Scholarship Program at Louisiana Community Colleges Improves Achievement and Retention

Community colleges, with their open admissions policies and relatively low tuition, are important resources for low-income people striving to improve their prospects. Yet nearly half of students who begin at community colleges leave before they earn a degree. MDRC launched the Opening Doors Demonstration to study the effects of several innovative programs to help community students stay in school and succeed. The demonstration created a performance-based scholarship at two New Orleans-area colleges in 2004-2005, before Hurricane Katrina devastated the region. The scholarship program offered students who were low-income parents enhanced counseling and a $1,000 scholarship for each of two semesters, funded by Louisiana state welfare dollars, if they maintained at least half-time enrollment and a 2.0 (or C) grade point average.

While it is too soon to conclude that the program was an unequivocal success, the early findings show that it had a significant positive effect on students’ academic achievement and rates of retention. The program’s participants were more likely than those in a comparison group to enroll in college full time. They also passed more courses, earned more course credits, and had higher rates of registration and full-time attendance in college. For more information, see MDRC’s May 2006 report, Paying for Persistence: Early Results of a Louisiana Scholarship Program for Low-Income Parents Attending Community College.

For More Information, Click Here.