Project Activities
The researchers will collect follow-up data from multiple sources for all 2,397 students in the CUNY and Ohio studies. They will obtain degree completion records from the National Student Clearinghouse and quarterly labor market data from state unemployment insurance records from New York and Ohio as well as records from the U.S. Census Bureau. During the project, the researchers will estimate precise program impacts for the full sample, sufficiently precise impacts for key subgroups, and the extent to which effects vary across colleges and states. For the cost analysis, they will examine return-on-investment from the college perspective and costs and benefits from a societal perspective. To provide context for the CUNY ASAP results, they will conduct a returns-to-degrees analysis for approximately 300,000 students who enrolled in CUNY at the time the ASAP sample was recruited. This analysis will shed light on the pathways leading to positive labor market outcomes and help CUNY strengthen its career guidance and services. Throughout the project, the researchers will communicate closely and frequently with administrators in New York who administer CUNY's program and oversee CUNY's ongoing replication efforts.
Structured Abstract
Setting
The initial RCTs took place at six community colleges located in New York and Ohio. Three colleges are located within the City University of New York (CUNY) system, and three colleges are in Ohio, including one in Cincinnati, one in Cleveland, and one outside Cleveland.
Sample
The pooled sample includes 2,397 students from low-income households who were willing to enroll full-time, wanted to earn a degree or certificate, and were first-time in college or had limited college credits. Over 60 percent of the sample is female. Reflecting the student body at the colleges, the study sample is racially diverse: most students in the CUNY sample are either Hispanic or Black and the plurality of students in Ohio are White.
CUNY ASAP is a 3-year program that provides comprehensive supports including student services (advising, career and employment services, and tutoring), financial supports (tuition waiver, free use of textbooks, and monthly financial support), and structured pathways (block scheduled courses, an ASAP seminar, required full-time enrollment, and encouragement to enroll in summer and to take developmental education classes early). Since its inception in 2007, ASAP has served more than 88,000 students at CUNY, has been replicated across 7 states, and is widely acknowledged as an exemplary model due to its large impact and robust evidence base.
Research design and methods
The CUNY and Ohio evaluations, from which this study is drawing, are ongoing multi-site, individually randomized trials. In each of those trials, eligible students who were interested in the program and agreed to participate in the evaluation were randomly assigned to either a program group, which was offered to participate in ASAP, or a control group, which had access to all their college's other programs and services excluding ASAP. In this study, the researchers will estimate the average effect, or value-added, of the program by taking the difference in the average outcomes of the two groups. They will examine and present findings on the long-term effects of CUNY ASAP on education and labor market outcomes. They will also pool and synthesize the long-term effects of ASAP in both CUNY and Ohio using methods similar to individual participant data metanalysis to explore the extent that effects vary across colleges to help inform the generalizability of findings to other colleges.
Control condition
Control group members were eligible to receive all their college's standard services but not the enhanced services available to students in ASAP.
Key measures
Confirmatory outcome measures for the project include degree receipt from any 2- or 4-year college and annual earnings measured approximately 10 years after students entered one of the two multi-site RCTs. The researchers will use college records and the National Student Clearinghouse data to code measures of degree receipt. They will obtain wage and employment data from New York and Ohio unemployment insurance records as well as from the U.S. Census's Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics (LEHD) program. They will use these data to code measures of employment and earnings.
Data analytic strategy
The researchers will compute intent-to-treat estimates by comparing regression-adjusted average outcomes of the program group and control group members. The main estimation model will include block (i.e., cohort and college campus) fixed effects, baseline covariates, and a treatment indicator. All analyses will use heteroskedastic robust standard errors to account for the possibility that outcome variances may differ across random assignment blocks and experimental groups. They will conduct subgroup analyses based on students' college of random assignment, need for developmental education, sex, age, race/ethnicity, and employment status at study entry.
Cost analysis strategy
The researchers will build upon cost estimates generated during the prior ASAP follow-up studies. They will update these initial cost estimates and combine them with the estimated effects on earnings generated through this project to produce an updated cost-benefit analysis.
People and institutions involved
IES program contact(s)
Project contributors
Products and publications
This project will result in evidence of the efficacy of the ASAP program for promoting 10-year impacts for community college students on degree completion, employment, and wages. The project will also result in an updated cost-effectiveness analysis for the program, a final dataset to be shared, peer-reviewed publications and presentations, and additional dissemination products that reach education stakeholders such as practitioners and policymakers.
Publications:
ERIC Citations: Find available citations in ERIC for this award here.
Related projects
Supplemental information
Co-Principal Investigators: Sommo, Colleen; Brongniart, Christine; Minaya-Lazarte, Veronica
Questions about this project?
To answer additional questions about this project or provide feedback, please contact the program officer.
