College attendance has increased significantly over the last few decades, but dropout rates remain high, with fewer than half of all adults ultimately obtaining a postsecondary credential. This project investigates whether one-on-one college coaching improves college attendance and completion outcomes for former low- and middle-income income state…

Randomized control trials (RCTs) have long been considered the "gold standard" for evaluating the impacts of interventions. However, in most education RCTs, the sample of schools included is recruited based on convenience, potentially compromising a study's ability to generalize to an intended population. An alternative approach is to…

Randomized control trials (RCTs) have long been considered the "gold standard" for evaluating the impacts of interventions. However, in most education RCTs, the sample of schools included is recruited based on convenience, potentially compromising a study's ability to generalize to an intended population. An alternative approach is to…

Objective: Mindfulness-based interventions have been shown to have psychological benefits in college students. We explored the effects of an academic Seminar on Compassion on student psychological health. Participants: Forty-one participants (14 male, 27 female, mean age 19.8 ± 1.4 years) were assessed pre- and post- spring semesters 2013 and…

This document presents the testimony of MDRC's Alex Mayer, the Deputy Director for Postsecondary Education at MDRC. The three points that Alex Mayer emphasizes in this testimony before the California State Assembly Higher Education Committee and the Budget Subcommittee on Education Finance on integrating postsecondary education interventions to…

Community college students often lack an academic plan to guide their choices of coursework to achieve their educational goals, in part because counseling departments typically lack the capacity to advise students at scale. This randomized controlled trial tests the impact of guaranteed access to one of two alternative counseling sessions (group…

"Aid Like A Paycheck" is a large-scale pilot evaluation of whether an innovative approach to disbursing financial aid can improve academic and financial outcomes for low-income community college students. Lessons from the pilot evaluation were used to create and fine-tune a logic model depicting activities, outputs, mediators, and…

Performance-based scholarships were developed to help tackle some of the financial obstacles facing students in the postsecondary education system. In general, these scholarships aim to help reduce the financial burdens of low-income college students, and are structured to help incentivize good academic progress. Performance-based scholarships…

Performance-based scholarships have two main goals: (1) to give students more money for college; and (2) to provide incentives for academic progress. MDRC launched the Performance-Based Scholarship (PBS) Demonstration in 2008 to evaluate the effectiveness of these scholarships in a diverse set of states, institutions, and low-income student…

This paper presents research that explores similarities and differences across six randomized controlled trials of learning communities in community colleges that were conducted by MDRC and the National Center for Postsecondary Research. Five of these studies track students' progress in the program semester and two follow-up semesters, and one…

Developmental education, also termed remedial education, refers to curricula intended to improve the academic skills and knowledge of students who are underprepared for undergraduate coursework, particularly in the areas of mathematics, reading, and writing. Many practitioners and researchers agree that developmental education should be improved,…