When President Obama called last month for making community college tuition-free for millions of students, he pointed out that graduation rates would have to improve to make the investment worthwhile. He also noted that the City University of New York system had already shown the way, with a program that has raised not just graduation rates but the rate at which students move on to four-year degrees. A rigorous new study released this week by MDRC, a nonpartisan research group, makes it clear that the CUNY approach, which offers students a network of support, could serve as a national model.

Nationally, about 60 percent of students entering community colleges need remedial courses, and only about 15 percent of them earn an associate’s degree or certificate within three years. Many two-year colleges have tried to improve completion rates but few have made significant progress. CUNY’s program — called the Accelerated Study in Associate Programs, or ASAP — provides intensive advising, tutoring, tuition waivers and money for books and transportation. It is now in use at six of the seven two-year colleges in the CUNY system, which also includes four-year colleges.

The MDRC study followed 896 students: Half of them enrolled in ASAP and half received the usual college services. The students in the program group earned credits more quickly. By the end of the three-year study period, 40 percent of them had received a degree, compared with just 22 percent of the control group. And by that time, 25 percent of the ASAP students had enrolled in four-year colleges; just 17 percent of the students in the other group had. Because ASAP students graduated in higher numbers and moved through school more quickly, the cost per degree was lower for them despite the significant added investment.

The study said the benefits of CUNY’s approach, with its web of support services, were more impressive than those of any other community college reform the organization had examined and called it a “highly promising strategy” for raising graduation rates among educationally and economically disadvantaged groups.

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