This guide describes how to perform two types of studies: • Surveys to assess basic needs security; and • Opportunistic small scale experiments to evaluate the effectiveness of programs meant to address basic needs security.
This article reports a systematic review and meta-analysis of studies that use regression discontinuity to examine the effects of placement into developmental education. Results suggest that placement into developmental education is associated with effects that are negative, statistically significant, and substantively large for three outcomes: (a) the probability of passing the college-level course in which remediation was needed, (b) college credits earned, and (c) attainment. Several sensitivity analyses suggest these results are not a function of particular stylized studies or the choices made in assembling the meta-analytic database. Two exploratory moderator analyses suggest that the negative effects of placement into developmental education are stronger for university students than for community college students and worse for students placed in reading or writing than in math. This work can inform debate and research on postsecondary policies and on alternative mechanisms for ensuring that college students have the skills needed to meet their goals.
Full hearing, including Q&A, featuring Dr. Sara Goldrick-Rab
For the past several years, we have conducted research on hunger affecting college studentsacross the nation, and we thank you for the opportunity to share what we have learned. Our goalis to provide useful information about food insecurity among undergraduates and offer potential policy solutions to help alleviate this problem.We urge the National Commission on Hunger to align hunger policies with educational policies, in order to ensure that individuals from low-income and economically vulnerable backgrounds have a fair shot at mastering college-level material and securing college credentials.In particular, we recommend the following actions.
Testimony of Dr. Sara Goldrick-Rab Associate Professor, University of Wisconsin Educational Policy Studies & Sociology Senior Scholar, Wisconsin Center for the Advancement of Education Director, Wisconsin Scholars Longitudinal Study Prepared for the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions United States Senate Hearing on “The Challenge of College Affordability: The Student Lens” April 16, 2013
The Wisconsin HOPE Lab and the American Council on Education Center for Policy Research and Strategy strongly urge the Technical Review Panel of NCES’s NPSAS study to add measurement of food insecurity to the next administration of this key national survey. This will provide policymakers with information required to assess the efficacy of Federal Student Aid in alleviating material hardships and consider the need for new programs to alleviate hunger among undergraduates, assist practitioners in examining how affordable college really is for their students, and enable researchers to produce a more accurate picture of the economic challenges inhibiting college completion.
Below, we describe the rationale for this request and proposed survey questions, drawn from standardized models of assessment that will enable comparisons with national statistics on food insecurity in the broader population.
This study investigates whether financial grants, allocated based on need rather than major, improves odds that economically vulnerable students will pursue science, technology, engineering, and/or mathematics (STEM) degrees. We implemented a privately-funded financial aid program in Wisconsin and conducted a randomized experiment of its effects for low and moderate-income students at 10 two-year and four-year colleges and universities. The additional financial support greatly increased the probability that students would persist in pursuing a STEM major and/or switch to a STEM major by the third year of school. However, it did not change the odds that students would remain enrolled. Implications for educational opportunity, practice, and policy are discussed.
Meeting Summary from the 2019 #RealCollege Conference
The purpose of the AERA research conference award program is to break new ground in
substantive areas of inquiry, stimulate new lines of study on issues that have been largely
unexplored, or develop innovative research methods or techniques that can contribute more
generally to education research. To that end, the program hopes to foster the accumulation of
knowledge, enhance dissemination, encourage innovation, and advance studies of the highest
quality in education research.
In keeping with those goals and desired outcomes, Temple University hosted the
“National Research Conference on Food and Housing Insecurity in Higher Education” on
October 23 and 24, 2017. The conference brought together researchers from diverse
professional levels and fields to advance knowledge in a nascent area of inquiry—college food
and housing insecurity. The current state of that field is summarized in a new article in an AERA
publication, Educational Researcher, co-authored by Katharine Broton and Sara Goldrick-Rab.1
As that article explains, beyond documenting the numbers of students affected by housing and
food insecurity in college, the research field knows little about the dimensions of the challenge,
how measurement affects estimates of its scope, the associated impacts on educational
attainment, and the most effective strategies to ameliorate those problems. The Research
Conference therefore tackled each of those issues, and has already—in just a few months—
begun to evidence positive results in terms of cultivating new and innovative research studies in
the field.
This report describes the Research Conference and its participants, examines the
contours of the conversation at the conference, reports on participant feedback, and then
describes plans for subsequent research and action.
Fall 2018 Survey.
ALMOST 22,000 STUDENTS AT
19 CAMPUSES PARTICIPATED.
THE RESULTS INDICATE:
• 48% of respondents were
food insecure in the prior
30 days,
• 55% of respondents were
housing insecure in the
previous year,
• 14% of respondents were
homeless in the previous
year.