In Tennessee, more than half a million working-age adults, or one in six Tennesseans between the ages of 25 and 64, have attended college but not completed a postsecondary degree. Given that adults with some college credits but no degree face significantly worse employment outcomes than those with a degree, many states have started to prioritize increasing degree attainment among this population.

In 2018, Tennessee launched Tennessee Reconnect, a “last dollar” scholarship that offers adults without a postsecondary degree the opportunity to attend a community college tuition-free. After its launch, adult student enrollment at Tennessee community colleges increased for the first time since 2010. However, fewer than half of these students reapplied for Tennessee Reconnect (a requirement for maintaining the scholarship) and returned the following year.

ideas42 and the Nudge4 Solutions Lab collaborated with the Tennessee Board of Regents (TBR) to boost the persistence of Reconnect students.

We started by conducting interviews with 30 students from two community colleges in Tennessee—Nashville State Community College and Pellissippi State Community College—to better understand the behavioral barriers that prevent Reconnect students from reapplying for the scholarship and persisting to the following academic year. From these interviews, we identified three primary barriers:

  • Lack of Awareness: Students often don’t know that they need to reapply for Reconnect each year.
  • Limited Reminders: Many students either don’t receive a reminder to reapply, or don’t  receive a reminder that effectively captures their attention and prompts them to act.
  • Unclear Information: Students don’t know who to go to with questions about Reconnect, or they may receive inconsistent information depending on who they ask.

Based on these insights, we designed a set of interventions to increase reapplication and persistence rates among Reconnect students at Nashville and Pellissippi. The first of these interventions, piloted in spring 2020, consisted of nudging students to reapply for the Reconnect scholarship through a series of reminders—targeted emails, texts, and alerts posted on the schools’ online portals and learning management systems. Nudges sent to Reconnect students, like the email below, highlighted the need to reapply for the scholarship each year, prompted action by specifying where to apply and how long it would take, and specified who to contact for help.

Read the full article about adult learners by Katherine Flaschen at ideas42.