Beyond the Classroom: How outreach and structure can improve college outcomes

Over the past three decades, returns to education in the US have been rising. In recent years, those who complete associate’s degrees have earned an average of 26 percent more than their counterparts with high school diplomas, and those with bachelor’s degrees have earned 60 percent more. Meanwhile, the gap in postsecondary education attainment between students from low-income families and students from high-income families has widened. Even when controlling for factors such as cognitive ability and demographic characteristics, students from low-income families are now 16 percentage points less likely to attend college than students from high-income families.

In a particularly striking trend called “summer melt,” many students who have actually received offers of admission, completed the financial aid application process, and even submitted an enrollment deposit, end up switching to a less competitive school or never matriculating at all. In one study, the rate of summer melt was 22 percent among low-SES students and 40 percent among students intending to enroll in community college.

Given the potential returns to higher education and the obstacles such students have already overcome, why these students would fail to enroll may seem puzzling. The enrollment process, however, is not so simple. The support secondary schools offer during the application process suddenly disappears during the “forgotten summer” between high school and college. As a result, students and their families, many of whom may already feel uneasy about college, face multi-step enrollment checklists – sometimes with complex steps, hard deadlines, and unexpected fees that can be as high as two thousand dollars – alone.

To tackle summer melt, researchers Benjamin Castleman, Lindsay Page, and Korynn Schooley made use of the many counselors available during summer months to address students’ issues with the enrollment process. In a recent paper, they detail a randomized experiment with a Boston-based counseling program and a school district in Atlanta to improve the handoff between high schools and postsecondary institutions.

One of the intervention’s key characteristics was that it required counselors to be proactive and heavily involved in students’ enrollment process. Counselors actively reached out to students in the treatment group—often multiple times—to offer personalized support. Among other services, counselors developed structured plans for enrollment, sent reminder emails and texts about important enrollment tasks and deadlines, and helped find additional financial aid.

The intervention successfully led to increases both in enrollment and persistence: Students who took part in the intervention were more likely not only to enroll but also to continue into their second year. The effect was most pronounced among low-SES students. In Boston, students in the treatment group with Expected Family Contribution of zero were 12.3 percentage points more likely to enroll and subsequently 13 percentage points more likely to remain in college than those in the control group. In Atlanta, low-SES students were 8.5 percentage points more likely to enroll, and the effect on persistence was positive though not significant.

Importantly, the intervention was not only effective but also much more cost-effective than common policy alternatives. The authors estimated the cost of increasing enrollment by 3.3 percentage points to be around 138 thousand dollars. A rough calculation suggests that the intervention was about 250 percent more cost-effective than an equivalent investment in additional grant aid at increasing enrollment.

While some may argue that grant aid is useful not only as a tool for enrollment but also as a transfer to the most financially constrained, the benefits of the transfer beyond its impact on enrollment pale in comparison to the returns to higher education for students. Given the financial resources currently available to low-SES students, providing more structure and support through the matriculation process may be a dramatically more cost-effective way to impact their economic prosperity than offering more financial aid.

The study joins a growing body of research suggesting that the most important needs of low-SES students do not always relate to academic skills or financial barriers. Assisting families through the FAFSA application process has been shown to boost enrollment and acceptance rates, and many believe that structured community college programs result in higher graduation rates than more typical, maximally flexible community college programs. When students are at risk of either dropping out of college or never attending in the first place, some nudging in the right direction may go a long way.

Castleman, B. L., Page, L. C., & Schooley, K. (2014), “The Forgotten Summer: Does the Offer of College Counseling After High School Mitigate Summer Melt Among College‐Intending, Low‐Income High School Graduates?,” Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 33(2), 320-344.

Feature Photo: cc/(John Walker)