(New York, June 13, 2012) — MDRC, a nonprofit, nonpartisan education and social policy research firm, released encouraging early findings today from a rigorous evaluation of the City University of New York’s (CUNY’s) Accelerated Study in Associate Programs (ASAP), an ambitious three-year intervention to encourage and support community college students to attend school full time and graduate. After only one semester, ASAP has increased the proportion of students who have completed their developmental (remedial) education courses by 15 percentage points — meaning that 15 more students out of every 100 are ready to take college-level courses. In addition, ASAP increased the number of credits students earned and boosted their rates of full-time enrollment in the first and second semesters.

Community colleges across the country confront a clear challenge: too many students arrive on campus unprepared, get placed into developmental courses where they stagnate, attend only part time (because of work or other responsibilities), and never complete a credential, graduate, or transfer to a four-year institution. At the same time, community colleges are subject to increasing expectations — and increased scrutiny — about their ability to develop a better-educated and credentialed workforce.

What Is ASAP?

In 2007, The City University of New York (CUNY), with the support and funding from Mayor Bloomberg’s Center for Economic Opportunity (CEO), launched Accelerated Study in Associate Programs (ASAP) at all six CUNY community colleges. ASAP requires students to attend college full time and provides them with a rich array of supports for three full years, including a tuition waiver that covers any gap between a student’s financial aid and tuition and fees, special seminars and block-scheduled classes, enhanced advising, career services, free MetroCards for use on public transportation, and free use of textbooks. In 2009, CUNY, in partnership with CEO and CEO’s evaluators, conducted an internal evaluation of ASAP and found very promising effects for participating students. At that point, CUNY decided to expand the program and commissioned MDRC to conduct an external study to test ASAP’s effects using a random assignment design, the "gold standard" methodology in program evaluation.

What Did MDRC’s Study Find?

MDRC’s study focuses on three CUNY community colleges: Borough of Manhattan, Kingsborough, and LaGuardia. For the study, ASAP targets low-income students who need one or two developmental courses to build their reading, writing, or math skills. The study compares ASAP with regular services and classes at the colleges. MDRC’s report provides results for the first two semesters of the three-year program. Key findings include effects on:

• Full-time enrollment. During the study’s first semester, ASAP increased full-time enrollment by 11 percentage points: 96 percent of the students assigned to ASAP enrolled full time, compared with 85 percent of the comparison group.
• Credits earned and completing developmental coursework. ASAP increased the average number of credits earned during the first semester by 2.1 credits and increased the proportion of students who completed their developmental coursework by the end of that semester by 15 percentage points.
• Semester-to-semester retention. ASAP increased the proportion of students who enrolled in college during the second semester by 10 percentage points and increased full-time enrollment that semester by 21 percentage points.

"These positive early effects are among the largest we’ve seen in a community college setting, and they provide hope that ASAP’s package of supports and services — and its strong message about full-time attendance — are putting students on the right track," said Gordon Berlin, President of MDRC.

"ASAP is one of CUNY’s most successful and well-evaluated community college initiatives. We are very pleased to partner with MDRC to examine ASAP outcomes in a rigorous experimental design study and are delighted to see these very positive results that are so consistent with our own evaluation findings," said Matthew Goldstein, Chancellor of CUNY. "This external assessment of ASAP impact is especially important to CUNY as we significantly expand the program over the next three years to serve three times the current enrollment."

"The NYC Center for Economic Opportunity collaborated with CUNY to launch the ASAP program to improve community college graduation rates and support young adults’ efforts to succeed," said Veronica White, Executive Director of the NYC Center for Economic Opportunity. "CUNY ASAP is an important part of our efforts to reduce poverty in New York and serves as a strong model for cities across the country."

MDRC will publish longer-term results from its evaluation of ASAP in 2014. In the meantime, CUNY is using lessons learned from ASAP to inform the development of a new community college opening in the fall of 2012 — as well as tripling the size of the program in its six existing community colleges to serve more than 4,000 students by 2014.

MDRC’s study is supported by the Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust and Robin Hood Foundation.

 

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Headquartered in New York City, with a regional office in Oakland, CA, MDRC is a nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization with nearly 40 years of experience designing and evaluating education and social policy initiatives.