Emergency aid for community-college students who encounter unanticipated financial setbacks can help prevent the students from dropping out, according to a new report.
Two pilot programs offer emergency aid to students who unexpectedly find themselves unable to pay for such basic expenses as housing, transportation, child care, and books. The programs provide a framework for how such aid might be administered, says the report, issued by MDRC, an organization that studies policies affecting low-income people.
One of the programs, the Dreamkeepers fund, offers emergency aid to eligible students at 11 community colleges serving large numbers of low-income students. The other program, the Angel Fund, does the same thing for 26 tribal colleges and universities. The multiyear pilot programs are financed by the Lumina Foundation for Education and administered by Scholarship America and the American Indian College Fund.
In 2005 and 2006 the programs awarded more than $845,000 in aid to some 2,400 eligible students at the participating colleges. Individual awards ranged from $11 to $2,286, the report says. Recipients of aid from the Dreamkeepers fund, in particular, were more likely to be older than other students, to have dependent children, and to be enrolled in vocational programs, the report says.
Although students receiving aid said it had helped them remain in college, the report says institutions struggled to define what constituted an “emergency” and grappled with how to distribute the funds fairly and efficiently. —Libby Sander
