“Given declining social mobility over time, intensive advising appears to be an effective policy strategy to promote greater economic opportunity for economically-disadvantaged, academically college-ready students … substantial expansion of the [Bottom
Line] model could contribute to increased racial equity and mobility in the U.S.” These are the partial conclusions of a new randomized controlled trial, the evidentiary gold standard,
on the effectiveness of Bottom Line, an NCAN member.
Drs. Ben Castleman and Andrew Barr conducted a multi-site (different locations – in this case, Boston and Worcester, Massachusetts, and New York City), multi-cohort (the high school classes of 2015 and 2016) examination of the effects of receiving Bottom
Line’s program on students’ postsecondary outcomes. Essentially similar groups of students were offered the chance to be served by Bottom Line (the “treatment” group) while those not served by Bottom Line became the control group.
The researchers' findings are a veritable who’s who of what the college access and success field aims to see from students. Compared to the control group, students served by Bottom Line were:
13% more likely to be enrolled in a four-year college.
10 percentage points more likely to stay enrolled in a four-year college over time.
23% more likely to graduate within four years after high school.
16% more likely to graduate within five years after high school.
18% more likely to graduate within six years after high school (first cohort only – the second cohort graduates in spring 2022).
2.8 times more likely to say that advising staff was "very important" to their college decision-making process.
Students apply to Bottom Line in their junior year of high school and are subject to criteria related to their academic qualifications and demonstrated financial need. Advisors begin to work with accepted students between their junior and senior years,
and support continues until college completion (contingent on matriculating to one of Bottom Line’s target institutions, which are generally “moderately selective four-year colleges and universities”).
Arguably the most remarkable aspect of the exceedingly positive outcomes here is their consistency across both students and advisors. This is a real strength for Bottom Line's intervention, especially on the advisor side, and portends good things for
program expansion. The research notes, "this lack of heterogeneity across different types of advisors suggests that BL has a well-developed set of advisor recruitment, selection, training, and development processes for ensuring advisor success, and
supports the potential scalability of the model, since results do not appear to be driven by a small set of particularly high-performing advisors.”
In layman’s terms: these findings aren’t a fluke.
The authors note in their discussion that:
“While maintaining implementation quality at scale for BL may be more challenging than for aid programs, the consistency of BL’s impacts across sites, student groups, and advisors suggests that providing cities with a combination of financial and technical
assistance to replicate the model could be a more efficient approach to increasing bachelor’s degree attainment than offering students additional aid.”
Comparing Bottom Line’s outcomes per dollar against other programs that have been rigorously evaluated, the authors find that “aid programs increase bachelor's degree attainment by one percentage point or less per $1,000, with most rigorously-evaluated
aid programs increasing attainment by less than 0.5 percentage points per $1,000.” However, “[Bottom Line] advising increases bachelor's degree attainment by over two percentage points per $1,000. Indeed, the advising model appears to be as cost-effective
at increasing bachelor's degree attainment as any rigorously evaluated policy of which we are aware.”
NCAN members and audiences should be well-acquainted with Bottom Line by now. Bottom Line was profiled in a case study in 2017,
then the organization’s CEO, Steve Colon (currently the vice president of NCAN’s board of directors), was interviewed in 2018.
We next heard from Bottom Line in 2020 when they received the Evergreen Prize at NCAN’s national conference.
Congratulations to the Bottom Line team; NCAN and the field look forward to continuing to learn from you!
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