The Accelerated Study in Associate Programs (ASAP) at the City University of New York (CUNY) is a much-studied intervention designed to help low-income community college students overcome barriers to degree completion. Fordham has looked at several previous analyses, both in New York City and its Ohio counterpart. But the New York program is back under the microscope again. The latest study examines ASAP’s impact on participants’ education and labor market outcomes 14 years after they first enrolled.
ASAP was launched at City University of New York (CUNY) campuses in 2007, aiming to help new students persist to graduation with a full suite of supports, including intensive advising, tutoring, and career development services; tuition gap coverage; free textbooks; and transportation assistance in the form of gasoline gift cards. MDRC began its investigation of ASAP in 2009, with a group of 900 students randomized into and out of the program. And while the final cohort entered the trial back in 2012, researchers have continued to follow and evaluate their educational and career paths ever since.
Among the previous findings: After three years, 40 percent of the ASAP students had earned a degree, compared to 22 percent in the control group. Meanwhile, 18 percent of ASAP students had transferred to four-year institutions to continue with their education, compared to 12 percent of the control group. After six years, ASAP students had a 10 percentage point advantage over their non-ASAP peers in degree attainment, still statistically significant. And after ten years, researchers found that students earning a terminal associate degree at a CUNY campus earned approximately $2,400 more per quarter (roughly $9,700 annually) than non-completers.
The latest analysis looks at 14 years of data for each cohort—a total of 896 individuals. Just over 57 percent of those offered ASAP earned a degree in that time, compared with 50 percent of those who were not offered ASAP, a large and statistically significant impact, while obviously a smaller difference than ever. However, ASAP actually produced a small—though not statistically significant—negative impact on annual earnings. Those offered ASAP earned approximately $36,000 per year, compared with approximately $38,000 per year for their control group peers. These results differ from findings from the ASAP replication in Ohio, where strong positive effects on earnings were observed for many years after treatment.
As part of their explanation for these puzzling data, the researchers note that their findings are limited to New York State only. Any participant who worked in another state registered earnings of $0. In the report, they also discuss a previously unexplained quirk of the original analytic model. Students entering several traditionally high-earning CUNY majors (Allied Health Sciences, Pre-Clinical Nursing, Forensic Science, and Engineering Science) were ineligible for ASAP because course requirements made graduating within three years difficult—because “on time graduation” was a primary impetus of the program. And while neither treatment nor control group students could be enrolled in these majors at the start of the program/analysis, students were free to switch to them later. However, doing so would remove ASAP supports, a fact that likely encouraged treatment group students to stay in traditionally lower-earning majors so as to remain in the program. Fascinating. “Most of ASAP’s impact on degree completion,” the analysts write, “came from students completing degrees in fields where employed CUNY graduates historically tend to have relatively low earnings (for example, an associate’s degree in liberal arts) among CUNY graduates.”
Beyond these analytical concerns, the researchers also believe their findings reflect the fact that earning power in the Empire State depends strongly on education level attained. ASAP, they conclude, increased the likelihood that students completed a degree, but degrees that mostly had low earning potential and low likelihood of transferring to bachelor’s degree programs. “Much of this gain [in degree earning via ASAP] came from moving students from the ‘no degree completed’ category into completing degrees that typically yield relatively low earnings among CUNY graduates.” Degree-completing ASAP students at the lowest income level outearned their non-completing ASAP peers by about $9,000 per year.
In a Hechinger Report article accompanying the report’s release, it is clear that the ASAP support program will continue at CUNY and beyond, no matter what this or future research findings reveals. The program has exploded since its inception, now serving more than 22,000 students. New York City’s budget for it at CUNY campuses alone is more than $76 million a year. We also learn that it has become more efficient, with the cost per student now $3,400 per year, compared to $6,000 back in 2010. Let’s hope the schools have also learned a few things from these important analyses about how to improve student outcomes.
SOURCE: Michael J. Weiss et al., “The 14-Year Effects of CUNY ASAP on Educational and Labor Market Outcomes,” MDRC (August 2026).
