In recent years, there has been unprecedented national focus on the importance of increasing the stubbornly low graduation rates of community college students. Most reforms that have been tried are short-term and address one or only a few barriers to student success. The City University of New...

Performance-based scholarships are designed to give students more money for college and to provide incentives for academic progress. MDRC launched the Performance-Based Scholarship Demonstration in 2008 to evaluate the effectiveness of these scholarships for as broad a range of low-income...

Rates of graduation and degree completion at community colleges remain distressingly low. This report evaluates two versions of a program designed to help probationary students at community college succeed in school. One version increased the average number of credits earned, the proportion of...

In this program, low-income students received enhanced student services and were eligible for a modest stipend for two semesters. The program improved academic outcomes in the second semester and registration in the semester after that, but these effects did not persist in subsequent semesters

Having a college degree is increas­ingly important in the U.S. labor market, and workers with a degree earn substantially more, on average, than those without. Recently there has been an un­precedented national focus on boosting the stubbornly low graduation rates of students in community...

While the United States has made strides in increasing college access among low-income students, college completion has remained low. Graduation rates are particularly low at the nation’s community colleges, which enroll a disproportionate percentage of low- income and nontraditional college...

Many recipients of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and other low-income individuals find or keep jobs for a while, but far fewer remain steadily employed and advance in the labor market. The Employment Retention and Advancement (ERA) project was launched in 1999 to identify and...

In today’s economy, having a postsecondary credential means better jobs and wages. Community colleges, with their open access policies and low tuition, are an important pathway into postsecondary education for nearly half of all U.S. undergraduates. Yet only one-third of all students who enter...