The pursuit of higher education has long been framed as the ultimate engine of economic mobility in the United States, yet a new 14-year study of the City University of New York’s (CUNY) flagship Accelerated Study in Associate Programs (ASAP) suggests the reality is significantly more complex. While the program has been lauded for its unprecedented ability to increase graduation rates among low-income community college students, a comprehensive evaluation released by the research organization MDRC reveals that these academic gains have not translated into the expected wage premiums. For policymakers, educators, and the millions of students who invest time and debt into higher education, the findings present a sobering paradox: completing a degree is no longer a guaranteed passport to a higher-earning career.
The Genesis and Evolution of the ASAP Model
Established in 2007, CUNY’s ASAP was designed as an aggressive, holistic response to the systemic failure of community colleges to retain students. At the time, the national discourse was dominated by alarmingly low graduation rates, with many students dropping out within their first year due to a combination of financial instability, lack of academic guidance, and the pressures of balancing work and family life.
ASAP addressed these hurdles through a "high-touch" support model. Participants were provided with intensive, mandatory academic and career advising, tutoring, and financial assistance to cover the costs of textbooks and public transportation. By removing the friction that typically leads to attrition, the program aimed to shepherd students through to completion as quickly as possible. The model proved so effective that it became the gold standard for higher education reform, eventually being replicated across 11 states and over 90 different institutions.
A Chronology of Evaluation and Expansion
The efficacy of the ASAP model was initially validated in 2010 through a randomized controlled trial (RCT)—widely considered the gold standard in social science research. Researchers tracked 900 low-income students, randomly assigning them to either the ASAP track or a standard control group. The results were dramatic: after three years, 40 percent of ASAP students had earned a degree, compared to just 22 percent of their peers in the traditional track.
Following this success, the program entered a period of rapid institutional scaling. By the mid-2010s, external evaluations in Ohio and Westchester County, New York, mirrored these positive outcomes, proving that the intervention was not merely a localized success but a scalable pedagogical framework. Today, the program serves more than 22,000 students annually, backed by a municipal budget exceeding $76 million.
However, the 2024 longitudinal study, which tracked the original cohort over 14 years, introduced a new variable: the long-term economic trajectory of the participants. While the "degree advantage" for ASAP students remained statistically significant—with 58 percent of participants earning a degree compared to 50 percent of the control group—the earnings gap had vanished.
The Earnings Paradox: Why the Degree Premium Failed
Economists and labor analysts are now grappling with why an increased rate of degree attainment failed to yield higher wages. In New York, where an associate degree typically correlates with a $10,000 to $14,000 annual income boost, the lack of wage growth for the ASAP cohort is particularly puzzling.
Several theories have emerged from the MDRC data:
- Field of Study Disparities: In the early years of the program, ASAP curricula were heavily concentrated in liberal arts and humanities, rather than high-demand technical or healthcare fields. A degree in the liberal arts often provides a foundational education but may lack the direct labor market alignment found in nursing, radiologic technology, or information technology.
- The "Opportunity Cost" of Education: The study suggests that students who left college without a degree often entered the workforce earlier. Over the course of 14 years, these individuals may have accrued significant on-the-job experience, climbing into management roles in retail or logistics, effectively catching up to the wages of their peers who spent those years completing an associate degree.
- The Bachelor’s Degree Ceiling: While ASAP successfully increased the rate of associate degree completion, it did not significantly boost the rate at which students went on to earn bachelor’s degrees. Without the professional advancement often associated with a four-year degree, the associate degree holders remained in relatively low-paying service sector positions.
Responses and Institutional Adjustments
The leadership at CUNY maintains that the program’s value should not be measured exclusively by short-term earnings. Christine Brongniart, executive director of ASAP, has emphasized that the program’s mandate is to foster academic completion and provide students with agency over their own fields of study. From this perspective, the societal benefits—such as increased civic engagement, better health outcomes, and the psychological benefits of degree attainment—are not captured by wage data alone.
Nevertheless, CUNY has acknowledged the need for better career alignment. The program has undergone significant iterations since 2010. Advisers now place a much heavier emphasis on career development, including mandatory workshops on resume building and job placement. There is also a more deliberate effort to guide students toward "Plan B" career pathways if their primary choice—such as nursing—proves unattainable.
In other regions, the response has been more structural. In North Carolina, new iterations of the program are explicitly excluding liberal arts majors in favor of high-demand, workforce-aligned programs, essentially attempting to "engineer" higher earnings from the outset of the student’s academic career.
A Divergent Case: The Ohio Experience
The narrative is not uniform across all states. A separate study conducted on the Ohio iteration of the program, which launched in 2015, indicated positive earnings gains six to eight years post-enrollment. Researchers suggest that the difference in outcomes may be tied to the specific labor market demographics of the Midwest compared to New York City. The Ohio cohort included a higher proportion of older, non-traditional students who were already entrenched in local labor markets, potentially allowing them to apply their new credentials more immediately and effectively than the younger, less experienced cohort in New York.
The Broader Implications for Higher Education Policy
The 14-year data serves as a critical inflection point for the "college-for-all" movement. The findings suggest that while pedagogical support can successfully get students to the finish line, it does not automatically resolve the structural issues of a labor market that may not value certain associate degrees.
For taxpayers and policymakers, this underscores a vital lesson: the "finish line" of graduation is merely the start of a much more complicated career journey. As philanthropic organizations like Arnold Ventures continue to fund and evaluate these programs, the focus is shifting from "how to help students graduate" to "how to ensure graduates possess skills that the economy rewards."
The path forward likely requires a more nuanced approach—one that balances the intrinsic value of education with the pragmatic realities of the modern economy. As the cost of education remains high and the stakes for student debt continue to rise, the ability to pivot these programs toward high-growth career sectors may become the ultimate test of their long-term viability. For now, the CUNY ASAP experience remains a powerful testament to the fact that while structural support is necessary, it is not a panacea for the broader economic challenges facing the American workforce.
