Program offering academic and financial support helps City Colleges students earn more, study finds

When Tiara Davis went back to school in her 30s after having three kids, she wasn’t looking to get involved on campus. She just wanted to “keep my head down and get my degree.”

But as she progressed at Kennedy-King College in Englewood, one of the City Colleges of Chicago, she met a coordinator with One Million Degrees who encouraged her to apply to the nonprofit’s program. She now credits the support and resources it provided with putting her on track to earn an associate degree in computer science in May.

Davis had dropped out of college before, and she says without the program, she was bound to do it again. Instead, she is gearing up to pursue a four-year degree.

“I would have 1,000% stopped,” Davis said. “I was coming for an advanced certificate. I’m leaving with an associate degree, and I’m transferring for my bachelor’s. That was not in the plan at all, but it was due to resources like this that made me see that, ‘Hey, there might be something further.’”

Community college students like Davis who participate in the Chicago-based One Million Degrees program are more likely to earn their degree and see higher wages after they graduate, a study released Wednesday by the University of Chicago Inclusive Economy Lab found. The effects are even greater if students start getting support early, as they transition from high school to community college.

Researchers say the findings bolster the case that wraparound supports can improve students’ outcomes in the workforce whether they are embedded within a college or offered by an outside organization.

Funded largely by donations and grants, One Million Degrees partners with City Colleges and often works with first-generation and low-income community college students. Students can apply while they’re in high school or if they’re enrolled in community college.

Students are then matched with a program coordinator who can connect them to various financial, academic, professional and personal supports. That could be tutoring or help finding child care. The program also provides a $750 to $1,000 stipend annually that full-time students can put toward college costs, like books and transportation, so long as they’re passing their classes and attending required meetings.

“It really meets students where their needs are and targets the support,” said Kelly Hallberg, who co-authored the study and is the scientific director for the Inclusive Economy Lab.

The newly released data builds upon research released in 2022 that showed students were more likely to remain in community college during their first year if they got the wraparound support offered by One Million Degrees.

Now, longer-term benefits of the program are emerging as students grow older and pursue further education and careers.

Enrolling in the program was strongly correlated with continued educational and employment success, especially for students who started the program earlier and participated in it for longer.

Students who were considering college but unsure about whether they should go benefited greatly from the extra support, Hallberg said.

“It's basically taking a potential non-college student and making them not only a college student, but a college student that’s more likely to complete,” Hallberg said. For those students, “the program really had the biggest effects.”

Students who participated in One Million Degrees were more likely to earn a degree. The researchers found that 63% of students who participated in the program got any kind of degree within eight years, compared with 55% of their peers who did not get that same support.

To conduct the study, researchers looked at students who applied to the One Million Degrees program beginning in 2016. Students were entered in a lottery, and about half were selected to participate while the other half served as the control group.

The study then tracked nearly 5,000 students’ education, employment and wages for six to eight years.

Students who applied to the program in high school also had higher earnings than their counterparts who weren’t a part of One Million Degrees. Seven years after starting the program, participants made around $14,000 more a year, on average, than students who weren’t enrolled.

Students who participated in the program were also significantly more likely to have a stable job, especially if they applied to One Million Degrees while still in high school.

The research, which is ongoing, points to ways that comprehensive and personalized support for students can shape their future in tangible ways, Hallberg said. The program, for example, offers students help registering for classes and applying for jobs or four-year colleges. Sometimes, the support is being there to listen when students need it.

Davis, who lives in Auburn Gresham, said One Million Degrees helped her balance caring for her three children and two cousins while she grieved the death of her grandmother, who raised her.

She recalled one hour-long conversation with her program coordinator shortly after her grandmother’s death last year. She was overwhelmed and considering dropping out again, but his encouragement reminded her she wanted to continue, she said.

“The support is everything, especially when you’re talking to mothers and non-traditional learners, because we are that support for everybody else,” she said. “It's almost like it’s a make-or-break, because you have someone that you can lean on when you don't have all the answers.”