HIGHER ED'S MOST SUCCESSFUL FAILURE: Why a proven reform to boost community college graduation rates can't get traction.

• Date: 01 September 2020
• Author: Abdul-Alim, Jamaal

Pour years ago, Christine Abate was driving the car she had just bought with $4,000 in cash to get to and from classes at Cuyahoga Community College in Cleveland, Ohio, when another driver T-boned her, sending her car careening front end first into a set of boulders. Her vehicle was badly banged up, but fortunately she wasn't. "The doctors were surprised I walked away from the accident," Abate recalled.

She was lucky in another way: She had a strong support system at her college. Unexpected life events, like suddenly being without a car, are a major reason students drop out of college. At Cuyahoga Community College, known locally as Tri-C, Abate was part of an experimental program called Degree in Three that was designed to help students like her stay on track. In return for agreeing to attend school full-time--going part-time is another factor linked to increased dropout rates--students in the program received tuition assistance for any costs not covered by their other financial aid, essentially making college free. They were also given $50 monthly gift cards to defray the cost of gas and groceries, and received more individual attention from academic advisers--a resource most students at financially strained community colleges sorely lack.

For Abate, the program made a huge difference. She stayed in school, finagling various ways to get to campus, at one point renting a car, until her father, a mechanic from whom she was somewhat estranged, got her car back in working order. She paid for the rental and other living expenses by juggling several part-time jobs--at a nursing home, a hospital, and in people's homes as a health aid. Most of all, she credits her advisers for helping her stay in school. "Not only were they emotionally supportive and understanding of how stressful it is to be a college student, they were also there for personal life and personal struggles," Abate told me. Other than her advisers, she said, "I didn't have anyone tell me, 'You're doing a great job. We're here for you. Good job getting an A on that test. You're smart.' I didn't have that." Her advisers became her personal boosters. When she applied for jobs, she listed one of her advisers as her reference.

In December 2019, she graduated with an associate's degree in nursing. That same month, she took her state nursing certification exam, and in February of this year started working in a Cleveland-area hospital, just as the COVID-19 crisis was about to heat up and her skills were most needed. She has since been accepted at Ohio University, where she hopes to earn a BA.

Abates experience with Degree in Three was no outlier. A carefully controlled evaluation of the program and similar ones at two other Ohio community colleges found that participating students were nearly twice as likely to graduate within three years as other students at those colleges who were also attempting to attend full-time but were not part of the program. Participating students were also more likely to transfer to a four-year college. Though the program costs more per student up front, it helped so many more students graduate that the overall cost per degree in the program was lower than it was for students attending the community colleges normally.

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