Washington Monthly - September/October 2020 - 37

er than her advisers, she said, "I didn't have anyone tell me,
'You're doing a great job. We're here for you. Good job getting
an A on that test. You're smart.' I didn't have that." Her advisers became her personal boosters. When she applied for jobs,
she listed one of her advisers as her reference.
In December 2019, she graduated with an associate's degree in nursing. That same month, she took her state nursing
certification exam, and in February of this year started working in a Cleveland-area hospital, just as the COVID-19 crisis
was about to heat up and her skills were most needed. She
has since been accepted at Ohio University, where she hopes
to earn a BA.
Abate's experience with Degree in Three was no outlier. A
carefully controlled evaluation of the program and similar ones
at two other Ohio community colleges found that participating students were nearly twice as likely to graduate within three
years as other students at those colleges who were also attempting to attend full-time but were not part of the program. Participating students were also more likely to transfer to a four-year
college. Though the program costs more per student up front,
it helped so many more students graduate that the overall cost
per degree in the program was lower than it was for students attending the community colleges normally.
In other industries, a new strategy that creates more products at a lower per-unit cost would be seen as a wild success. The
company that developed it would quickly become a magnet for
investors and a leader in the field-until their competitors all
started copying the strategy. Not so, apparently, when it comes
to American higher education. Despite rigorous evaluation,
widespread acclaim from researchers, praise from Ohio Governor John Kasich, glowing write-ups in major newspapers, and
powerful boosters in the philanthropic world, Degree in Three
isn't being rolled out at community colleges across the country,
or even in Ohio. In fact, Tri-C itself discontinued the program
in 2018 when its external funding ran out. A sister program at
Cincinnati State Technical and Community College experienced
the same fate. With the collapse of state revenues brought on
by the pandemic, the status of the program at a third Ohio
school, Lorain County Community College, remains uncertain,
and a version in New York City, where the program originated,
barely avoided having its budget slashed earlier this summer.
The failure of America's community colleges to replicate,
or even maintain, successful programs like Degree in Three illustrates a profound but underappreciated flaw in the way this
country allocates funds for higher education: Students who
need resources the most get the least. Community college students generally have significantly less of the social capital-
parents who attended college, for instance-that can help them
navigate the college setting. They tend to have less developed
study skills than affluent students who attended well-funded
high schools. They also carry greater personal burdens, such as
having to work multiple jobs. Since some adults enroll in community college classes without intending to get a degree, and
students often transfer to different institutions, graduation
rates for community college can be difficult to pin down. But

reports suggest that just a third of students who enter these
schools receive a degree or certificate within six years-a rate
that would be considered scandalous if it were happening at
elite institutions that more affluent students attend.
Yet community colleges generally have far smaller budgets
to spend on students than four-year schools. Public four-year
schools, whose student bodies tend to be wealthier and whiter,
spend on average three times more per student each year than

In other industries, a new
strategy that creates more
products at a lower perunit cost would be seen
as a wild success. Not so,
apparently, when it comes to
American higher education.
community colleges. Private four-year schools generally spend
five times as much. As long as these basic inequities continue,
even the most astonishingly successful innovations to boost
community college success rates are likely to languish.

ver the course of the 2000s, various community colleges
and research groups experimented with interventions
designed to help more students graduate. One effort,
with the goal of providing the students a sense of community, grouped them into cohorts with whom they took all of their
first-year classes. Another attempt involved giving students
increased access to advisers. Yet another effort gave students
scholarships, in addition to whatever financial aid they were receiving, and conditioned the funds on passing grades and consistent enrollment. But all of these efforts, and many others,
saw relatively modest effects.
Prompted by a report from a New York City mayoral commission on alleviating poverty, the City University of New York
system began thinking ambitiously about how to increase graduation rates. CUNY devised a program that would wrap together all of the interventions that had shown a modest positive
effect on graduation rates. To alleviate cost stressors, the program would provide free Metro passes, free books for classes,
and waivers for any tuition that remained after financial aid.
It would also assign additional academic advisers, with lower
caseloads, to meet with the students, twice a month in their
first semester and then once a month after that. From focus
groups, researchers had learned that students also drop out
when they can't reconcile their work schedule and class schedule, so students in the program got priority enrollment. Lastly, because of the drawbacks of part-time attendance, students
would be required to attend full-time, with the goal of graduWashington Monthly 37

Washington Monthly - September/October 2020

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