This post is part of our blog series on holistic student supports in postsecondary education. You can find more information on the series in our introductory post here.
Last-dollar scholarship programs have proliferated in the past decade out of growing concerns about college access and completion. Last-dollar scholarships cover eligible students’ remaining tuition costs after all other financial aid and scholarships are applied, seeking to minimize the financial burden of college and, in turn, make college more accessible to a broader population of students. Accompanying the growing popularity of last-dollar scholarship programs is research showing that these programs have been effective in increasing college enrollment, with some evidence emerging of benefits to college completion.
Guided by an understanding that financial assistance alone is insufficient to promote successful degree completion, many last-dollar scholarship programs have expanded to include supplemental programs that provide holistic student supports—such as coaching while students are in school—geared towards supporting students’ degree completion. In a holistic student supports model, students receive academic and nonacademic services that are tailored to their individual needs, with services provided as an integrated support structure rather than independent, standalone resources. Recognizing that students can face a myriad of barriers to successful college completion—such as food, housing, transportation, and health care—holistic student supports are designed to provide students with the range of academic and non-academic supports they need to navigate college and complete their degree.
Research for Action (RFA) has partnered with postsecondary institutions and organizations across the country to understand how students in last-dollar scholarship programs perceive and benefit from holistic student supports. In this blog, we synthesize key takeaways from our research in Tennessee and Pennsylvania to describe how coaching has been leveraged as an effective holistic student support in Tennessee’s statewide Promise program and the Community College of Philadelphia’s Catto Scholarship achieve college success.
Tennessee’s tnAchieves and the Tennessee Promise
In Tennessee, we partnered with tnAchieves, a non-profit organization that serves as a key partner to the Tennessee Promise, Tennessee’s statewide last-dollar scholarship program that operates in the state’s 13 community colleges. The Tennessee Promise launched in 2015 as one of the first statewide last-dollar scholarship programs, covering full tuition and fees for in-state high school graduates attending community colleges. As the partnering organization to the Tennessee Promise, tnAchieves facilitates the non-financial components of the scholarship initiative, providing holistic student supports to students participating in the Tennessee Promise.
Among the range of student supports provided by tnAchieves is the COMPLETE coaching model. The COMPLETE coaching model is a specific form of structured advising focused on supporting students’ ability to navigate academic and personal barriers to college success. In this model, completion coaches work individually with students to support a range of student needs, such as connecting students with on-campus or community resources, creating individualized success plans, and supporting FAFSA completion. Structured advising models have been shown to help improve college completion rates, particularly for first-generation and low-income students (Bettinger & Baker, 2013; Deil-Amen & Rosenbaum, 2003).
The COMPLETE coaching model includes two forms of coaching: (1) proactive coaching, an intensive intervention where coaches contact students at least once every three weeks; and (2) reactive coaching, a responsive intervention where contact between coaches and students is initiated by the student.
Our research used a randomized controlled trial to understand whether offering proactive coaching to students was more effective at improving completion rates than offering reactive coaching. While our causal estimates show limited evidence of differences in completion rates between students receiving proactive and reactive coaching, on average, descriptive evidence indicates that students who were offered proactive coaching—and subsequently engaged with their coach—had higher rates of college completion compared to students who were offered reactive coaching.
Our findings suggest that for holistic student supports to be effective, it is not enough to only offer services and resources; well-designed programs must encourage students to use the supports available to them. tnAchieves has since launched its COMPLETE grants program, a supplemental grant program that intends to incentivize students’ usage of completion coaching services while alleviating financial burdens such as food and transportation. COMPLETE grants provide up to $1,000 per semester to students who have had at least two contacts with their completion coach. Recent research suggests that the COMPLETE grant program has seen early success in raising completion rates for participating students.
The Community College of Philadelphia’s Octavius V. Catto Scholarship
In Philadelphia, we partnered with the Community College of Philadelphia to conduct a mixed-methods evaluation of the Octavius V. Catto Scholarship. The Catto Scholarship is a last-dollar scholarship with supplemental holistic student supports housed within the Community College of Philadelphia. A relatively new initiative, the Catto Scholarship launched in 2021, designed through a partnership between the Community College of Philadelphia and the Philadelphia Mayor’s Office as an anti-poverty initiative for the city of Philadelphia.
In addition to covering participating students’ tuition and fees, the Catto Scholarship provides additional financial support coupled with an array of holistic student supports, including referrals to community resources, monthly workshops, and Success Coaches, individuals who serve as key points of contact for students to offer personalized academic and personal support. The Catto Scholarship is modeled similarly to the City University of New York Accelerated Study in Associate Programs (CUNY-ASAP) program, a last-dollar scholarship program with demonstrated effectiveness.
Our evaluation of the Catto Scholarship focused on student experiences with the initiative’s holistic student supports, drawing on interview and focus group data with participating Catto Scholars and Success Coaches. In our interviews with Scholars, they expressed their appreciation for the comprehensive support system that the Catto Scholarship provides, viewing their participation as a “job” that holds them accountable in their personal and academic life. They stated that the “one-stop-shop” nature of the Scholarship, with dedicated tutoring, advising, and additional supports all housed within one space, enhances the accessibility of resources and support.
Our research also highlighted the importance of Success Coaches in supporting Catto Scholars towards degree completion. Catto Scholars spoke highly of the Success Coaches, describing them as empathetic, passionate, and trustworthy. Descriptively, Catto Scholars have higher rates of persistence, retention, and degree completion than students at the Community College of Philadelphia who do not participate in the Catto Scholarship, and in interviews, many Scholars credited their persistence in college to their relationships with Coaches, who they said help foster a sense of belonging within the college and the Scholarship. In our interviews with Success Coaches, they spoke passionately about their work, with many describing it as a vocation or a dream job. Their attitudes towards the importance of their work supported strong relationship building with Scholars, which allowed them to be effective in their coaching and advising roles.
Accessibility of holistic student supports is key to supporting student success
Our research in Tennessee and Philadelphia reveals the importance of accessibility in the context of holistic student supports. Making holistic student supports available to students is the first step, but students must be able and willing to access and utilize the available supports in order to benefit from them. In a holistic student supports approach, the integrated nature of academic and non-academic supports helps with logistical accessibility, but nurturing relationships between students and support providers—such as completion coaches in the case of Tennessee, or Success Coaches in the case of Philadelphia—is an integral piece of the holistic student support approach.