Overview

Far too many students do not persist in college long enough to earn degrees. In the first OnPath project (a technical assistance project with community colleges), MDRC learned that while improving communications can help many students complete actions they need to take to remain enrolled, there are many other, structural barriers to enrollment that colleges could also address to facilitate continued enrollment. OnPath 2.0 aims to use strategies grounded in behavioral science and higher education research to transform college institutional processes and improve students’ experiences during their first year. It will address structural barriers to continued enrollment in three areas:

• Enrollment and registration
• Financial aid
• Satisfactory academic progress (the academic achievement students must demonstrate to retain federal financial aid)

This work will be grounded in the experiences of the colleges’ students and staff members. Aside from meetings with staff members and interviews or focus groups with students, the project will also recruit a group of students who will serve as Lived Experience Advisers —people directly affected by the project who will be part of the research team. These students will serve as advisers and codesigners. MDRC will collaborate with college staff members and students to identify the challenges students face in navigating the college’s existing processes and to create interventions that can address these challenges. The project will then solicit students’ reactions to the early designs of these interventions and refine those designs so they can be strengthened iteratively before they are implemented.

MDRC will provide operational support throughout implementation and will evaluate the interventions that result from the design process. The project will study the interventions’ effect on first-year students’ persistence (that is, fall-to-fall enrollment), along with intermediate outcomes such as the completion of administrative steps (for example, applying for federal financial aid) and maintaining satisfactory academic progress.