Offering comprehensive supports to community college students shows positive results

Offering comprehensive supports to community college students can increase full-time enrollment in college and increase retention to the next term, according to new results from a study by the University of Chicago Poverty Lab.

The study found offering supports to students increased full-time enrollment by 13 percent and increased retention to the next term by 11 to 16 percent. The benefits for participating students are even greater; program scholars are 35 percent more likely to enroll full-time and 47 percent more likely to persist to the next term in their first year in the program.

The preliminary findings are part of an eight-year, randomized controlled trial of One Million Degrees, a Chicago nonprofit that provides wraparound support to low-income community college students in the Chicago area. The results of its partnership with the Poverty Lab, a leader in providing data-driven solutions to study the effectiveness of programs, add to a small but growing body of rigorous evidence on how to support community college students.

Although community colleges enroll 8.7 million students each year—nearly half of all students in postsecondary institutions in the U.S.—these students are disproportionately low-income, first-generation college-goers, and/or students of color. Students face multiple barriers to success in community college; in Chicago, fewer than one in four community college students graduates within three years. One Million Degrees provides students a unique support model that targets students’ academic, professional, personal and financial needs.

Encouraging early results

These results are the first in a three-cohort, randomized controlled trial that will include almost 5,000 students and will evaluate long-term whether this promising model also shows impacts on degree attainment, employment, and earnings. The students in the study attend all seven City Colleges of Chicago, as well as Harper College in suburban Palatine.

OMD participants consist of both recent high school graduates and continuing community college students. Initial results show the offer of a spot in the OMD program is equally impactful for both groups of students. However, participating in the program had a larger effect on students entering directly from high school. High school students who elect to participate in the program are twice as likely to persist to the next school term and 82 to 85 percent more likely to enroll full-time.

OMD also substantially increases the likelihood that students enroll in college at all the fall after their senior year in high school, indicating great promise to move the needle among the approximately 20 percent of Chicago Public Schools graduates who do not immediately pursue postsecondary education.


These encouraging preliminary results stand against a backdrop of little previous evidence about how best to support community college persistence and graduation. A study of the City University of New York’s Accelerated Study in Associate Programs—a wraparound program for community college students similar to One Million Degrees—found that ASAP doubled graduation rates.