scholarly journals Paying for Performance: The Education Impacts of a Community College Scholarship Program for Low-Income Adults

2014 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 563-599 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa Barrow ◽  
Lashawn Richburg-Hayes ◽  
Cecilia Elena Rouse ◽  
Thomas Brock
Keyword(s):  
Community College ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Scholarship Program

scholarly journals Supporting Community College Students from Start to Degree Completion: Long-Term Evidence from a Randomized Trial of CUNY’s ASAP

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 253-297 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael J. Weiss ◽  
Alyssa Ratledge ◽  
Colleen Sommo ◽  
Himani Gupta
Keyword(s):  
Community College ◽  
Community Colleges ◽  
Graduation Rates ◽  
Degree Completion ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Randomized Experiments ◽  
Low Income Students ◽  
Percentage Points ◽  
The City

Nationwide, graduation rates at community colleges are discouragingly low. This randomized experiment provides evidence that graduation rates can be increased dramatically. The City University of New York’s (CUNY) Accelerated Study in Associate Programs (ASAP) is a comprehensive, integrated, 3-year program that has an estimated 18 percentage point effect on 3-year graduation rates, increases 6-year graduation rates by an estimated 10 percentage points, and helps students graduate more quickly. Graduation effect estimates of this magnitude are exceptional in randomized experiments conducted in higher education, offering hope of what is possible when serving low-income students. (JEL H75, I23, I24, I28)

Competitive Impacts of Means-Tested Vouchers on Public School Performance: Evidence from Louisiana

2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 66-91 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna J. Egalite ◽  
Jonathan N. Mills
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
School Choice ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Private School ◽  
Fixed Effects ◽  
Policy Implications ◽  
First Year ◽  
Competitive Effects ◽  
Scholarship Program ◽  
Sudden Injection

Given the significant growth rate and geographic expansion of private school choice programs over the past two decades, it is important to examine how traditional public schools respond to the sudden injection of competition for students and resources. Although prior studies of this nature have been limited to Florida and Milwaukee, using multiple analytic strategies this paper examines the competitive impacts of the Louisiana Scholarship Program (LSP) to determine its achievement impacts on students in affected public schools. Serving 4,954 students in its first year of statewide expansion, this targeted school voucher program provides public funds for low-income students in low-performing public schools to enroll in participating private schools across the state of Louisiana. Using (1) a school fixed effects approach and (2) a regression discontinuity framework to examine the achievement impacts of the LSP on students in affected public schools, this competitive effects analysis reveals neutral to positive impacts that are small in magnitude. Policy implications are discussed.

Campus of Opportunity: A Qualitative Analysis of Homeless Students in Community College

2017 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
pp. 190-214 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jarrett T. Gupton
Keyword(s):  
Community College ◽  
Community Colleges ◽  
Postsecondary Education ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Homeless Youth ◽  
Empirical Work ◽  
Underrepresented Students ◽  
Research Literature ◽  
Access To Higher Education ◽  
Homeless Students

Objective: Community colleges are gateways of access to higher education for many underrepresented students. One group that has received little attention in the community college research literature is homeless youth. The objective of this research is to address the following research questions: (a) What might be learned from the narratives of homeless youth and their experiences in postsecondary education? and (b) How might community colleges promote interpersonal and institutional resilience for homeless students? Method: Utilizing qualitative research techniques, this article reviews the experiences’ of homeless youth attending community college and explores the ways in which community colleges might serve as sites for fostering resilience and stability in the lives of homeless students. Results: The results of this empirical work suggest that although homeless students do benefit from enrolling in community college, some of the benefits are not salient to them and they are unable to take full advantage of institutional resources. Contributions: The findings from this study contribute to the literature on low-income students’ experiences in community college and add the voices and experiences of homeless youth.

scholarly journals ACDC Agency: Food and Politics with Community College Students at Vassar

2017 ◽  
Vol 107 ◽  
pp. 45-51
Author(s):  
Robert Cowan
Keyword(s):  
College Students ◽  
Community College ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
Community College Students ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Liberal Arts ◽  
Food Systems ◽  
Food Sovereignty ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Transfer Program

The food at the All-College Dining Commons (ACDC) at Vassar College stinks. Not that is literally smells foul; it just isn’t very good. The high-achieving community college students in the Exploring Transfer Program (ET) eat breakfast and dinner there for the five weeks that they are studying at Vassar. Ironically, the course I co-taught in ET for two summers, with the Chair of Environmental Studies, is entitled Feast or Famine: Food, Society, Environment. This course is a survey of issues concerning food systems, such as industrial farming, the role of agricultural lobbyists in Washington, overfishing, food sovereignty in developing countries, food stamps, food deserts, the USDA, FDA, WTO, IMF, etc. And yet, with all of the knowledge the students are gleaning from authors like Marion Nestle, Michael Pollan, Wendell Berry and myriad others, they have to eat the crappy food at ACDC.            We have had students in this course from Argentina, Bosnia, Bourkina Faso, China, El Salvador, Ghana, Guyana, Haiti, Italy, Mexico, Pakistan, Poland, the Philippines, Sweden, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam. They come from community colleges mostly in the New York area, but also from as far away as Boston, Maine, Los Angeles, and Diné Community College, which is on a Navajo reservation in Northern Arizona. This program—over 30 years old and with over 1,000 alumni—is a sort of academic boot camp for community college students who hope to transfer to an elite liberal arts college, a Research 1 university, or an Ivy League school. It’s a full scholarship program during which they take two courses in five weeks, each team-taught by a community college professor and a Vassar professor.            “AC/DC” seems an apt metaphor for the ET program; not for its pop-metal connotations but because of the fact that it demands that students that are accustomed to operating in one current suddenly adjust to quite another. The question that arises out of the experience of eating ACDC, though—of being low-income, immigrant, first-generation college students, studying at one of the whitest and most expensive schools in the country and yet being forced to eat poor food—is “how do they develop a sense of personal agency,” since that is what the transition through community college and onto a school like Vassar requires. 

Envisioning Workforce Training Differently: The Obama ‘Free’ Community College Initiative

2015 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 249-252 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Holland
Keyword(s):  
Community College ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Workforce Training ◽  
President Obama ◽  
Middle Income ◽  
Post Secondary ◽  
Time Period ◽  
Programme Design ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Tuition Costs

Education, particularly at the post-secondary level, does not come cheaply in the USA, with the increase in annual tuition costs far outpacing the inflation rate during the same time period. A core tenet of US President Obama's domestic policy agenda is the belief that increased educational attainment can potentially lead to better economic prospects. As a result of the financial hardship that higher education brings to low-income and middle-income individuals and families, access to these educational opportunities and their benefits are not then fully realized. In response, President Obama has called for a ‘universal community college’, where tuition costs are reduced to zero. The intent and effect of the ‘universal community college’ initiative are identified and this commentary also suggests that additional scrutiny is needed with four questions to ensure that the programme design will later translate into meaningful outcomes, if this policy were to pass in Congress.

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