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March 23, 2006
Issue Focus
Improving the Success of Low-Income Students in Community College
Community colleges enroll nearly half of all students in higher education — over 11 million annually. For low-income people in particular, community colleges offer an important pathway out of poverty and into better jobs. But a host of factors, including inadequate financial aid or student services and poor developmental (or remedial) classes, can keep them from enrolling in and completing postsecondary education. For instance, according to the Beginning Postsecondary Students Longitudinal Study, only 31 percent of students who entered community college in 1995-1996 with the intention of earning a degree or certificate had met their goal six years later. Completion rates are particularly low for students in developmental courses, who comprise the majority of new students at many community colleges. Finding effective strategies to increase access to and retention in college is critical to improving the lives of low-income individuals.
MDRC has embarked on a multifaceted new research agenda aimed at discovering how to dramatically increase the success of low-income young adults in school, in the labor market, and in life. Among the strategies MDRC is investigating are:
- Learning Communities
Two recent papers, Learning Communities and Student Success in Postsecondary Education: A Background Paper and Building Learning Communities: Early Results from the Opening Doors Demonstration at Kingsborough Community College provide background and early experimental results on the effectiveness of programs that place college students into small groups that take coordinated classes together. MDRC is also in the planning phase for a Learning Communities Demonstration, which will further evaluate the effectiveness of this approach.
- Improved Student Support Services
Support Success: Services That May Help Low-Income Students Succeed in Community College explores strategies community colleges can pursue for enhancing student services, including offering “one-stop shopping,” which provides students with multiple services at the same time and place. MDRC is also working with The James Irvine Foundation to develop the Student Support Partnership Integrating Resources and Education (SSPIRE) to help a group of colleges in California effectively integrate traditional student support services with intensive academic instruction and supports.
- Instructional Innovation
Changing Courses: Instructional Innovations That Help Low-Income Students Succeed in Community College looks at curricular and program redesign strategies currently used by community colleges to speed nontraditional students’ advancement from lower levels of skill into credential programs and to shorten the time commitment required to earn a credential. Two colleges in the Opening Doors are focusing on ways of improving instruction. MDRC is also evaluating a Lumina Foundation for Education initiative, Achieving the Dream, in which many colleges are planning changes in developmental education.
- Improving Financial Aid
Money Matters: How Financial Aid Affects Nontraditional Students in Community Colleges presents a framework for understanding challenges to securing comprehensive financial assistance for low-income working students. MDRC is also evaluating the Dreamkeepers Emergency Financial Aid initiative, an emergency scholarship program for community college and tribal college students.
- Institutional Change
MDRC is evaluating a Lumina Foundation for Education initiative, Achieving the Dream, in which 35 colleges in 7 states are collecting and analyzing longitudinal student data to diagnose where students are having difficulty. From this effort, colleges will design and implement reforms to improve student performance.
An overview of the full range of our projects in this area is available on our Postsecondary Education page and a full list of our publications in this area is available on the Postsecondary Education Publications page.
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