Community College Initiative:

The path to economic success for America’s most vulnerable runs through community colleges.  Nationwide, more than 11.5 million students (including approximately five million not-for-credit students) attend such institutions each year.  A community college degree provides the opportunity for many of these students to move from the lowest income percentiles to the middle class in one generation.  Unfortunately, simple economic barriers and financial obstacles prevent most from graduating.  Single Stop is working to change that

Why Community Colleges?
Community colleges are one of the most effective vehicles for moving people from poverty to self-sufficiency because they make post-secondary education accessible to low-income, high-need populations.   At the same time, they are also the launching pad for our competitive future as a nation.

An Associate’s Degree results in 15% higher annual earnings for men and 48% higher annual earnings for women. Even without graduating, simply staying longer in community college is proven to lead to higher earnings. But for the majority of community college students it is a stretch to afford the costs of student life.

Twenty-nine percent of community college students have household incomes under $20,000, 35% are parents, and financial pressures force many (nearly 80%) to seek full or part-time work to cover expenses.  As a result, an overwhelming 69% of all those enrolled in community college must attend school part-time.  The result?  Retention and graduation rates reflect the vulnerability of the populations that community colleges serve:  Six years after starting at a two-year institution, nearly half of all students (45.2%) drop out without attaining a degree.

How can Single Stop Help?
Multiple studies by MDRC and others show a strong positive correlation between financial interventions and rates of retention and graduation.  In one recent pilot program, community college students who were given as little as $300 were more likely to stay in school and access supportive services;  in another, financial interventions increased semester-to-semester reenrollment by more than 30%.  To date, such initiatives have been largely financed and supported by private, unsustainable dollars and have been relatively limited in both scope and scale. 

By comparison, the Single Stop model leverages existing federal supports—tax refunds and the fungible value of other benefits—as a proxy for such successful interventions.  But because the Single Stop model also includes long-term legal and financial counseling and access to social services, it constitutes a more comprehensive intervention that provides students with a basis of support to help them succeed through graduation.

Single Stop helps students to surmount financial barriers and seeks to break the cycle of intergenerational poverty in two ways.  In the short term, Single Stop augments financial aid by providing students and their families with immediate access to crucial benefits and services in order to supplement their income – resources including health care, Food Stamps, child care and tax credits, proven to reduce poverty.  In the long run, because this influx of resources helps students to stay in school and graduate, the Single Stop Community College Initiative also yields higher increased lifetime earnings and greater economic mobility. 

Results to date
By tapping into existing public resources, Single Stop’s community college sites are achieving remarkable outcomes.  In their first year of operation, these sites drew down an average of $1,500 per student served – a staggering 15% of that same cohort’s average gross income.  At the same time, approximately 50% of students served during this time period confirmed receipt of public benefits; received legal services; or were referred to on-site Single Stop financial counselors to address issues like debt management, budgeting and credit clean-up.  Anecdotally, we know that these services have already had an enormous impact.  Even more compelling: preliminary data from select sites indicate a dramatic improvement in average semester-to-semester retention rates of students who received Single Stop services.

Sustainability and Scale
By partnering with community colleges, Single Stop harnesses two of the country’s most effective antipoverty tools: coordinated access to America’s safety net and a post-secondary education.  By integrating its successful service delivery model into community colleges nationwide  – Single Stop hopes to reach millions of students and families and looks to address critical barriers to financing and scale.  With community college sites in four states and system-wide partnerships with two of the nation’s largest community college systems – the City University of New York and the City College of San Francisco – Single Stop expects to provide services to more than 7,000 students in 2010, helping them to access benefits and services valued at more than $20 million.  With a growing national commitment to post-secondary access and completion, Single Stop is laying the groundwork for national replication and working to turn its initial success into a national economic empowerment model.