Three Ohio community colleges are seeing early improvements in enrollment, retention and completion rates after creating their own versions of the Accelerated Study in Associate Programs developed by the City University of New York, according to a report from MDRC, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization.

Cincinnati State Technical and Community College, Cuyahoga Community College and Lorain County Community College created ASAP programs on their own campuses and have early results showing increases in enrollment and credit accumulation during the first semester and persistence in the second semester.

For instance, the Ohio students in the first-semester group earned 1.4 more credits, on average, than the control group. In the second semester, the impact on credits attempted grew to 2.3 credits, which was a 28 percent increase over the control group level of 8.2 credits.

The results are comparable to early findings from CUNY's ASAP, which later nearly doubled the three-year graduation rate for New York community college students who started with developmental needs.

The Ohio colleges were able to develop the programs after receiving funding from a group of higher education organizations including the Great Lakes Higher Education Guaranty Corporation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Lumina Foundation and the Kresge Foundation.....

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