The federal Institute of Education Sciences has awarded a grant to MDRC, the City University of New York (CUNY), and the Community College Research Center to examine the ten-year impact of CUNY’s Accelerated Studies in Associate Programs (ASAP) on education and labor market outcomes.

CUNY ASAP is a three-year program, designed and implemented by CUNY, that provides comprehensive supports to community college students, including student support services, financial supports, and structured pathways. Since its inception in 2007, ASAP has served more than 100,000 students at CUNY, has been replicated across seven states, and is widely acknowledged as an exemplary model due to its large impacts on postsecondary degree completion. MDRC's randomized control trial (RCT) evaluation of ASAP showed that the program raised three-year graduation rates by an estimated 18 percentage points. These findings were reinforced by findings from an RCT evaluation of ASAP replications at three community colleges in Ohio, where the program increased three-year graduation rates by an estimated 16 percentage points.

This project will be the first project to assess the effects of CUNY's ASAP on labor market outcomes. It will also provide a necessary complement to a recent evaluation of the Ohio programs, which found positive effects on earnings during the sixth year after students entered the study. By pooling the data across the CUNY and Ohio evaluations, with outcome data that tracks students' progress for 10 years from program entry, the researchers will precisely estimate the pooled average effect of ASAP on degree completion, employment, and earnings; examine the extent that these effects vary across colleges; explore effects for subgroups with greater precision than is possible using data from either study alone; and update prior research on the societal economic benefits and costs of ASAP using observed earnings data.

The principal investigator for the study is Michael Weiss (MDRC), along with co-principal investigators Colleen Sommo (MDRC), Christine Brongniart (CUNY), and Veronica Minaya (Community College Research Center).