About News Castleman: To Level the Playing Field in College Completion: Invest in Advising Nov 3, 2021 Ben Castleman and Andrew Barr Castleman: To Level the Playing Field in College Completion: Invest in Advising (iStock Photo)The scaled-back version of president Biden’s signature Build Back Better plan only heightens the importance of investing limited resources in evidence-based strategies. Our research suggests that college advising models can close the gap in degree attainment between academically-prepared students from the bottom and top quartile of family income and substantially reduce racial gaps. In a new working paper released Thursday, we show that intensive college advising leads to large increases in the share of low-income high school seniors that earn their bachelor’s degree. The college advising program we study, “Bottom Line,” operates in several cities across the U.S.; prior to the start of senior year in high school, we worked with Bottom Line to randomly assign applicants to the program to either receive Bottom Line advising or to a control group that did not get advising from Bottom Line, but who were free to access other college advising supports in their schools or communities. Students randomly assigned to Bottom Line were 16 percent more likely than control group students to earn a bachelor’s degree within five years. Read Full Article in The Hill Benjamin Castleman Ben Castleman is an associate professor of education and public policy at the Batten School and the founder and director of the Nudge4 Solutions Lab at UVA. His research focuses on policies to improve college access and success for low-income students. Several of his papers examine innovative strategies to deliver high-quality information about the college-going process to low-income students and their families, and to ease the process of students and families getting professional support when they need assistance Read full bio Related Content Benjamin Castleman New Case: Unfinished Business? Academic and Labor Market Profile of Adults With Substantial College Credits But No Degree Research Using data from the Virginia Community College System (VCCS), this case provides the first detailed profile on the academic, employment, and earnings trajectories of the SCND population and how these compare with VCCS graduates. The scholars show that the share of SCND students who are academically ready to re-enroll and would benefit from doing so may be substantially lower than policy makers anticipate. Stacking the Deck for Employment Success: Labor Market Returns to Stackable Credentials Research With rapid technological transformations to the labor market along with COVID-19 related economic disruptions, many working adults return to college to obtain additional training or credentials. Using a comparative individual fixed effects strategy and an administrative panel dataset of enrollment and employment in Virginia, we provide the first causal estimates of credential “stacking” among working adults. Why aren’t more adults finishing community college? News Batten School professor Ben Castleman and colleagues explore programs enacted by states to increase enrollment in community colleges. Despite these efforts, numbers have been steadily declining for much of the 2010s. Is there a way to get adults back to community college? Four Batten Professors Ranked as Nation’s Most Influential Education Scholars News Batten School professors Daphna Bassok, Ben Castleman, Sarah Turner and Jim Wyckoff were among 200 scholars nationwide to rank as highly influential in education policy, according to Education Week. Stay Up To Date with the Latest Batten News and Events Subscribe
Benjamin Castleman Ben Castleman is an associate professor of education and public policy at the Batten School and the founder and director of the Nudge4 Solutions Lab at UVA. His research focuses on policies to improve college access and success for low-income students. Several of his papers examine innovative strategies to deliver high-quality information about the college-going process to low-income students and their families, and to ease the process of students and families getting professional support when they need assistance Read full bio
New Case: Unfinished Business? Academic and Labor Market Profile of Adults With Substantial College Credits But No Degree Research Using data from the Virginia Community College System (VCCS), this case provides the first detailed profile on the academic, employment, and earnings trajectories of the SCND population and how these compare with VCCS graduates. The scholars show that the share of SCND students who are academically ready to re-enroll and would benefit from doing so may be substantially lower than policy makers anticipate.
Stacking the Deck for Employment Success: Labor Market Returns to Stackable Credentials Research With rapid technological transformations to the labor market along with COVID-19 related economic disruptions, many working adults return to college to obtain additional training or credentials. Using a comparative individual fixed effects strategy and an administrative panel dataset of enrollment and employment in Virginia, we provide the first causal estimates of credential “stacking” among working adults.
Why aren’t more adults finishing community college? News Batten School professor Ben Castleman and colleagues explore programs enacted by states to increase enrollment in community colleges. Despite these efforts, numbers have been steadily declining for much of the 2010s. Is there a way to get adults back to community college?
Four Batten Professors Ranked as Nation’s Most Influential Education Scholars News Batten School professors Daphna Bassok, Ben Castleman, Sarah Turner and Jim Wyckoff were among 200 scholars nationwide to rank as highly influential in education policy, according to Education Week.