Pre-college advising programs in high schools play an important role in increasing the enrollment rates of Hispanic students in community colleges, a new Vanderbilt University study has found.
The “College Guidance for All: A Randomized Experiment in Pre-College Advising” study, conducted by Brent Evans and Eric Bettinger, found that pre-college advising programs can be useful for Hispanic students of all income levels and low-income students in general.
The specific program under study, Advise TX, is part of the National College Advising Corps and supplements the work done by high school guidance counselors in some of the most disadvantaged high schools nationwide. These programs help students in understanding postsecondary admissions procedures and financial aid processes.
“These findings provide empirical support for policymakers choosing to continue investment in college access programs generally,” Evans said.
“Given that we expect these new college entrants to have better labor market outcomes than if they did not attend college, we conservatively estimated the rate of return of the college access program to be 4 percentage points.”
The study also found significant positive effects on student enrollment in colleges during the first three years of the program’s implementation, especially on enrollment rates in two-year colleges.
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