The University of New Mexico has entered into an agreement with MDRC, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research firm, to test an innovative strategy to increase student persistence and completion rates at UNM. MDRC will provide more than $1.7 million to fund a three-year pilot scholarship program at UNM and at other sites. Overall funding for MDRC’s multi-site investigation is being provided in part by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
The principal investigators in the project include Vanessa Harris, director, University College Advising Center, Associate Professors of Economics Melissa Binder and Kate Krause and Cynthia Miller of MDRC.
The program, called VISTA at the UNM demonstration site (for Vision Inspired Scholarship Toward Academic Achievement), targets low-income students with high financial need, and provides up to $1000 per semester for four semesters to students who meet enrollment and grade criteria. A total of 500 freshmen will become VISTA scholars this academic year and next.
“The Division of Enrollment Management at UNM helped bring together a diverse team of university administrators necessary to execute a project of this scope,” said Krause. “For many low-income college students, one of the biggest barriers to college attendance is cost. The VISTA scholarship demonstration will test whether additional aid delivered for achieving academic milestones will help students overcome cost-related barriers.”
In a similar pilot program conducted by MDRC at two Louisiana community colleges, students who received the scholarship were more likely to enroll in college full time, exhibited higher rates of semester-to-semester retention and earned more college credits than did students who did not receive the funding. The VISTA demonstration will test whether the same successes can be obtained at UNM.
“The research design calls for the random assignment of eligible students to either a treatment group or a control group,” said Krause. “Control group students will receive the same financial aid and support services for which they would otherwise be eligible; treatment group students will receive VISTA scholarships in addition to all other financial aid for which they are eligible. This design will allow us to isolate and evaluate the effects of the VISTA scholarship.”
Continued eligibility for the VISTA scholarships depends on a student's enrolling in a minimum number of credit hours and maintaining a minimum 2.0 GPA. The performance-based scholarships are paid directly to students, rather than to the university, in order to reward students for their progress and to allow them to make choices of how best to support their schooling.
For some, this may mean buying books or paying for transportation to campus; for others, it may mean cutting back on work hours or hiring a babysitter for their children during finals week.
“Our goal is to identify policies that help students succeed at UNM. The VISTA scholarship program contributes to that inquiry.”
About the MDRC...
In 1974, MDRC was founded as the Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation. However, in 2003, the organization became "MDRC," its registered corporate identity, thereby formally adopting the name by which the organization become best known to its professional colleagues and the general public.
Media Contact: Steve Carr, (505) 277-1821; e-mail: scarr@unm.edu