over the long time it takes to complete a college program as part-time students while working in a low-wage job and raising a family. Discussions touched on many issues, but says Lisa Matus-Grossman, a coauthor of the report: “Four recurring themes come up. Participants emphasized that low-wage working students need new forms of financial aid, increased child care availability including expanded weekend and evening hours, stronger support services on college campus, and creative scheduling formats to enable students to earn their credentials more quickly.”

Participants discussed both the direct costs of going to college, such as tuition, books, and supplies; and the indirect costs of having to reduce their work hours to attend school — particularly the loss of wages. Though most hold low-wage jobs, many fail nonetheless to qualify for Pell grants and other forms of financial aid.
The focus group panelists emphasized the need for strong on-campus support services, including tutoring, personal counseling, financial-aid advice, life-management skills, and job-placement assistance. “Their availability often determined whether students were able to stay in school, interrupt their studies, or drop out entirely,” explains Dr. Susan Gooden, an Associate Professor of Public Administration and Policy at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University and a coauthor of the report.

Participants also described how faculty and employers both bolstered and inhibited their efforts to succeed in college. Some spoke approvingly of faculty who provided extra help and let them make up for missed classes and work; others described faculty as rigid and unsympathetic. In a similar vein, students and former students spoke of accommodating employers who allowed them to arrange work hours around class schedules; other employers were described as inflexible and unwilling to support their aspirations for postsecondary education.

The experiences articulated by current, former, and potential students suggest these policy and program strategies for community colleges working in concert with the welfare and workforce development systems and the business community: br> Develop new varieties of financial aid to help low-wage workers cover both the direct costs of going to school — tuition assistance for students who miss the Pell cutoff or do not qualify for student loans; books and supplies for most others — and that provide supplemental income to make up for wages foregone by students who must reduce their work hours to attend school.
Enhance the rudimentary counseling and other support services generally found at most community colleges, and expand their availability. Providing more comprehensive personal and financial-aid counseling, tutoring, job-placement assistance, and access to Food Stamps, health insurance, and other supports of the work-based safety net could result in higher rates of student retention and graduation.

New class curricula and scheduling formats would enable students coping with the demands of work and parenting to earn their credentials more quickly. Innovations that compress and modularize course offerings include open-entry/open-exit classes that allow students to progress at their own pace, classes that meet on weekends, and course offerings that combine distance-learning and on-campus support. Schools might productively consider making more extensive use of “career ladders” in high-growth occupations that enable students to earn basic certification quickly with the option to continue training for more advanced certification.

In collaboration with a group of states and community colleges, MDRC is in the early stages of developing a demonstration project to design and implement these ideas, to determine whether they can be realized on a large scale, and to measure their costs and their effects on students’ education outcomes and labor market success.

Opening Doors is funded by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Joyce Foundation, the KnowledgeWorks Foundation, the Lumina Foundation for Education, the MetLife Foundation, the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, and the Smith Richardson Foundation.

With offices in New York City and Oakland, MDRC is a nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization with more than a quarter century’s experience designing and evaluating social policy initiatives aimed at increasing employment and earnings among low-income populations.