Abstract
A growing body of research has documented positive effects of multifaceted interventions on rates of college completion, most notably among students at community colleges (Dynarski & Oster, 2016; Scrivener et al., 2015; Weiss et al., 2019). These interventions typically combine financial, advising, academic, and social supports. For example, the Accelerated Study in Associate Programs (ASAP) blended substantial financial support with intensive, personalized advising and structured requirements (e.g., students had to enroll full time). The ASAP program was piloted at community colleges in New York and boosted 3-year and 6-year degree completion rates by 18 and 10 percentage points, respectively. A similar, ASAP-like intervention in Ohio nearly doubled the 3-year completion rate for community college students seeking an associate degree (i.e., from 19 to 35 percent).
While these comprehensive interventions boast impressive effects on completion within the community college context, little work has explored the capacity of similar interventions to address barriers faced by community college students who transfer to 4-year institutions. These students often struggle to persist and complete at rates comparable to peers who started their college journeys at a 4-year institution. For example, within the UNC System of public 4-year institutions, the 2-year completion rate for students who transfer from community colleges (with an associate degree) is about 33 percent—nearly 34 percentage points lower than their within-cohort peers who started at a public 4-year institution (i.e., a 4-year completion rate of 67 percent). Gaps in 3-year completion rates between transfers from community colleges and their within-cohort native peers are around 23 percentage points for recent cohorts.
This project will examine the effects of a comprehensive intervention on outcomes for students at public 4-year institutions who have transferred from community colleges. The Transfer, Accelerate, Complete, Engage (TrACE) intervention is adapted from the ASAP/ACE model and will be implemented at three public 4-year universities in the UNC System. TrACE was piloted in a non-randomized fashion during the 2022-23 academic year in order to set up structures and processes necessary for delivering program components.
The fully developed TrACE program will be piloted as a randomized controlled trial across three public 4-year universities in the UNC System in Fall 2023. The duration of the program is two years (i.e., 2023-24 and 2024-25). We will examine the effects of TrACE on measures of postsecondary progress, performance, and completion (e.g., graduation within two and three years of transfer).