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ERIC Number: ED612066
Record Type: Non-Journal
Publication Date: 2021-Mar
Pages: 13
Abstractor: ERIC
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-
EISSN: N/A
Available Date: N/A
Scaling Success Services: How 5 Organizations Increased Their Capacity to Serve More Students
National College Attainment Network
Since their inception in the 1950s, community-based college access programs have focused on preparing students from low-income and first-generation backgrounds for college and helping them complete the necessary steps to matriculate. Until about 10 years ago, however, most programs had little, if any, involvement with students after high school. Instead, students had to navigate the unfamiliar world of college with scarce support from their postsecondary institutions. Despite all their efforts, when college access programs heard from their alumni, they discovered many were struggling in college and lagging behind the degree completion rates of middle- and upper-income students. Building the capacity of college access programs to serve students in college can be a heavy lift for several reasons. Offering college success services requires financial resources to support the additional staff needed to assist students. College students confront more complex issues than the transactional tasks high school seniors must complete to matriculate, and so require advisers with different skills than those needed to support high school students. Maintaining personal connections with students attending a variety of institutions, often outside the immediate geographic area, involves challenges not faced with high school students. These challenges require organizations to establish new approaches to engaging college students on an ongoing basis and monitoring their academic progress and emotional well-being. Despite these hurdles, a number of college access organizations have made successful transitions to supporting students in college. This paper highlights five such organizations that participated in the Success Replication Project organized by the National College Attainment Network (formerly the National College Access Network) and funded by the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation: (1) Capital Partners for Education (CPE), Washington, D.C.; (2) DC Prep, PrepNext Washington, D.C.; (3) Operation Jump Start (OJS) Long Beach, CA; (4) Project GRAD Houston (PGH), Aspiring Young Adults Houston, TX; and (5) Ready to Rise Tacoma (RTR), Degrees of Change Tacoma, WA. Each organization faced different challenges in building the infrastructure to serve college students. But they have all implemented a number of research-based practices likely to increase the persistence and completion rates of their graduates that can be replicated by others. This paper describes how these organizations developed the capacity to provide college success services, what students consider the most important services, and the challenges the organizations have faced in expanding to support their graduates in college. [For the "Scaling Success Services" series overview paper, "Scaling Success Services: Strategies for Promoting Postsecondary Success," see ED612064.]
National College Attainment Network. 1001 Connecticut Avenue NW Suite 300, Washington, DC 20001. Tel: 202-347-4848; Fax: 844-324-0809; e-mail: ncan@ncan.org; Web site: http://www.ncan.org
Publication Type: Reports - Descriptive
Education Level: Higher Education; Postsecondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: National College Attainment Network (NCAN)
Identifiers - Location: District of Columbia; California (Long Beach); Texas (Houston); Washington
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Author Affiliations: N/A