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Following up on an individual-level randomized controlled trial of a Dana Center Math Pathways (DCMP) model, this study assessed longer-term impacts on students' math completion, academic progress, and academic attainment. The version of the DCMP that was assessed in this study diversified the developmental and college-level math course content that students take, separating it into distinct pathways that better aligned with their career interests. It also streamlined developmental math sequences into a one-semester developmental course for all students, regardless of placement level, and implemented evidence-based curricula and pedagogy to engage students in active problem solving that was pertinent to real-life situations. The study, which followed 1,411 students from four Texas community colleges and ten campuses, found that, in the five years after random assignment, program group students were consistently more likely to successfully complete their first college-level math courses than control group students. The study did not find impacts after five years on the number of overall college credits that students accrued or on the likelihood that students attained a credential or transferred to a four-year college.

Transferring to a four-year institution is an important pathway to student success. Many students who enroll in community college intend to transfer to a four-year institution and subsequently earn a bachelor's degree. However, few students ultimately do, with low-income students transferring at lower rates than their peers. The Texas Transfer Grant Pilot Program was created by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board (THECB) to improve the transfer rates of students from two-year to four-year institutions in Texas. The pilot program offered $5,000 grants to community college students who performed well academically, came from low-income backgrounds, and transferred to a public four-year institution. MDRC's evaluation of the program, conducted in partnership with the THECB, used Texas statewide administrative data to identify and randomly assign about 90,000 eligible students. Students were assigned to either a program group (whose members were notified they were eligible to receive the grant for the fall 2022 semester) or a control group (whose members did not receive a Texas Transfer Grant offer but who could seek business-as-usual financial aid resources). Students assigned to the program group were informed of the opportunity to receive a grant via email and hard-copy letters. This brief answers the following two primary questions: (1) Does offering the Texas Transfer Grant to community college students affect their enrollment rates at four-year higher education institutions in Texas? and (2) What do community college students think--and how do they feel--about the Texas Transfer Grant offer, particularly with respect to their decision to transfer to a four-year institution? Although additional research is needed to fully understand the impact of the grant offer, early findings indicate that the pilot program increased the proportion of students who enrolled in Texas public four-year institutions. [For the supplement, "Differential Impacts on Fall 2022 Enrollment at Any Four-Year Institution. A Supplement to Texas Takes on Transfer Grants," see ED627376.]

More than half of community college students nationwide intend to pursue a four-year degree; however, in Texas only one in four community college students transfer to four-year institutions successfully. Among students who do transfer to a Texas four-year institution, roughly 60 percent go on to graduate with a bachelor's degree. The result is that only about 15 percent of Texans who start at a community college end up graduating from a four-year institution. To improve transfer rates and, ultimately, bachelor's degree attainment, the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board (THECB) launched the Texas Transfer Grant Pilot Program with money provided by the U.S. Department of Education's Governor's Emergency Education Relief (GEER) Fund. MDRC evaluated the pilot program to build evidence about its efficacy and help inform future THECB decisions about the program. This policy brief follows up with additional findings about the pilot program's impact on students' enrollment and academic outcomes at Texas four-year institutions during the fall 2022 and spring 2023 semesters--two semesters after students initially received the fall 2022 transfer grant.