Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

The Detroit Promise program was designed to encourage college attendance for some of the nation’s most underserved students in Detroit, Michigan. This paper presents findings from a randomized controlled trial of a student success program, the Detroit Promise Path, built atop the Detroit Promise scholarship. This program seeks to improve both college access and college success (persistence, credit accumulation, and graduation) by adding evidence-based college support services to its Promise scholarship once students have enrolled in college. Detroit Promise Path students began meeting with college coaches in the late summer before their first semester of college. They were incentivized to attend coaching meetings with a monthly gift card, refilled with $50 each month that they met with coaches as directed. The program lasted all year, including summer semesters, when students were encouraged to enroll in summer classes or engage in a local summer jobs program. The entire operation was supported by a management information system.

This paper presents findings from a randomized controlled trial evaluation of the Detroit Promise Path. About two-thirds of eligible students were randomly assigned to be offered the new program, while the rest were assigned to a control group who received the Promise scholarship alone, and thus did not meet with coaches or receive incentives. Comparing the two groups’ outcomes over time provided a reliable estimate of the effects of the Detroit Promise Path. The findings in this report include the following:

• The program had a positive effect on students’ persistence in school, full-time enrollment, and credit accumulation. The effects in the first year are statistically significant and among the largest MDRC has found in postsecondary experiments: in the second semester, for instance, there is an 8 percentage point impact on enrollment and a 10 percentage point impact on full-time enrollment. There is also a near tripling of summer enrollment and a doubling of students’ likelihood of completing a full-time load in the first year (24 or more credits).
• While these effects decline somewhat for those students in their second year of the study, the results still remain positive. Some of the impacts on persistence and full-time enrollment hover around statistical significance in the second year. The size of the effect on average credits earned also shrinks in the second year.
• Participation rates were high among enrolled students, and students reported positive experiences in the program, especially in their relationships with their coaches. The vast majority of program group students engaged with the program, and the average number of coaching meetings remained high throughout the two program years. In focus groups and a student survey, nearly all students reported valuing the program.

Although it is too soon to know whether the program will have a measurable effect on graduation rates, it is having a positive effect on students in the first two years. This evaluation shows that building student support services like the Detroit Promise Path into Promise scholarships can have a meaningful effect on students’ academic progress.