At a time when policy makers are faced with budget constraints, the idea of tying financial aid to desirable outcomes has a lot of surface appeal. But a new study -- one of a series being conducted to test the concept -- shows the limits of the approach.

The study, published by the research group MDRC and part of a larger project financed by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and other sources, explores the effects that grants tied to measures of enrollment, persistence and academic performance have on low-income students at two New York City community colleges. Unlike some of the other studies in the series, which provide students with extra student services and other enhancements as well as scholarships, the New York study provided grants alone (on top of the students' federal and state need-based grants) to students at Borough of Manhattan Community College and Hostos Community College, both in the City University of New York System...

....Reshma Patel, project and data manager for the Performance-Based Scholarship Demonstration Project, suggested that the New York project might be showing the least results of the various sites in the larger study because of its "bare bones" nature, since participants received only grant funds and no other support. (Studies at other sites are testing the provision of advising and tutoring services, the power of longer terms and larger amounts of scholarships, etc.) While results for most of the other sites have not yet been published, she said, "we have had consistent findings across the sites, in terms of improvements in credit accumulation...."

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