In 2014, three Ohio colleges set out to improve access and success outcomes for low-income students by adapting the City University of New York’s (CUNY) innovative Accelerated Study in Associate Programs (ASAP). A new report from MDRC looks at the eight-year findings from the ASAP Ohio programs.
ASAP provides an array of supports to students, including intensive advising, special classes, tuition waivers and assistance with transportation and other basic needs. A goal of the program is to make it possible – financially and otherwise – for students to attend college full time and complete a degree within three years.
Ohio was the first state to replicate ASAP outside of New York, officially launching the program at Cincinnati State Technical College, Cuyahoga Community College (Tri-C) and Lorain County Community College (LCCC).
The MDRC report shows that not only did Ohio ASAP participants have improved college success rates, but the program also improved their post-college outcomes.
Outcomes
MDRC followed three cohorts for its study: spring 2015, fall 2015 and spring 2016. Within those cohorts, 806 students were able to access ASAP services and 695 were not (they served as the control group).
After eight years, ASAP continues to have a positive impact on completion, with 46% of program students earning a degree, compared with 31% in the control group. That has helped to drive positive earnings outcomes, too, for the program group.
Though there was very little difference in employment rates between the program group and the control group, the program group showed higher earnings. They earned an average of $27,934, which is $3,337 more than the control group’s average of $24,596 in year eight, according to the report. That’s a 14% increase. (The report notes that the earnings seem low, but they are estimates for the entire study sample, including students who weren’t working, were working part time and those for whom there’s no wage data.)
A third (32%) of the program group students were earning at least $40,000 in year eight, compared with 26% of the control group students.
That’s important to note, considering the growing skepticism over the value of college, say the report’s authors.
In addition, 17.6% of program group students earned a bachelor’s degree by the eight-year mark.
MDRC also evaluated the program after three and six years. Even at the three-year mark, Ohio ASAP was making a difference: 35% of the students in the program group had earned degrees versus 19% of the control group students.
In terms of earnings, the year-six findings revealed that Ohio ASAP students earned $2,045 more than control group students.
A continued impact
The success of the program is not surprising to those at Cuyahoga Community College – where the program is called Degree in Three (D3).
“Student participants at Tri-C often voiced the significance of the wraparound services and personal support they received; it was the difference between dropping out or finishing their educational goals,” said Miria Batig, associate dean of natural sciences and former D3 director. “And the earnings data demonstrate the programs’ continued impact on the community and workforce needs of the area.”
Because of the number of services and supports, the program has required a lot of funding. At Tri-C, it was originally funded by several external foundations and education groups. The college matched this external funding to support infrastructure, staffing support and a portion of the student financial supports.
Since implementation, Tri-C has learned several lessons, including the importance of ensuring that multiple departments/divisions of the college collaborate from the start.
“To truly make a difference, multiple layers of support of both an academic and student service perspective are required, and this often translates into cross-divisional teams,” Batig said.
Also, she said that it’s crucial to not make assumptions about what students need.
“At Tri-C we found that since we partner with local transit and offer all our students a free bus pass, the MetroCard that the CUNY program utilized did not serve our students’ needs,” Batig said. “Instead, we provided gift cards to our local grocery store that could supplement the students’ needs in a more impactful manner.”
SAILing to success
At Lorain County Community College, the program also goes by a different name: Students Accelerated in Learning, or SAIL. When they launched it, the college sought to do a “transformational redesign,” said Marisa Vernon White, LCCC’s vice president for enrollment management and student services.
Now, “SAIL is the new standard for how we support students,” she added.
LCCC has scaled the original program to support different student populations, serving about 400 students a year, including those in short-term certificate programs. Program students get the same benefits as the original program: gap tuition scholarships, textbook vouchers, monthly grocery gift cards, intensive advising, priority registration and more.
Vernon White is particularly happy to see evidence of post-completion success for program participants.
“Success is no longer just about completing a credential,” she said. It’s about “changing the trajectory” for students and their families.
Sustaining the program involves leveraging existing resources at the college to support it – scholarship dollars, federal grants, community partnerships and more. It’s about “thinking creatively to strategically align resources you already have to assist low-income students,” Vernon White said.
The program also requires an amount of human capital, especially as LCCC has scaled up intensive advising to serve not just SAIL students, but all students across the institution. But, “it’s worth the investment,” Vernon White said.
And investing in accelerated completion for students may have another positive side effect. In states with performance-based funding, higher success rates for more students can lead to more state funding.
Like Tri-C, LCCC has learned lessons over the last decade. The big one is “you can’t necessarily implement only one portion of the program and expect to move student outcomes,” Vernon White said. “There’s no one factor that is the magic bullet.”
Instead, all the elements of ASAP in tandem – the advising and navigation help, financial support and basic needs help, etc. — give “the biggest lift,” she said.
