Rady School Faculty Sally Sadoff Awarded Grant to Study Community College Effectiveness Incentives

SAN DIEGO - Dec. 5, 2016 - PRLog -- Rady School of Management Assistant Professor of Economics and Strategic Management Sally Sadoff recently received an over $300,000 grant from the Laura and John Arnold Foundation to study the use of incentives to improve community college effectiveness. For the study, Sadoff is partnered with Assistant Professor of Economics Andy Brownback of the University of Arkansas to design and test interventions, built on insights from behavioral economics, to increase the persistence and graduation rates of community college students.

"Community colleges can play a critical role in training highly-skilled workers and provide a pathway to four-year colleges, especially for low-income or minority students," said Sadoff. "However, to become more effective, community colleges must increase their currently low levels of student achievement and persistence – which is the purpose of this research."

Sadoff and Brownback have partnered with Ivy Tech Community College (Ivy Tech), Indiana's largest public postsecondary institution and the nation's largest singly accredited statewide community college system serving nearly 170,000 students annually.

For the study, Sadoff and Brownback designed incentives that target performance and persistence that are simple to administer and easily scalable. They will use a randomized controlled trial to test the effects of incentive-pay for instructors, and the effect of combining instructor incentives with performance-based summer scholarships for students.

The year-long study will include approximately 140 instructors and 9,000 students. They will measure short-term outcomes using scores from a standardized exam, since these scores will determine the incentive payments to students and instructors. Additionally, they will measure credit accumulation during the program and student retention in the semesters that follow the program. In the longer term, they will track the post-program effects on future course enrollment, credit accumulation, transfer to a four-year institution and final degree attainment at any institution.

To learn more about the Rady School, go to: www.rady.ucsd.edu