Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

The Future to Discover Pilot Project is a large-scale Canadian randomized field experiment to find out the roles played by different types of early high school programming on postsecondary attainment. It has tracked 4,500 Grade 9 students over 9 years so far, to find out what happens when they are offered (a) a guarantee of a generous student aid grant or (b) three years of enhanced career education programming or (c) both. The two interventions were developed to be practical means by which governments could increase attainment in secondary and post-secondary education by improving the efficiency of student decision making. Both were implemented with high fidelity and produced impacts on high school graduation and enrollment in different types of postsecondary education (2-year and 4-year college programs). This is one of the first randomized studies to report long-term results on the effectiveness of an early promise of postsecondary grant to low-income students. The latest evidence indicates significant longer-term impacts on persistence, completion and credentials earned in post-secondary education. The results are relevant to inform policy decisions about optimizing the processes through which youth acquire and enhance their skills to meet future labour market requirements.