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Ten years after the launch of City University of New York’s Accelerate, Complete, Engage (ACE) academic support program, the initiative has led to strong economic gains for its students, according to a new working paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research.
The study, conducted by researchers at Columbia University, found that ACE students’ five-year graduation rate was 11.7 percentage points higher than the rate of students who were eligible for, but not enrolled in, the program.
The researchers also calculated that the net social benefits for each participant in the program equal about $48,000—or $3.06 per taxpayer dollar spent on the program—most of which comes from the students’ increased earnings. The estimated net benefits accruing to ACE participants’ children will be triple that number, the researchers said, at over $130,000 per participant; that number represents the children’s eventual salaries, as well as “their reduced use of public services, reduced crime, and improved health,” according to the study.
The researchers noted that, even if the control group’s graduation rate did eventually catch up with those in the ACE program, students in the ACE program would still produce net social benefits of $16,000 because they graduated earlier, giving them a head start in their careers.
“To accurately assess the value of any investment, stakeholders need good estimates of both benefits and costs,” the report reads. “Yet, compared to the immediate and concrete nature of costs, expected long-term benefits can be much more challenging to assess. Long-term benefits accrue over participants’ lifetimes—potentially extending even into subsequent generations—and are diffused across a range of monetary and non-monetary outcomes, and across a variety of stakeholders, including not only the student but the student’s eventual offspring, if any, along with both current and future taxpayers.”
