For The Higher Education Randomized Controlled Trial project (THE-RCT), MDRC is creating the largest individual-participant database from higher education randomized controlled trials to date. THE-RCT will make standardized,...
Financial Aid
Issue Focus
June, 2019
MDRC’s initiative Scaling Up Community College Efforts for Student Success (SUCCESS) seeks to improve graduation rates for community college students by helping states and colleges develop large-scale, financially sustainable support programs based on strong evidence. This issue focus provides an overview of the project.
Report
Final Report on Aid Like A Paycheck
May, 2019
This study, implemented at two community college systems in Texas and one in California, tested whether biweekly disbursements of financial aid rather than lump sum payments could help students budget more efficiently and improve their academic and financial outcomes. Overall, this approach did not have substantial impacts on student outcomes.
Report
Interim Findings from the Detroit Promise Path Evaluation
April, 2019
The Detroit Promise allows the city’s high school graduates to attend local colleges tuition-free. To that scholarship the Detroit Promise Path adds campus coaches, monthly financial support, enhanced summer engagement, and messages informed by behavioral science. Interim findings about persistence in school, full-time enrollment, and credit accumulation are all positive.
Colleen Sommo, Elena Serna-Wallender, Alexander Mayer, Alyssa Ratledge, Michelle Ware, Osvaldo Avila, Katie Beal, Melissa Wavelet
MDRC’s Scaling Up Community College Efforts for Student Success (SUCCESS) seeks to improve graduation rates for traditionally underserved students at community colleges, by helping states and institutions align their resources with evidence-driven practices. SUCCESS combines...
Issue Focus
April, 2019
This Excel tool is intended for colleges undertaking student success programs. It helps colleges set benchmarks: outcome measures that they can use over a defined time period to measure success relative to a prespecified target.
Issue Focus
April, 2019
This visual tool is intended to help colleges undertaking student success programs create process maps. A process map is a visual representation that breaks down a process into every decision point, communication, and activity involved from the perspective of a user — in this case, a student.
Brief
The Early Implementation of College Promise Programs
April, 2019
College Promise programs offer scholarships for up to 100 percent of tuition and fees. Many Promise programs are adding to their models by providing students with support services. MDRC’s College Promise Success Initiative (CPSI) works with Promise programs interested in including such services; this brief provides some early implementation lessons.
Brief
Two Proven Strategies to Boost Summer Enrollment
February, 2019
Summer courses can help students progress to graduation, but most students do not enroll in them. An informational campaign incorporating behavioral science, tested with and without tuition assistance, increased summer enrollment. This brief presents findings from the Encouraging Additional Summer Enrollment (EASE) project following the reinstatement of year-round Pell grants.
Brief
A Case Study of Lorain County Community College’s Comprehensive Student Success Program
December, 2018
In 2014, Lorain County Community College launched Students Accelerating in Learning (SAIL), a comprehensive student success program that is substantially improving persistence and graduation rates among low-income students. This brief describes the steps Lorain took to fund and institutionalize SAIL that are now making it easier to sustain the program.