Document Tag: community college

Exploration of Barriers to Use of Community Food Resources in Community College Students in Rural Appalachia (2023)

Food insecurity in college students worsened during the COVID pandemic. However, students are often hesitant to access food assistance. The purpose of this study was to explore students’ perceptions of barriers to the use of food assistance. In 2021, students (n = 13) were recruited from a Kentucky college. Virtual interviews were conducted. Further research is needed to explore other barriers to use of food assistance. Research is needed to evaluate interventions aimed at decreasing the stigma of food assistance in college students.

Community Colleges and Human Services Nonprofits BOOSTing Family Economic Success Through Organizational Policy and Practice (2023)

The BOOST initiative connects families with low incomes to critical human services supports and educational and career pathways to advance multigenerational family economic success. In six cities — Baltimore, Maryland; Green Bay, Wisconsin; Hartford, Connecticut; New York City (Queens); Portland, Oregon; and Syracuse, New York— community colleges and human services nonprofits have partnered to support the economic advancement of families as part of the BOOST initiative. The partners at these BOOST sites are guided by six core tenets that advance family social and economic success: partnership, learning, lifetime and springboard jobs, sustainability, racial equity, and the two-generation (2Gen) approach, also sometimes referred to as the whole-family approach, as defined by Ascend at the Aspen Institute.
BOOST partnerships place a particular emphasis on racial equity—both the process and outcome of seeking to understand and address the programmatic, institutional, and policy barriers families of color face in higher education and human services systems. Over time, BOOST partners have deepened their understanding of systemic racism and how it influences individual and organizational thinking and are now shifting their organizational practices to support more equitable outcomes.
This brief explores how community colleges and human services nonprofits can partner to advance multigenerational family economic success and how these partners can lean into their unique strengths as they seek to achieve this goal. It looks at how the six BOOST sites are working to change policies and access funding at the institutional, state, and federal levels to support their partnership goals. It also highlights practices and insights learned from the BOOST initiative, with the intent of aiding and accelerating other efforts to follow this collaborative path.

Empirical Benchmarks for Planning and Interpreting Causal Effects of Community College Interventions (2023)

Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) are an increasingly common research design for evaluating the effectiveness of community college (CC) interventions. However, when planning an RCT evaluation of a CC intervention, there is limited empirical information about what sized effects an intervention might reasonably achieve, which can lead to under- or over-powered studies. Relatedly, when interpreting results from an evaluation of a CC intervention, there is limited empirical information to contextualize the magnitude of an effect estimate relative to what sized effects have been observed in past evaluations. We provide empirical benchmarks to help with the planning and interpretation of community college evaluations. To do so, we present findings across well-executed RCTs of 39 CC interventions that are part of a unique dataset known as The Higher Education Randomized Controlled Trials (THE-RCT). The analyses include 21,163–65,604 students (depending on outcome and semester) enrolled in 44 institutions. Outcomes include enrollment, credits earned, and credential attainment. Effect size distributions are presented by outcome and semester. For example, across the interventions examined, the mean effect on cumulative credits earned after three semesters is 1.14 credits. Effects around 0.16 credits are at the 25th percentile of the distribution. Effects around 1.69 credits are at the 75th percentile of the distribution. This work begins to provide empirical benchmarks for planning and interpreting effects of CC evaluations.

The Effects of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program on Community College Students’ Grade Point Average, Retention, and Graduation Rates (2023)

The purpose of this quantitative research study was to explore whether community college students who received benefits through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) outperformed those who did not receive SNAP benefits in terms of retention, grade point average (GPA), and graduation rate. The deidentified archival data collected from the College Tracker and Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) systems from fall 2018 through spring 2022 included a total of 4,127 sample size of 3,277 continuing students, 312 freshmen, and 538 transfer students who were either SNAP or non-SNAP recipients. The study’s results for each null hypothesis were reported as “fail to reject; not statistically significant” or “reject; statistically significant.” This was determined if the p-value was either higher or lower than the predetermined significance level of 0.05. As a result, of the six findings, four were not statistically significant (p>0.05), while two were statistically significant (p<0.05). The results indicated SNAP affected the retention, GPA, and graduation of part-time, SNAP-receiving students versus their counterparts who did not receive SNAP. However, for full-time, SNAP-receiving students, SNAP affected retention but did not affect GPA and graduation compared to their counterparts who did not receive SNAP during the academic periods from fall 2018 to spring 2022. The study is limited by a small sample size of SNAP students and a lack of information on other potential influencing factors such as low wages, financial difficulties, and family demographics.

How Community Colleges Can Support Student Mental Health Needs (2023)

Community colleges in the study have expanded their mental health support programs through integrating them in the broader college environment.
While community colleges in this study offered multiple levels of mental health supports, most lack a clear organizing framework.
Community college leadership should consider explicitly supporting prioritization of student mental health—and broad staff buy-in is important. Community colleges struggle to meet students’ mental health needs because of limited resources. Financial support for student mental health should extend beyond high school.

#RealCollege California: Basic Needs Among California Community College Students (2023)

The RealCollege survey, the nation’s largest annual assessment of basic needs security among college students, was last comprehensively reported for California Community Colleges in a 20191 report. In spring 2023, The Research and Planning Group for California Community Colleges (The RP Group) partnered with the CEO Affordability, Food & Housing Access Taskforce of the Community College League of California (CCLC) to assist in survey data collection efforts and provide updated data trends regarding California Community College (CCC) students’ food and housing security. Over 66,000 students from 88 California Community Colleges responded to the survey, revealing that two out of every three CCC students grapple with at least one basic needs insecurity. Nearly half of CCC students are food insecure, almost 3 out of 5 are housing insecure, and about 1 in 4 are homeless.

An Examination of Food Insecurity within Connecticut’s Public University System (2023)

This secondary analysis examined the differences in food security, knowledge of eligibility for food assistance programs, and access to food programming across students attending two- and four-year public postsecondary institutions in the state of Connecticut. This study found two-year college students experienced a higher prevalence of food insecurity and were also more aware of their eligibility for SNAP than students attending four-year institutions. Additionally, all institutions provided students with an on-campus food pantry. Further research is needed to understand differences in food security and opportunities to address student barriers to the use of available resources to support food security.

Connecting Students to Basic Needs Hubs During the COVID-19 Pandemic: An Evaluation of a Cross-Sectoral Partnership (2023)

Reducing basic needs insecurity among community college students is an equity imperative for improving college attainment, particularly given the challenges the pandemic introduced. One popular approach is co-locating campus support services to help students access support (beyond financial aid), including public benefits and emergency aid. Some institutions operate their own basic needs hubs, while others engage outside providers. This study evaluates a campus-based cross-sectoral approach at two community colleges in King County, Washington. Together, the United Way of King County and area colleges and universities operate “Benefits Hubs” for students, offering support from peer navigators and helping them access financial resources and information. However, many students experiencing basic needs insecurity do not use hubs—a problem shared by many other student support services. Is it possible to increase students’ use of hubs through low-cost outreach? Does that outreach also improve students’ academic outcomes? Evaluators examined these questions during the COVID-19 pandemic, a time when students’ needs for support were especially high, and staff were particularly constrained. The colleges collectively identified a group of approximately 3,000 low-income students who might be eligible for public benefits and thus find the Benefits Hubs’ support useful. Those students were divided at random into two groups. Beginning in fall 2020, staff sent the first group emails encouraging them to use hubs. The second group did not receive that outreach but still had access to hubs. A comparison of the two groups following that outreach revealed whether sending those emails—a strategy widely known as “nudging”—those students improved their use of hubs and/or their odds of academic success in terms of grades and retention. The results are mixed and largely inconclusive. On the one hand, outreach modestly increased students’ use of Benefits Hubs. It also reached students in several target demographic groups—older students and those from marginalized communities who are at heightened risk of basic needs insecurity. This suggests that informational barriers contribute to basic needs insecurity and may be partially overcome with inexpensive outreach strategies. However, the benefits of outreach dissipated over time, potentially because the targeted students shared information with their peers who did not receive the emails, and then those students also used hubs. Even with the additional outreach efforts, most targeted students did not use hubs and academic improvements were not evidenced. As community colleges continue to recover from the pandemic and support students to graduation, providing basic needs supports to help students afford college may help. There are several reasons why this evaluation might understate the benefits, including analytic limitations and how the pandemic affected the program. Recent legislation and philanthropy are funding many basic needs hubs, making it especially important to engage in ongoing assessment to develop strategies for strengthening their use and ensuring maximum equitable impact.