Washington Monthly - September/October 2020 - 39

to interact with me. I'm appreciative [of] the program for allowing me to meet them."
Abate and Jones weren't the only students who benefited.
MDRC released early data from 2015 and 2016 showing that students in the program were twice as likely to stay in school. After the three-year period was up in 2018, researchers crunched
the numbers fully. Ohio's version of ASAP had been just as effective as CUNY's: Graduation rates had nearly doubled for students in the program, and students were 50 percent more likely to transfer to a four-year college. If CUNY ASAP was strong
proof of concept, this new study of Ohio's version showed that
the concept could be successfully applied elsewhere-it was,
in the argot of social science, replicable. And while the cost per
student enrolled in the program per year was estimated by researchers to be $3,303, that amount was partially offset by extra revenue (mostly from Pell Grants) the colleges received because students in the program stayed in school longer. With all
factors taken into account, MDRC calculated that the cost per
graduate of the Ohio version of ASAP was $49,000 less than for
similar students not in the program.
Few other community colleges, however, seem interested
in even trying to replicate the ASAP model-not because they
think it won't work, but because the realities of the budgeting
process in most states and municipalities make funding something like this extremely difficult. One problem, Brock pointed
out, is that states budget on a year-to-year basis-a system that
doesn't take into account longer-term savings. If you're a state
legislator or college president who pushes for programs with a
longer time frame, you may not get credit for positive outcomes
that happen three or six years down the line, he said. On top
of that, lawmakers are unlikely to take money away from fouryear colleges in order to pay for innovations at community colleges, Robert Kelchen, a professor at Seton Hall University who
studies higher education, said. (Kelchen is also the data manager of the Monthly's College Guide.) To fund a program like this
would "take a significant investment of new money from states
to implement this program on a widespread basis. That looks to
be very unlikely in the next several years," Kelchen said.
Ohio community colleges were only able to run the program with ample grant funding from large foundations. (Another recent attempt to replicate the program in West Virginia is also being funded by Arnold Ventures.) Once the outside
money for Ohio ran out, the state legislature didn't allocate
funds to continue the program. Without additional funding,
said Miria Batig, who oversaw the program at Tri-C's Western
Campus, "trying to get that kind of ratio [of advisers to students] would be near to impossible." Stephanie Davidson, vice
chancellor of academic affairs at the Ohio Department of Higher Education, said as attractive and beneficial as the program
may be, the state would be hard pressed to find a way to sustain
it. As it stands, Ohio has no plans to expand the program at the
state level, and two of the three colleges that participated have
discontinued their programs.
Tiffany Jones, the senior director of higher education policy at the Education Trust, a nonprofit that focuses on equity in

education, told me that it's not hard to figure out "how to help
students from low-income families complete college-that
work has been done." What is difficult, she said, is finding college leaders and state policymakers who make student success a
top priority not only in their rhetoric but also in their budgets.
"This is really a question of political will."
The struggle of the Ohio programs to survive, much less
spark similar efforts across the country, tells a larger story about
ambitions to make community college better. No past effort had
been tested so rigorously and seen such success. Community
colleges generally operate on such thin margins that, on their
own, it is nearly impossible for them to come up with the additional cash to pilot new programs. But without some money to
try out new strategies, it's hard to see how these schools will ever
solve the stubborn problem of low graduation rates-or really
any of the problems they face. State and local lawmakers could
have theoretically provided the funds to bring CUNY ASAP to
their states, but as a practical matter, we now know they won't.

The evaluation of the program
made a splash. The New
York Times wrote up the
findings, and its editorial
board highlighted them, too.
The Obama administration
cited the program's success,
calling on all community
colleges to take similar steps.
There's another large investor, however, that could step in:
the federal government. Jones argued that there should be a
federal fund, either for states or for individual colleges, to scale
up strategies proven to boost student success. Grants should
be tiered by institution type to ensure that under-resourced
schools are able to compete for the funds, and investments
should target schools that enroll high proportions of historically disadvantaged students, Jones said. There are any number
of ways Washington could direct more federal funds to these
schools, which would allow them to adopt programs like ASAP.
(Kevin Carey lays out one such proposal on page 30.) Until then,
the single most promising way to help minority students and
students from low-income families succeed in higher education
will remain a promise unfulfilled.
Jamaal Abdul-Alim is a D.C.-based education journalist and the education editor at The Conversation US. His position there is partially funded
by the Lumina Foundation, which also helped fund the development of
the ASAP program model.
Washington Monthly 39

Washington Monthly - September/October 2020

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