In postsecondary research, comprehensive approaches to student success (CASS) programs are shown to have the greatest impact on student outcomes. At the core of a CASS program is personalized and proactive coaching in which coaches actively reach out to students and meet to discuss personal and academic issues. MDRC's evaluation of one CASS…

Increasingly, companies are dropping four-year degree requirements in job postings, favoring skill-based requirements--such as communication and writing--instead. These types of nonacademic "soft skills" are viewed as essential for employment--employers consistently cite these abilities as among the most valuable in job applicants, yet…

The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board (THECB) seeks to improve student outcomes by promoting a variety of student success efforts. These efforts include direct programs with well-defined target populations and program participants, offering specific student support services following a program model, and indirect programs aimed at…

Through the federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act of March 2020, Congress created the first-ever federal emergency aid program for higher education, the Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund (HEERF). In the 2020-21 academic year, MDRC partnered with the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators…

Across the country, postsecondary education leaders are striving to increase graduation rates. Among a variety of evidence-based strategies to boost those numbers, perhaps the most prominent are multifaceted student support programs. These programs use multiple components over two to three years to address students' barriers to success.…

Open-access colleges are an important pathway to economic mobility for millions of Americans. But graduation rates at these colleges are low--for example, only 36 percent of first-time, full-time freshmen at community colleges graduate within three years. Over the last two decades, MDRC and others have conducted research to build the evidence base…

The COVID-19 crisis has upended students' lives and their career plans, including their ability to line up college internships. As millions of people across the country continue to work or attend school from home, many companies and organizations have had to cancel their internship programs, which are an important part of recruitment and diversity…

Community colleges and broad-access universities (those with minimally selective admissions policies) provide an opportunity for students across the United States to attain postsecondary degrees and economic mobility. However, graduation rates from such colleges are often low and there are many obstacles that can be difficult to overcome,…

National college completion rates for men of color at open- and broad-access postsecondary institutions (including community colleges) lag behind completion rates for White students and for female students of any race or ethnicity. Research points to several broad factors to explain these unequal outcomes, including precollege environments that do…

Despite increased national attention on work-based learning opportunities, internship programs vary markedly from college to college, and very few mechanisms exist for evaluating the quality of the experiences they offer students. Hoping to overcome these challenges, Ascendium Education Group established the Career Readiness Internship (CRI)…

While a college degree offers the opportunity for increased income, a degree alone does not guarantee a student's successful entry into the workforce. Work-based learning, such as internships and apprenticeship programs, has become an increasingly popular way to help students build workforce skills and experience and gain real-world exposure to a…

Integrated Planning and Advising for Student Success (iPASS) is an initiative funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to support colleges seeking to incorporate technology into their advising and student services. In iPASS, such technology is intended to increase advising's emphasis on a student's entire college experience, enabling…

Postsecondary education is widely seen as a necessity in the modern economy, yet among low and middle-income families, college enrollment rates are dismayingly low -- and graduation rates are even lower. College Promise programs, which cover local students' college tuition and fees, are one strategy states and municipalities use to help. But…

College Promise programs aim to make students believe they can afford college, and to give them the opportunity to go to college and earn degrees without taking on significant debt. At the core of all College Promise programs is a scholarship: All eligible College Promise students receive scholarships that may cover up to 100 percent of tuition…

National studies reveal that 50 percent to 70 percent of community college students are required to take developmental, or remedial, math courses upon enrollment, and only 20 percent of developmental math students ever successfully complete a college-level math course. Taking up the challenge is the "New Mathways Project" (NMP),…