About MDRC
Austin Slaughter is a technical research analyst in MDRC’s Postsecondary Education (PSE) policy area. He manages the technical work—randomizing study participants, collecting and processing data, estimating impacts, and creating data visualizations—for two randomized controlled trial (RCT) evaluations: CUNY Start and Scaling Up College Completion Efforts for Student Success (SUCCESS). Slaughter also contributes to PSE’s cost work and leads the development of the return on investment tool, a web-based application that enables community college administrators to estimate the costs and revenues associated with implementing a new Student Success intervention. Slaughter and his MDRC colleagues recently completed The Higher Education Randomized Controlled Trial (THE-RCT) restricted access file, which consists of student-level data from more than 30 RCTs MDRC has conducted in postsecondary education.
Prior to joining MDRC, Slaughter conducted postsecondary education research at Research for Action, the University of Michigan, and the Michigan Department of Education. He holds a master’s degree in public policy from the University of Michigan and a bachelor’s degree in business administration from the University of Texas at Tyler. Slaughter is a proud first-generation college graduate, which drives his passion for postsecondary education policy and research.
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MDRC Publications
Working PaperA Randomized Controlled Trial Evaluation of a Developmental Education Reform at the City University of New York
March, 2021CUNY Start aims to prepare students with significant remedial needs for college-level courses. This working paper reports that over three years, CUNY Start substantially increased college readiness, slightly increased credit accumulation, and modestly increased graduation rates (by increasing participation in another highly effective program).
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Other Publications
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Projects
College administrators are better positioned than ever before to make decisions about adopting programs based on the effectiveness and cost of interventions. There is, however, a third piece of information critical to decision-making: the amount of revenue an intervention would generate at their college because of increased student...
Alexander Mayer, Michelle Ware, Frieda Molina, Hannah Dalporto, Andrea Vasquez, Susan Scrivener, John Diamond, Oscar Cerna, Dorota Rizik, Rashida Welbeck, Sophia Sutcliffe, Clinton Key, Melissa Boynton, Austin Slaughter, Erick Alonzo, Kalito Luna, Xavier Alemañy, Melissa WestIncome share agreements ( ISA s) are designed to help students pay for and attend postsecondary education and career training programs. With an ISA , students receive financial support to help cover the cost of their education and, in return, agree to pay a fixed percentage of their future income over a predetermined time period. ISA s are gaining popularity as an...
For The Higher Education Randomized Controlled Trial project ( THE - RCT ), MDRC has created the largest individual-participant database from higher education randomized controlled trials to date. THE - RCT makes standardized, deidentified data from more than 25 studies covering 50 institutions of higher education and 65,000 students securely available to...
Colleen Sommo, Alexander Mayer, Alyssa Ratledge, Michelle Ware, Osvaldo Avila, Katie Beal, Melissa Wavelet, Leigh Parise, Kriti Singh, Colin Hill, Rae Walker, Austin Slaughter, Hannah Dalporto, Elena Serna-WallenderMDRC ’s Scaling Up College Completion Efforts for Student Success ( SUCCESS ) seeks to improve graduation rates for traditionally underserved students at two- and four-year colleges, by helping states and institutions align their resources with evidence-driven practices. SUCCESS combines components from multiple programs that have proven themselves to be...
MDRC ’s Center for Applied Behavioral Science ( CABS ) and Postsecondary Education policy area launched The Finish Line: Graduation by Design to improve college completion rates using behavioral insights. Graduating from college is a challenge, particularly for low‐income and nontraditional students, who often face personal, institutional, and structural barriers to...
Many students enter postsecondary education underprepared academically, and the success rate for these students is low. At open access colleges (like community colleges), underprepared students are typically referred to developmental (or remedial) coursework, often in the form of multilevel, noncredit course sequences in reading, English, and math.
To help...
Colleen Sommo, Susan Scrivener, Michael J. Weiss, Michelle Ware, Michelle S. Manno, Alyssa Ratledge, Rebekah O'Donoghue, Austin Slaughter, Gilda AzurdiaNational attention is focused on increasing graduation rates at community colleges. Graduation rates are particularly low for students who come to campus underprepared for college-level work. Across the nation, between 60 and 70 percent of entering freshmen in community colleges enroll in developmental (or remedial) math, reading, or writing courses. Data show that...