Six-Year Findings from the ASAP Ohio Demonstration
U.S. community colleges—which disproportionately serve students from low-income backgrounds—have very low graduation rates. In response, three Ohio community colleges implemented programs based on the City University of New York’s successful Accelerated Study in Associate Programs. After six years, the programs had a positive impact on graduation and earnings.
Using College Staff Members’ Perspectives to Improve the Student Experience
Complex administrative processes in community colleges can delay graduation. The OnPath project aims to help students navigate those processes more effectively and persist in college. This brief examines OnPath’s use of research evidence and staff members’ perspectives and hands-on knowledge to build and improve college systems that benefit all students.
This paper, originally published in Evaluation Review, provides researchers with new information about the values of the key design parameters needed for planning randomized controlled trial evaluations of interventions in community colleges.
Exploring the Experiences of Students Ages 25 and Older
The SUCCESS project aims to improve college completion rates for traditionally underserved students at community and broad-access colleges. This brief highlights the experiences of students 25 years or older in four SUCCESS colleges. The findings suggest how programmatic and institutional structures may promote or hamper student success for this population.
Many community colleges have implemented interventions to help students persist in college and earn degrees. MDRC has studied many such interventions; several of them improved students’ academic outcomes, but the effects varied. This report synthesizes results from 30 studies MDRC has conducted of 39 interventions at 45 colleges.
The Detroit Promise Path combines a tuition-free scholarship with additional forms of support, such as a campus coach and personalized communications, to keep students on track to graduate. After four years, the program helped students stay enrolled in school but had no impact on degrees earned.
A Brief Synthesis of 20 Years of MDRC’s Randomized Controlled Trials
What works to help community college students progress academically? This brief synthesizes 20 years of rigorous research by MDRC, presenting new evidence about key attributes of community college interventions that are positively related to larger impacts on students’ academic progress.
Participating in a College Support Program During the Pandemic and Beyond
This issue focus shares early implementation lessons from an evaluation of MDRC’s Scaling Up College Completion Efforts for Student Success (SUCCESS) and the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on the program model. It offers lessons that could be relevant to similar programs operating in online, in-person, and hybrid environments.
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 retention...
Early Lessons from SUCCESS
MDRC’s Scaling Up College Completion Efforts for Student Success (SUCCESS) aims to help more low-income students and students of color graduate by combining proven components into an integrated three-year program. This brief describes the model, the study, and adaptations to the COVID-19 pandemic, and offers some early findings.
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