Interim Report
National Evaluation of Student Support Services :
Third Year Longitudinal Study Results (1994)

Report Number One: Program Implementation
Report Number Two: Profile of Freshman Participants and Project Services
Analysis and Highlights

The Student Support Services (SSS) program provides supplemental tutoring, counseling, remediation and other support services to disadvantaged college students. The aim of the program is to increase rates of college retention and graduation among disadvantaged college students. The main questions to be addressed in this evaluation are:

• What are the characteristics of SSS participants and projects? What services do students receive? Where do these projects fit within the larger framework of campus-wide support services and efforts to improve student retention.

• How effective is SSS in achieving its basic goal of helping disadvantaged students complete college?

• Are certain approaches more effective than others, and how can current programs be improved?

The reports address the first issue described above. The methods employed include a survey of 200 SSS project directors, case studies of support service programs on 50 college campuses (30 with SSS grants and 20 without grants), analysis of project performance reports, collection of student service records, and baseline data from a longitudinal study designed to measure net impact.

The chief findings are:

• SSS grants are well-targeted in terms of the types of institutions that receive grants and the students participating in the program. SSS institutions are more likely than other colleges to have predominant minority enrollment, and to admit students with lower SAT scores. Compared to other students at their institution and to national norms, SSS participants are more likely to come from poor families, have parents who have not completed high school to college, be African-American or Hispanic, older, and have lower high school grades and SAT scores.

• There is a long-term trend for the program to serve students less intensively. The average SSS freshman receives 10 hours of service (most often counseling or tutoring), but a 1979 study found that the average freshman participant received 14 hours of service--a decline of 35 percent. Similarly per capita expenditures (adjusted for inflation) have decline nearly 30 percent since 1970.

• Although SSS was often among the first services available on campus for disadvantaged students, at most institutions it is now one of several service providers. Of the 30 institutions at which site visits were conducted, SSS was the primary support service provider in only three places. At most schools, federal grants support only a limited part of the support service mix.

• Most SSS projects operate as "stand-alone" entities. Two-thirds of the site visited were organized in this manner; one-third were blended with other institutional support service efforts.

  In the past, federal requirements for non-duplication of services and for a full-time project coordinator encouraged stand-alone program approaches. The 1992 amendments to the Higher Education Act will alter these federal policies.

• Beyond serving a limited number of eligible students, there is little evidence of direct SSS efforts to shape larger institutional policies regarding retention, recruitment or admissions, minority relations, or financial aid policy. There was no discernible difference between SSS schools and non-SSS schools in institutional climate regarding minority relations, at-risk students or students with disabilities. In general, the SSS project is not located high enough in the institution's governance structure to impact basic policies.

• Although one objective is for SSS institutions to meet the full financial need of SSS participants, many institutions are unable to do so. Also, many SSS participants do not always receive the best financial aid package available to other students with similar needs.

• Outcome measures used by projects to evaluate their own performance, and by the federal government, vary considerably, by type of outcome (e.g., grades, passing a course, retention, graduation) and degree of difficulty. No project considers the intensity of services provided participants.

These findings suggest that stronger links should be established between federal SSS grants and other broad institutional efforts to improve performance and retention of disadvantaged students.

The final report focuses on program impact.

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