What is Giving Compass?
We connect donors to learning resources and ways to support community-led solutions. Learn more about us.
Giving Compass' Take:
• This brief underscores how the Scaling Up College Completion Efforts for Student Success (SUCCESS) program adapted very well during COVID-19 to support students.
• How can donors help support evidence-based programming that can help individuals who are vulnerable during the pandemic? What are the most significant challenges for college students during this time?
• Read about the impact of COVID-19 on college enrollment.
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 about what works to help students stay in college and earn credentials. Using lessons from the existing body of research, MDRC designed and is evaluating the Scaling Up College Completion Efforts for Student Success (SUCCESS) program, a multifaceted student support program designed for financial sustainability.
This brief highlights the components of the original SUCCESS program model and how colleges adapted them in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, and describes the study design and how the pandemic has affected it too. It also presents some early implementation findings and preliminary impact findings for the first study cohort’s first semester, which occurred during the peak of the pandemic.
Read the full article about helping college students in COVID-19 by Colleen Sommo, Marco Lepe, Alyssa Ratledge at MDRC.
A growing body of research shows that combining multiple interventions into a single, long-lasting program can help students succeed, but resource constraints have often made it hard for colleges and states to implement comprehensive programs on a large scale. SUCCESS partners with states and colleges to make programs financially sustainable by selecting the program components backed by the greatest evidence, aligning programs with state initiatives, and using existing resources to keep costs contained.