Success Coaches

The Issue

Finishing a degree makes a measurable difference in someone’s economic life. According to 2024 data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, workers with some college but no degree earned median weekly wages of $1,020 and faced a 3.8 percent unemployment rate. Workers who completed an Associate’s degree earned $1,099 per week, with unemployment falling to 2.8 percent. That gap, between starting college and finishing it, represents significant earnings and stability left on the table for millions of students who enroll but never cross the finish line.

Community colleges enroll millions of students who are pursuing these credentials, but a large share of them will not complete their degree. Much of the existing research on community college completion focuses on big, structural barriers such as the cost of tuition, the burden of student loans, and gaps in academic preparedness coming out of high school.

But cost and academic preparedness aren’t the only things standing between a student and a degree. Many students who are otherwise on track to graduate get knocked off course by smaller, more solvable problems such as not knowing a registration deadline has passed, not realizing they need to sign up for childcare before the semester starts, or not knowing which courses to take next. These are the kinds of obstacles that a well-timed nudge, rather than a large new program, might be able to fix.

That raises a practical question for community colleges working with limited budgets: do students need intensive, one-on-one support to stay on track, or can lower-cost, lower-touch interventions, like a text message reminder, get them just as far?

 

The Intervention

To find out, Ivy Tech Community College South Bend-Elkhart is testing two different ways of supporting its students. The first is a low-touch informational intervention where participating students receive periodic text messages reminding them of upcoming deadlines and pointing them toward available campus and community resources, such as childcare assistance or help choosing a course load. The second is a high-touch intervention that connects participating students with Success Navigators, counselors who provide ongoing, one-on-one case management, including help with course planning, financial aid, and personal obstacles that could derail a student’s progress. The informational content behind both programs is similar; the high-touch program is simply far more costly and time-intensive to deliver.

 

Research Question

How effective are high- and low-touch interventions in increasing rates of persistence and degree completion among community college students?

Intended Outcomes

• This study investigates the specific mechanisms involved in community college completion by comparing the impacts of low- and high-touch interventions on rates of persistence and degree completion.

• If students in both the low- and high-touch programs show comparable improvements relative to non-participating students, the study will show that the more expensive, time-intensive case management model isn’t necessary to move the needle, and that low-cost nudges can do much of the same work.

• If, instead, only students in the high-touch program show meaningful improvement, the study will demonstrate that more intensive, relationship-based case management is what is needed to meaningfully increase completion rates.

 

Research Study Design

The Ivy Tech South Bend-Elkhart study is a randomized controlled trial that evaluates the differences between an expensive, time-intensive program and a low-cost, low-touch program in boosting the persistence and degree completion of community college students.

To investigate the impacts of each program, first-time Ivy Tech students are randomly assigned into one of three groups. The first group participates in the low-touch intervention and receives informational text messages. The second group receives case management services as part of the high-touch intervention. Students assigned to the third group receive neither.

After consenting to participate in the study, students complete a baseline survey that documents their student identifiers and demographics. Following the conclusion of the study, LEO researchers will compare persistence and degree completion outcomes of students across all three groups.

 

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