Editor's note: This story is one in a series,#PolicyForward, that spotlights how faculty, students and alumni at the Harris School of Public Policy are driving impact for the next generation. Leading up to the May 3 grand opening of Harris’ new home at the Keller Center, these stories will examine three of the most critical issues facing our world: strengthening democracy, fighting poverty and inequality, and confronting the global energy challenge.
A partnership between the University of Chicago’s Poverty Lab and nonprofit student support organization One Million Degrees aims to help transform community colleges into more powerful engines of economic mobility.
There’s a lot of room for improvement. Only a third of first-time, full-time students who enroll in community colleges nationally earn an associate degree within three years.
But researchers at the Poverty Lab are hopeful about the impact of One Million Degrees (OMD), and are in the midst of a multi-year study of its efforts to help disadvantaged students. The study, a rigorous randomized controlled trial involving more than 4,000 students at the City Colleges of Chicago and Harper College in suburban Palatine, should lead to more effective policies at institutions that can play a key role in alleviating poverty, says Kelly Hallberg MPP’05, a Poverty Lab researcher who is one of the principal investigators on the OMD study.