We conduct the first long-term experimental evaluation of a need-based financial aid program, the privately funded Wisconsin Scholars Grant. Over multiple cohorts, the program failed to increase degree completion and graduate school enrollment up to 10 years after matriculation. The program did reduce time-to-degree for some students and modestly…

Food and housing insecurities are serious challenges confronting community college students. This chapter reviews the evidence on prevalence and correlates of basic needs insecurity and discusses institutional actions to support students.

The rising price of higher education and its implications for equity and accessibility have been extensively documented, but the material conditions of students' lives are often overlooked. Data from more than 30,000 two- and 4-year college students indicate that approximately half are food insecure, and recent estimates suggest that at least 20%…

This study provides one of the first causal estimates of the impact of housing on academic outcomes. While college students are too often dismissed as a privileged and healthy part of the population, researchers increasingly observe housing insecurity among college students. This problem worsened during the pandemic, underscoring the link between…

Community colleges increase college access, extending postsecondary educational opportunities to underserved students, yet, these students exhibit low rates of program completion and transfer to 4-year colleges. Sociological research on community colleges focuses on the tension between increasing educational opportunity and failing to improve…

Ensuring college access amid rising tuition costs has hovered near the top of the nation's education agenda for years. Facing heightened concern about the student debt burden and disappointing college graduation rates, policymakers are hungry for fresh ideas. Federal Pell Grants, the primary means for subsidizing college tuition for…

This issue of "Fast Focus" is based on an article published by Sara Goldrick-Rab and Kia Sorensen in the fall 2010 issue of "The Future of Children" (Vol. 20, No. 2; used here with permission), which focuses on "fragile families," defined as families in which the parents were unmarried when the child was born. The authors examine unmarried parents…

Noting that access to higher education has expanded dramatically in the past several decades, Sara Goldrick-Rab and Kia Sorensen focus on how unmarried parents fare once they enter college. Contrary to the expectation that access to college consistently promotes family stability and economic security, the authors argue that deficiencies in current…

Reducing socioeconomic differences in college transfer requires a better understanding of how and why parental education, occupational class, and family income are associated with changing colleges. Building on prior studies of traditional community college transfer we explore relationships between those factors and two types of transfer among…