Students in the city of Boston have greater access than ever to programs that assist with getting into and persisting in college, but the impact could be far greater if these programs increased their collaboration, according to a report by the Boston Foundation and the Success Boston College Completion Initiative.
“We believe data drives change,” said Elizabeth Pauley, associate vice president for Education to Career at the Boston Foundation, which last week released the report “Supporting Postsecondary Success: Understanding the College Access and Success Landscape in Boston.”
“Because this work is cross-sector, it is critically important for us to be using data and for us to be coordinating across those sectors to make sure that we’re finding gaps and filling them,” she added. “You need the owners of the data to come together.”
The Boston Foundation is one of the largest community foundations in the United States. Success Boston, launched in 2008, is a college-completion initiative dedicated to increasing the number of Boston public schools graduates who earn postsecondary credentials. The Boston Foundation is one of its partners.
Conducted by the University of Massachusetts Donahue Institute, Supporting Postsecondary Success breaks out information about college access and success programs by population and neighborhood served. It explored programs offered within the 58 high schools in Boston, 55 of which responded to the request for information. The research also tracked 106 programs offered by 75 community-based organizations (CBO) and institutions of higher education (IHE).
“After having been in Success Boston from the very beginning, we really wanted to understand what the ecosystem of college access and success organizations looked like,” said Pauley. “How is it changing? Are there gaps still? Was there duplication?”
Pauley noted that 10 years ago, the conversation was mostly about college access. Now it’s shifted to helping students complete their postsecondary degrees. The idea is that this report provides perspective on how to continue to increase access while also thinking about how to best equip students to succeed.
