In recent years, interest has
grown in the role community colleges can play in helping low-wage workers advance
out of poverty and toward economic self-sufficiency. Unfortunately, high attrition
rates among these nontraditional students limit community colleges’ success
in this arena. MDRC has identified three strategies that might enable colleges
to serve working adults more effectively: enhanced student services; curricular
and instructional innovation; and, the focus of this paper, supplemental student
financial aid. Examining federal, state, and institutional programs, the paper
presents a framework for understanding challenges to securing comprehensive
financial assistance for low-income working students. The paper identifies promising
approaches for supplementing student financial aid based on a range of programs
implemented in the past and planned for the future. It also raises issues that
bear consideration in designing a program that would be both effective in ways
that can be measured through random assignment studies and replicable.
|