Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

This paper will share six-year findings from a randomized controlled trial of the City University of New York’s (CUNY) Accelerated Study in Associate Programs (ASAP). Previous findings from this program found unprecedented impacts on the program’s goal of three-year associate degree attainment. This paper extends the follow-up period to six years to track students’ degree receipt, including bachelor’s degrees, and time to degree. The analysis also calculates academic impacts of the program for key student subgroups, such as race, for the first time. This paper provides six-year follow-up to this nationally recognized program, informing important questions around longer-term time to degree and the likelihood of control catch-up, as well as how students perform when they move from two-year to four-year colleges. Finally, the presenter will share early results from another randomized controlled trial in which three community colleges in another state implemented the CUNY ASAP model. These include first semester enrollment and credit accumulation and retention to the second semester. This paper provides lessons learned for attempts to translate successful programs to new contexts and contributes to the larger policy conversation ability of programs to improve community college student success.