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Policy Framework
Community colleges, which tend to be accessible and affordable, serve as a critical resource for low-income individuals striving to improve their prospects in the labor market and life. However, a variety of factors, ranging from a lack of financial aid to inadequate student services and poor developmental classes, can impede students’ progress. Many students stop attending school before receiving a postsecondary credential: One study found that only 39 percent of students who entered community college with the goal of earning a degree or certificate had met their goal six years later. College administrators, policymakers, and researchers are searching for effective strategies to help students stay in school and succeed.
In Opening Doors, MDRC worked with community colleges in several states to design and implement new types of financial aid, enhanced student services, and curricular and instructional innovations, with the goal of helping low-income students earn college credentials as the pathway to better jobs and further education. Integral to the demonstration project is a random assignment study measuring how the Opening Doors interventions affect students’ education, labor market, and personal outcomes.
Agenda, Scope, and Goals
The Opening Doors demonstration grew out of previous efforts to learn about the factors that affect low-income students’ college enrollment and completion. It seeks to address two pressing problems: high rates of attrition among low-income community college students and a dearth of reliable evidence about which strategies are effective in improving student retention and longer-term academic and labor market success. During the project’s reconnaissance phase, focus groups with past, current, and potential students uncovered three major themes: a need for financial support; the importance of support services to supplement coursework; and a lack of time to work, raise children, and attend college simultaneously.
Building on these findings, Opening Doors sites tested various combinations of innovations in three areas:
- Curricular and instructional innovations, including learning communities where students take blocks of classes with the same group of peers, customized instructional support, integrated developmental and academic content courses, directed tutoring and courses for students on academic probation, and enhanced orientation courses to help students navigate through the college experience.
- Supplementary financial aid for direct costs (such as tuition, books, supplies, transportation, and child care) or offsetting indirect or opportunity costs (reduced earnings resulting from fewer work hours) of college attendance. Since state policies on financial aid and community college tuition and fees vary enormously, the financial aid intervention is tailored to each site’s circumstances.
- Enhanced student services encompassing stronger academic advisement, personal counseling, career counseling, peer support, and tutoring.
The project’s evaluation component is measuring the effects of each intervention in the following areas:
- Implementation. What services are provided, how are they delivered, who receives them, what are the participation rates, what works best, what problems are encountered, and how are problems addressed?
- Impacts. To what extent do Opening Doors programs improve short- and long-term effects on education, labor market, health, civic engagement, and personal development outcomes?
- Costs and benefits. How much does the program cost, and how large are its benefits relative to its costs from the perspectives of participants, community college administrators, taxpayers, and society as a whole? How do costs and benefits differ across types of programs and types of participants?
Design, Sites, and Data Sources
Six community colleges in four states are participating in the demonstration:
- Kingsborough Community College in Brooklyn, New York
- Lorain County Community College near Cleveland, Ohio
- Owens Community College in Toledo, Ohio
- Delgado Community College and Louisiana Technical College–West Jefferson in the New Orleans, Louisiana, area
- Chaffey College in Rancho Cucamonga, California
The evaluation uses a random assignment research design in which the experiences of students who receive the Opening Doors interventions are compared with those of students who receive existing services. The study will track students for at least two years and will measure the effects of Opening Doors on outcomes such as continued enrollment in college, academic performance, credential attainment, labor market success, and measures of individual well-being.
MDRC's collaborators on the demonstration include the American Association of Community Colleges, the American Council of Education, the Community College Research Center at Teachers College, FutureWorks, Jobs for the Future, the MacArthur Research Network for the Transition to Adulthood, the National Governors Association, and Princeton University: Industrial Relations Section.
What's Next
During 2008, MDRC will produce reports on the Louisiana and California sites. The reports will present impacts on a wide range of educational, social, and health outcomes, based on multiple data sources. In 2009, MDRC will write a similar report on the Ohio sites and a report synthesizing the study’s findings.
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