|
Policy Framework
For many low-income college students, one of the biggest barriers to attendance is cost. While federal and state financial aid is available to help with tuition, fees, books, and some living expenses, students still often have unmet need, particularly if they are from the poorest families or are independent from their parents. Working while going to school is obviously one answer, but too many hours on the job can contribute to poor academic performance and dropping out. Loans are another answer, but many low-income students are reluctant to take on debt — especially if they have doubts about their ability to complete a college degree, or if they do not come from families where college attendance is the norm.
MDRC launched the Performance-Based Scholarship Demonstration in 2008 to test an innovative strategy for addressing two policy objectives: increasing the financial support available to low-income students, and creating an incentive for such students to complete their courses and make more timely progress toward degrees. The idea is to provide a supplement to existing federal and state financial aid that is contingent on enrolling in a minimum number of credit hours and making passing grades. The performance-based scholarships are paid directly to students (rather than to the colleges or universities they attend) in order to reward students for their progress and to allow them to make choices of how best to support their schooling. For some, this may mean buying books or paying for transportation to campus; for others, it may mean cutting back on work hours or hiring a babysitter for their children during finals week.
The Performance-Based Scholarship Demonstration is based on positive findings that emerged from MDRC’s Opening Doors Demonstration in Louisiana, which showed that such a program had a number of positive effects for students, including boosting students’ credit accumulation, grades, and persistence. The program targeted low-income parents, and, as a result, the study sample comprised older, unmarried, and mostly female students. Unfortunately, the devastation inflicted by Hurricane Katrina intervened partway into the study, making it difficult to confirm the program’s long-term effects.
While the Louisiana results were impressive, there was an open question about whether performance-based scholarships would be effective in other college settings for a broader range of target groups. There were additional questions about the payoff of varying scholarship amounts or of offering the scholarship for different durations.
Agenda, Scope, and Goals
With anchor funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and commitments from other funding partners, MDRC is testing variations of the performance-based scholarship at eight colleges and one intermediary across six states. The program at each college is targeted to low-income students with high unmet need, based on the cost of attendance and gaps in state financial aid. The goal is to inform changes in state policy, if warranted by the research findings.
The Performance-Based Scholarship Demonstration is designed to produce rigorous evidence of the programs’ impacts and to answer policy-relevant questions:
- Do performance-based scholarships increase short- or long-term academic achievement?
- How does variation in the amount and duration of scholarships affect academic outcomes? For example, how do the impacts of a $1,000 scholarship compare with those of a $2,000 scholarship?
- For what target population do the scholarships have the greatest impacts?
- What are the effects of bundling the scholarships with enhanced student services, such as advising and tutoring?
Design, Sites, and Data Sources
More than 5,600 students will receive scholarships at two- and four-year institutions in six states: Borough of Manhattan and Hostos Community Colleges in New York City (with support from the Robin Hood Foundation); Lorain County, Owens, and Sinclair Community Colleges in Ohio (with support from both the Chancellor of the Ohio Board of Regents and the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services); the University of New Mexico in New Mexico (with support from the Open Society Foundations); Hillsborough Community College in Florida (with support from both the Helios Education Foundation and the Open Society Foundations); Pima Community College in Arizona (with support from both the Helios Education Foundation and The Kresge Foundation); and state-wide in California through the California Cash for College program in partnership with the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce Foundation and the California Student Aid Commission (with support from the College Access Foundation of California). We are also working with UNCF (United Negro College Fund), the nation’s largest minority education organization, to provide technical assistance in implementing performance-based scholarships at three UNCF member institutions: Benedict College and Claflin University in South Carolina and Florida Memorial University in Florida.
Because the scholarship dollars are limited, the demonstration can use a random assignment research design to compare the outcomes of students who receive a performance-based scholarship (on top of their regular financial aid) with a control group who would not receive the performance-based scholarship but would have access to other scholarships that would otherwise be available. MDRC is using variety of quantitative data sources, including transcript data, other administrative data, and surveys, to determine the impacts of the scholarships. Qualitative data from focus groups and interviews are being employed to understand why (or why not) the scholarship intervention had an effect on outcomes.
MDRC now has preliminary results from the program in New York, Ohio, and New Mexico, in addition to the original results in Louisiana. While the effects vary across these sites, there are some commonalities in the emerging findings, including:
- Increases in credits earned. All of the sites have found impacts on credits earned in one or more semesters or terms. While the impacts in the demonstration sites are more modest than those found in Louisiana, they can sometimes account for one full course toward a student’s degree requirements, essentially shortening the time to degree completion by that amount.
- Greater impacts in the second term. All sites, including the original Louisiana study, showed an increase in credits attempted and/or full-time enrollment in the second term of the scholarship, a key focus of the incentive.
- Varied effects on term-to-term persistence. While the Louisiana program saw sizeable impacts on rates of registration in virtually every term after random assignment, the early findings in Ohio, New Mexico, and New York have not shown similar effects. Nonetheless, impacts on other academic outcomes continue to be observed.
- Debt reduction. The studies of the Ohio and New Mexico programs found evidence of student loan reduction as a result of the performance-based scholarships.
These mostly short-term results suggest that performance-based scholarships can move the dial on some important markers of academic success. If the programs can show lasting effects after the scholarships are no longer available to the students — and impacts on persistence emerge in later terms — these performance-based scholarships could lead to higher graduation rates and translate into higher earnings.
What's Next
MDRC will follow longer-range outcomes closely in New York, Ohio, and New Mexico in the coming years. In addition, forthcoming results from three more states in the Performance-Based Scholarship Demonstration — Arizona, California, and Florida — will add to the body of knowledge on the effectiveness of these scholarships on improving academic success for low-income students. Reports are being published periodically through 2014.
|
|
