Nearly one in five undergraduate students in the United States is caring for dependent children. Supporting student parents through higher education is crucial for promoting economic mobility. Child Trends administered the New Mexico College Student Experience Survey to more than 3,000 students, including more than 1,000 pregnant or parenting students with children under age 18, across nine higher education institutions in New Mexico during the 2024 spring semester. This report presents the results of the survey, providing an illustration of student parents in New Mexico and pointing to practice reforms that may better support this group of students.

Hundreds of local labor markets fuel the American economy, and each one is driven by the needs of the local area’s mix of industries and the skills of its workers. When these needs and skills align, everyone can benefit. But many local economies are struggling to achieve strong alignment between the demand for middle-skills credentials (certificates and associate’s degrees) and the supply of these credentials produced by local institutions. This Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce resource consists of a full report and a data tool, both of which demonstrate that in half of the nation’s labor markets, at least 50 percent of all middle-skills credentials would need to be granted in different fields of study to meet projected labor demand through 2031. The report focuses on the great misalignment between middle-skills education and training, and middle-skills jobs—and what stakeholders can do to address it.

More than half of community college students nationwide intend to pursue a four-year degree; however, in Texas only one in four community college students transfer to four-year institutions successfully. To improve transfer rates and, ultimately, bachelor’s degree attainment, the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board (THECB) launched the Texas Transfer Grant Pilot Program with money provided by the U.S. Department of Education’s Governor’s Emergency Education Relief Fund. MDRC evaluated the pilot program to build evidence about its efficacy and help inform future THECB decisions about the program. This brief provides findings about the pilot program’s impact on students’ enrollment and academic outcomes at Texas four-year institutions during the fall 2022 and spring 2023 semesters—two semesters after students initially received the fall 2022 transfer grant.

In 2014, three Ohio community colleges set out to adapt a developmental student support model pioneered by the City University of New York (CUNY) called Accelerated Study in Associate Programs (ASAP). This program requires students to attend school full time and provides support services for three years, including enhanced advising, financial aid, and career counseling, to help them graduate with an associate’s degree quickly. In this Evidence First podcast episode, MDRC talks with Christine Brongniart, the University Executive Director of CUNY ASAP, and Colleen Sommo, a senior research fellow in MDRC’s Postsecondary Education policy area, to learn more about the replication of CUNY ASAP and the latest findings from MDRC’s study of the Ohio program, including increased earnings and doubled graduation rates.

MDRC’s Evidence First podcast features experts—program administrators, policymakers, and researchers—talking about the best evidence available on education and social programs that serve people with low incomes. In this episode, MDRC’s Leigh Parise talks with Paul Fain, an education and workforce journalist, and Betsy Tessler, a senior researcher at MDRC. Nondegree credentials are typically certificates or licenses earned in a short period of time that confer some kind of professional or industry-recognized skill. They are not new to the world of higher education, but they have received a lot of attention in the last few years as a “faster” way to connect students to employment in comparison to earning a traditional college degree.

In observance of National Adult Education and Family Literacy Week, September 19-25, this compendium highlights nine practices that represent holistic approaches to delivering adult education programs. These programs represent approaches for modeling effective integrated education and training (IET) programs—transitioning adult learners from adult basic education to postsecondary education or training, and increasing access to adult education services. The practices are drawn from programs in Alabama, Arkansas, Indiana, Kentucky, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Ohio, and Texas.

In April 2020, the U.S. Department of Education expanded the Second Chance Pell Experimental Sites Initiative to include 67 new higher education institutions in the program, beyond the 63 colleges that had already been providing postsecondary education programs in prisons. This initiative and its expansion offer unique challenges for colleges responding to this nontraditional student population. This guide offers examples and practical operational support to both colleges and corrections departments for establishing postsecondary education programs in the prison environment. These programs strive to balance affirming the dignity of these nontraditional students with delivering comparable in-person educational quality to traditional classroom settings.

This webpage provides information on City College of San Francisco’s noncredit Vocational English as a Second Language classes which introduce students to work-related vocabulary and help with employment-related language skills. Also provided is a link to I-BEST/Supported Instruction classes, as well as information about the college’s Adult Education Program and a link to the current schedule of classes.

This Lumina Foundation brief offers a synthesis of third-party evaluations that measure and assess the impact of strategies used by two-year colleges to improve adult completion of non-degree credential programs. Strategies include the use of academic and non-academic student supports, the creation and implementation of career pathways, and the deployment of prior learning assessments. The brief also offers data pointing to the limited labor market opportunities for the more than half of Americans ages 25 to 64 who do not hold a postsecondary credential.

This Urban Institute brief presents findings of the Accelerating Opportunity (AO) initiative evaluation as a model and practice of integrated career pathways for adult basic education and skills training. The evaluation covers ways that programs in Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, and Louisiana aimed to help adults with basic skills deficiencies earn occupational credentials. The evaluation identifies impacts on earnings and job opportunities for AO initiative participants.