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This report describes the potential benefits and costs of one low-cost and relatively light-touch tool that community colleges might use to increase students' access to basic needs assistance: the Findhelp platform, which is an online "social care network" connecting students to services. The authors examine how the resource was implemented at four community colleges in North Carolina, its costs, and its impacts on student success.

Report on the Implementation, Costs, and Impacts of the Findhelp Platform in the North Carolina Community College System

Christine Mulhern, Kelly Hyde, Sam Morales, Drew M. Anderson, Brian Phillips, Alice Huguet

ResearchPublished Apr 5, 2023

Community colleges enroll a diverse set of students who often face challenges meeting their basic needs. This report describes the potential benefits and costs of one low-cost and relatively light-touch tool that colleges might use to increase students' access to basic needs assistance. The authors focus on the Findhelp platform, which is modeled as a "social care network" that connects students through an online platform to services that provide help. Findhelp is a website that lists local resources and services, and it is available to anyone affiliated with an institution partnering with the platform.

There is little research on Findhelp and similar light-touch resources, so this research documents how the resource was implemented at four community colleges in North Carolina, its implementation costs, and its impacts on student success following implementation. The authors use information from interviews with the campus staff who implemented the platform, administrative student-level data from the North Carolina Community College System on student persistence and credits attempted and completed, and data from Findhelp on how much individual students interacted with the platform.

Overall, Findhelp usage rates were low, though usage varied across the participating colleges. Campus staff were enthusiastic about the potential of the platform, and there is some evidence that student success increased when the platform was implemented. In addition, the platform was relatively low-cost to implement compared with other more-intensive approaches for supporting students' basic needs.

Key Findings

  • Overall, the four participating colleges were able to implement the core components of Findhelp (campus resources required, creation of a local version of Findhelp, marketing the platform, and providing supports for its ongoing development) as intended.
  • Relatively few students (3 percent) at colleges that implemented the Findhelp platform logged into or conducted searches in it, though usage increased over time.
  • Usage varied considerably across the participating colleges, though it is not clear why it varied.
  • The staff supporting Findhelp were enthusiastic about its potential and wanted to continue using it.
  • Measures of persistence, credits attempted, and credits completed were similar in the treatment and comparison colleges.
  • Students who use the platform are more likely to persist in college, enroll for more semesters, and attempt and earn slightly more credits, on average.
  • The estimated impacts of student use of the Findhelp platform were largest for students from underrepresented minority backgrounds and female students.
  • Implementation costs were higher than the costs to sustain the platform, but overall costs were low.
  • Costs varied considerably according to how much each campus decided to market the platform, how much work was done one-on-one with students, what was done to support students before adopting Findhelp, and whether the campus wanted to create a customized list of resources.
  • There is not a clear relationship between costs and impact estimates.

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Citation

RAND Style Manual
Mulhern, Christine, Kelly Hyde, Sam Morales, Drew M. Anderson, Brian Phillips, and Alice Huguet, Report on the Implementation, Costs, and Impacts of the Findhelp Platform in the North Carolina Community College System, RAND Corporation, RR-A2527-1, 2023. As of October 15, 2024: https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA2527-1.html
Chicago Manual of Style
Mulhern, Christine, Kelly Hyde, Sam Morales, Drew M. Anderson, Brian Phillips, and Alice Huguet, Report on the Implementation, Costs, and Impacts of the Findhelp Platform in the North Carolina Community College System. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2023. https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA2527-1.html.
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This study was sponsored by the John M. Belk Endowment and undertaken by RAND Education and Labor.

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