Can Re-Enrollment Campaigns Help Dropouts Return to College? Evidence From Florida Community Colleges

Abstract

In this study, we develop and implement a text messaging re-enrollment campaign to encourage former community college students to return to college. Former students are randomly assigned to one of two treatment groups that either receives information to simplify the re-enrollment process or receives both information and a one-course tuition waiver. We find that providing information and a one-course tuition waiver to former students increases their likelihood of re-enrollment by 1.5 percentage points (21.1%), enrolling in multiple courses by 0.9 percentage points (16.4%), full-time enrollment by 0.5 percentage points (21.7%), and persistence by 0.6 percentage points (23.1%). This study highlights the importance of targeted interventions that address informational and financial barriers facing former students.

Values-Based Interventions Increase Reenrollment and Equity among Community College Pre-Allied Health Students

“…Moreover, digital media provide more flexibility to customize messages based on student data and responses.Our results also indicate that values-based interventions benefit students who have stopped out of college, not just those currently enrolled. Although most prior studies of text message interventions have targeted college-intending high school seniors or currently enrolled college students (e.g.,Castleman & Page, 2015O'Hara & Sparrow, 2019;Page & Gehlbach, 2017; seeOrtagus et al, 2021, for an exception), we found that our treatment increased reenrollment by 13 percentage points when students had stopped out prior, as opposed to only 4 percentage points when they had been recently enrolled. As community college enrollments have fallen almost 15% since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic (National Student Clearinghouse, 2021), severely undercutting tuition revenue and keeping colleges understaffed, boosting enrollments back to pre-pandemic levels may be key to ensuring continued student success.…”

Investigating Why Academically Successful Community College Students Leave College Without a Degree

“…Community colleges provide critical developmental education for academically underprepared students (Bailey et al, 2015;Bemmel et al, 2008;Cohen & Brawer, 2008) and mobility pathways for working or low-income students (Armstrong & Hamilton, 2013). Although most community college students who leave college without a degree struggle with their entry-level coursework, a smaller share of noncompleters drop out after performing well in their introductory courses and making significant progress toward degree completion (Ortagus, Tanner, & McFarlin, 2020;Shapiro et al, 2019).…”

“…To encourage these students to reenroll and complete their degree, many community colleges launch reenrollment campaigns targeted at former students who have already made considerable progress (Schwartz, 2019). While reenrollment campaigns can increase the 2 probability of former students returning to college (Ortagus, Tanner, & McFarlin, 2020), the likelihood of any student completing college after stopping out for a period of time is significantly lower when compared with students who remain enrolled (Crosta, 2014;DesJardins et al, 2006). 1 For community colleges facing limited resources and low completion rates, the most effective mechanism to optimize completion would be to prevent students from dropping out in the first place (e.g., Mabel & Britton, 2018).…”