tag: Student success

Comprehensive postsecondary student success initiatives that deliver meaningful improvements in persistence, credit accumulation, and completion require significant investment to implement, sustain, and scale. Holistic wraparound models such as the City University of New York’s Accelerated Study in Academic Programs (CUNY ASAP) combine academic advising, financial assistance, career supports, and proactive student engagement to achieve these outcomes. While the model’s effectiveness has a strong body of evidence behind it, replicating these models at scale requires more than demonstrating effectiveness.

Despite emerging research on the prevalence and consequences of basic needs insecurity, few studies comprehensively examine how student perspectives shape definitions of basic needs, their thresholds for recognizing and seeking help, and institutional responses. This literature review synthesizes existing research and practice-based evidence on student perspectives, help-seeking, institutional strategies, communication approaches, and public benefit navigation, while identifying gaps that the project’s subsequent student-focused research and institutional strategy work aim to address.

Students’ ability to succeed in higher education is closely tied to their access to food, housing, technology, transportation, mental health, and other essential support. While a range of public benefits programs and institutional initiatives aim to address these basic needs, access to support is often shaped by a complex and fragmented policy environment. State and federal policy related to basic needs has a direct impact on the support students can access.

Part-time students represent about one-quarter of all undergraduate students at four-year institutions and nearly two-thirds at two-year institutions, yet they complete credentials at roughly half the rate of their full-time peers. These gaps are driven primarily by constraints due to work schedules, caregiving obligations, and limited financial aid, rather than by student characteristics or motivation. Added to this, the systems meant to support postsecondary success are largely designed for students who can attend full time.