Boosting Equitable College and Career Outcomes: A Research-Practice Partnership to Study a Scaled Pre-College Advising Strategy

Principal Investigator:

Taylor Odle, assistant professor of educational policy studies

Access to college has become a necessary condition for social and economic mobility. 92% of high-income, suburban high school graduates enroll in college within two years, but only 54% of their lower-income, rural peers do. These disparities fuel a cycle of under-enrollment and under-credentialing that limits the development of already-underserved communities. One challenge is access to information and support. Students in underserved areas lack advisers who can help with important college and career steps.

This project will evaluate the Advise TN program. Since 2016-17, Advise TN has embedded advisers into high schools in Tennessee across underserved communities with the goal of increasing college and ACT planning, college applications, financial aid applications and awards, and subsequent college enrollment and completion.

Despite the promise of this innovative strategy, little is known about the impacts of programs like it. Through a research-practice partnership, this project will connect researchers with program leaders to comprehensively study Advise TN. The program evaluation will use administrative data that follow students from high school to college and into the workforce while capturing rich demographic, academic, and economic information.

This project, the first to estimate whether an already scaled advising approach makes a difference for rural and low-income communities. As such, it represents a considerable extension of existing research.

The study will generate insights for Tennessee’s ongoing operation and further scaling of the program, aid decisionmakers in other states considering adoption, and fill a gap in knowledge for researchers and funders alike by generating practically-grounded and empirically-guided recommendations to drive investment and future work. It will produce new, action-oriented insights to benefit students, inform policy and philanthropy, and inform practice to advance social and economic inclusion via public-facing factsheets, briefs, and infographics; presentations at academic and policy conferences; peer-reviewed journal articles; and social and earned media.

This research will produce new, action-oriented insights to benefit students, inform policy and philanthropy, and inform practice to advance social and economic inclusion. This project will produce public-facing factsheets, briefs, and infographics; presentations at academic and policy conferences; peer-reviewed journal articles; and social and earned media.