Creating a "Single Stop" to Fast-Track Assistance

MARCH 24, 2014

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CCSSE Report

VOLUME 24 • NUMBER 12

Entrepreneurship Education

COMMUNITY COLLEGES/INNOVATIONS/PROGRAMS

Creating a “Single Stop” to Fast-Track Assistance

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by Jeff Simmons ou’re probably familiar with onestop shopping – venues that ease consumer angst and provide an array of items to make the retail experience much more digestible and simple.

In the higher education world, a similar concept is cropping up on community college campuses across the country, establishing a hub of resources to help students. In this situation, however, students are shopping for precious dollars rather than spending them.

J. Noah Brown, president and chief executive officer of ACCT

The venture is called Single Stop USA, and it endeavors to decrease poverty by connecting low-income individuals and students with existing resources and services to help them become self-sufficient and attain economic mobility. Since launching in 2009 at Kingsborough Community College in Brooklyn, N.Y., Single Stop’s Community College

Initiative has been expanding, first within New York and New Jersey, and then into California, Florida, New Mexico, Louisiana and Massachusetts.

The initiative received a $1.1 million grant from the White House Social Innovation Fund and by 2012 was introduced to 17 colleges in seven states, forming system-wide partnerships with several of the nation’s largest community college systems, such as the City University of New York (CUNY), Miami Dade College, and the City College of San Francisco.

As the Community College Initiative expansion gathered momentum, Single Stop partnered with the Association of Community College Trustees (ACCT), a nonprofit organization of governing boards representing more than 6,500 elected and appointed trustees at more than 1,200 community, technical, and junior colleges.

“Our organization has been committed to a student success and completion agenda,” said J. Noah Brown, president and chief executive officer of ACCT. “When you look at low-income and disadvantaged or underrepresented populations there are special and unique challenges, not only getting them to college but keeping them in college.

“Single Stop USA developed a really innovative strategy to essentially consolidate and centralize all student support services, financial aid, career advising, tax preparation, legal services and the like, within a college, and then use a software program that actually helps students determine whether they are avail-

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able for public assistance benefits,” he said.

In 2012, the national nonprofit Single Stop USA served more than 32,000 students across 17 community college sites in seven states.

Sara Goldrick-Rab, evaluator of Single Stop USA

In a recent analysis of the program, Clearing the Path to a Brighter Future, researchers examined Single Stop operations and pointed out that many community college students have financial needs that are not covered by financial aid packages, such as contributing to their households.

“Single Stop brings money to the

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table,” said Sara Goldrick-Rab, who evaluated the program. “Students say that the Single Stop office is a place where they really care about me and they ‘get it’. What impressed me the most is how much the schools and students talk about how the approach that Single Stop is taking is so different than the typical community college student services approach.”

At its heart, Single Stop imbues a onestop shopping system, but with a tender

the first in their families to go to college.

But when they go, they don’t go the way many people imagine college students attend.”

The Hispanic students that GoldrickRab met with explained that they made educational decisions with their families as a unit. Often they are attending college as a way to ultimately help their families. “It’s a much more collective decision about paying it back, and paying it forward,” she said.

As a result, often they are struggling to juggle family, school and work Who Does Single Stop Serve? demands simultaneously.

Demographics Breakdown The experience at Hostos Community College in the Bronx, N.Y., illustrates the Community College Students effectiveness of the program. (Hostos Average annual income $7,184 was the second college within the CUNY Average age 28 system to participate in the program.)

Marital status 85% are single “I remember when Single Stop first Gender (female/male) 64%/36% approached us in 2009. We were highly Households with children 45% skeptical, and thought there has to be a Ave. household size 2.7 catch because they introduced us to so Work status 50% work at least part-time many wonderful services they could provide to our students,” said Hostos Student Development Assistant Dean 4% 2% Johanna Gómez. “We asked ‘what do we 11% 7% Ethnicity have to give in return?’ because most of Asian/Pacific islander the time a college has to provide some Black type of financial matching, but this 35% Hispanic or Latino wasn’t the case.”

More than one race 41% A key selling point was that Single Other Stop would help connect students with White (non-Hispanic) tax benefits and would help them prepare their taxes for free.

Hostos’ Single Stop and financial aid touch. Single Stop targets a growing seg- dents identify as Hispanic or Latino, and offices take an integrated approach to ment of the community college commu- 35 percent identify as black. serving students. They coordinate outnity: most are first-generation students, “We serve a good portion of Hispanic reach campaigns and the provision of and 40 percent are parents. Their aver- students at community colleges,” said services, permitting each office to develage income is $7,000 and more than half Brown. “Because this is such a compre- op expertise in a portion of the college of them work while attending school. hensive and centralized approach to financing process. Single Stop partners While a number face informational helping students, it really is a benefit to with local experts to provide free tax barriers, language barriers or a lack of not only Hispanic students but other preparation services to students and so, social connections pose obstacles for minorities and other underrepresented at Hostos, the tax preparers direct stuothers. So Single Stop brings students students.” dents to special Free Application for into contact with resources supported “Hispanic students are often times Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) completion by funding streams that can help them coming from a family that believes edu- sessions coordinated by the Financial become more self-sufficient and achieve cation is really important but hasn’t Aid Office. economic mobility, such as health insur- been able to make college happen for a “We know that our students need ance, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance million different reasons,” Goldrick-Rab additional assistance in order to continProgram (SNAP), federal and state stated. “These students are ambitious ue with their courses,” Gómez said. unemployment insurance, child care and excited to be there because they are “During this time, we had students com-

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assistance, Women, Infants and Children (WIC), and Social Security funds.

In 2012, Single Stop USA screened more than 18,000 students for benefits and was able to confirm that fewer than 29 percent of those screened received extra support, the authors noted. On average, those students received cash and non-cash benefits averaging $5,400 annually to help them complete college.

Overall, 41 percent of Single Stop stu-

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ing to our office asking for financial support just to buy books to get transportation, or indicating they were hungry. Those are impediments to a successful education.”

Students, she said, often were afraid to reach out to ask people for help.

Single Stop allocated $120,000 for Hostos to hire service providers, but with the blessing of the new college president, additional resources were directed to bring on a third full-time person. Recruiting staff that had a personal touch was crucial.

In 2009, Hostos helped 400 students.

That grew to 700 in 2010, and by 2013, the program’s reach extended to 1,900 students. The majority of the students seeking assistance have been Hispanic or African- American, a reflection on the overall student demographics at Hostos.

In the end, Gómez said, “the students became Single Stop’s biggest ambassadors. They told their friends they got assistance. It was like a buddy system.

We don't only help students; we help their families, because some of our students are dependent on their parents.”

Madeline Cruz, coordinator of Hostos’ Single Stop program since 2010, is on the front lines of the program, day to day. “We are trying our best to educate the students about credit, budgeting and other financial matters,” she said.

She recalled enlisting student volunteers to distribute information in classrooms. The students were dispatched across campus, and when they returned, it solidified her instinct that Single Stop was catching on: volunteers reported

that peers responded, “We went there!

That’s a great service!”

One such beneficiary was Nancy Acosta, a South Bronx resident who is pursuing a nursing degree at Hostos.

She remembers spotting the Single Stop posters wallpapering Hostos, identifying services she thought she could use.

“I first sought the services when I had a problem with my tuition and felt like I didn't have anywhere to go,” Acosta said. “I wasn’t anticipating a lot of help.

But if it wasn’t for me going there, I wouldn’t be in college right now.”

Single Stop helped her explore other financial opportunities, such as a tuition support pipeline, and a grant to assist with back tuition. She also took advantage of the program’s legal services support, and credited the one-to-one assistance she received. ”I wasn't so much nervous as I was reluctant because I had gone to so many places and kept getting the runaround.

When I came here, it seemed so simple.

They helped me fill out everything, step by step,” she said.

Goldrick-Rab praised the Hostos program. “There is also a real connection with the staff at Hostos,” she said. “The students treat the woman who works in the office like family and that’s superimportant because family is so often important to these students because often, when students come to a school it doesn't feel like family.”

Because the Single Stop USA program is relatively new, information regarding its outcomes if still “preliminary and promising,” note the authors of the

Clearing the Path analysis. They report that Single Stop clients outperform other students on year-to-year retention rates.

At CUNY, for example, they report annual college retention rates for Single Stop clients are around 73 percent, with just over half enrolled full-time and completing more than 80 percent of their attempted classes.

“Single Stop does bring a double bottom line,” she said. “You are bringing money to the students so there is a return to the student getting a degree, and there’s a return to the college for the student getting a degree.”

Both she and Brown pointed out that colleges and universities should explore the Single Stop USA model and rethink how they can better meet their students’ needs. The report’s authors recommend modernizing student services, reforming federal financial aid, coordinating social and education policy, and evaluating evidence that shows improved student outcomes.

Said Brown: “As I’ve traveled to Single Stop locations and talked with students I am absolutely convinced that this is the way we should be thinking about students in the broader context, in particular to those in our colleges that need special support and services in order to be successful.

“I know that once we can get them into college and give them services and benefits they need, we can keep them in college and vastly improve their economic circumstances. And, I would argue that's in all of our best interests.”

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