Creating a “Single Stop” to Fast-Track Assistance

You're probably familiar with onestop shopping - venues that ease consumer angst and provide an array of items to make the retail experience much more digestible and simple.

In the higher education world, a similar concept is cropping up on community college campuses across the country, establishing a hub of resources to help students. In this situation, however, students are shopping for precious dollars rather than spending them.

The venture is called Single Stop USA, and it endeavors to decrease poverty by connecting low-income individuals and students with existing resources and services to help them become self-sufficient and attain economic mobility. Since launching in 2009 at Kingsborough Community College in Brooklyn, N.Y., Single Stop's Community College Initiative has been expanding, first within New York and New Jersey, and then into California, Florida, New Mexico, Louisiana and Massachusetts.

The initiative received a $1.1 million grant from the White House Social Innovation Fund and by 2012 was introduced to 17 colleges in seven states, forming system-wide partnerships with several of the nation's largest community college systems, such as the City University of New York (CUNY), Miami Dade College, and the City College of San Francisco.

As the Community College Initiative expansion gathered momentum, Single Stop partnered with the Association of Community College Trustees (ACCT), a nonprofit organization of governing boards representing more than 6,500 elected and appointed trustees at more than 1,200 community, technical, and junior colleges.

"Our organization has been committed to a student success and completion agenda," said J. Noah Brown, president and chief executive officer of ACCT. "When you look at low-income and disadvantaged or underrepresented populations there are special and unique challenges, not only getting them to college but keeping them in college.

"Single Stop USA developed a really innovative strategy to essentially consolidate and centralize all student support services, financial aid, career advising, tax preparation, legal services and the like, within a college, and then use a software program that actually helps students determine whether they are available for public assistance benefits," he said.

In 2012, the national nonprofit Single Stop USA served more than 32,000 students across 17 community college sites in seven states.

In a recent analysis of the program, Clearing the Path to a Brighter Future, researchers examined Single Stop operations and pointed out that many community college students have financial needs that are not covered by financial aid packages, such as contributing to their households.

"Single Stop brings money to the table," said Sara Goldrick-Rab, who evaluated the program. "Students say that the Single Stop office is a place where they really care about me and they 'get it'. What impressed me the most is how much the schools and students talk about how the approach that Single Stop is taking is so different than the typical community college student services approach."

At its heart, Single Stop imbues a onestop shopping system, but with a tender touch. Single Stop targets a growing segment of the community college community: most are first-generation students, and 40 percent are parents. Their average income is $7,000 and more than half of them work while attending school.

While a number face informational barriers, language barriers or a lack of social connections pose obstacles for others. So Single Stop brings students into contact with resources supported by funding streams that can help them become more self-sufficient and achieve economic mobility, such as health insurance, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), federal and state unemployment insurance, child care assistance, Women, Infants and Children (WIC), and Social Security funds.

In 2012, Single Stop USA screened more than 18,000 students for benefits and was able to confirm that fewer than 29 percent of those screened received extra support, the authors noted. On average, those students received cash and non-cash benefits averaging $5,400 annually to help them complete college.

Overall, 41 percent of Single Stop students identify as Hispanic or Latino, and 35 percent identify as black.

"We serve a good portion of Hispanic students at community colleges," said Brown. "Because this is such a comprehensive and centralized approach to helping students, it really is a benefit to not only Hispanic students but other minorities and other underrepresented students."

"Hispanic students are often times coming from a family that believes education is really important but hasn't been able to make college happen for a million different reasons," Goldrick-Rab stated. "These students are ambitious and excited to be there because they are the first in their families to go to college. But when they go, they don't go the way many people imagine college students attend."

The Hispanic students that GoldrickRab met with explained that they made educational decisions with their families as a unit. Often they are attending college as a way to ultimately help their families. "It's a much more collective decision about paying it back, and paying it forward," she said.

As a result, often they are struggling to juggle family, school and work demands simultaneously.

The experience at Hostos Community College in the Bronx, N.Y., illustrates the effectiveness of the program. (Hostos was the second college within the CUNY system to participate in the program.)

"I remember when Single Stop first approached us in 2009. We were highly skeptical, and thought there has to be a catch because they introduced us to so many wonderful services they could provide to our students," said Hostos Student Development Assistant Dean Johanna Gómez. "We asked 'what do we have to give in return?' because most of the time a college has to provide some type of financial matching, but this wasn't the case."

A key selling point was that Single Stop would help connect students with tax benefits and would help them prepare their taxes for free.

Hostos' Single Stop and financial aid offices take an integrated approach to serving students. They coordinate outreach campaigns and the provision of services, permitting each office to develop expertise in a portion of the college financing process. Single Stop partners with local experts to provide free tax preparation services to students and so, at Hostos, the tax preparers direct students to special Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) completion sessions coordinated by the Financial Aid Office.

"We know that our students need additional assistance in order to continue with their courses," Gómez said. "During this time, we had students com- ing to our office asking for financial support just to buy books to get transportation, or indicating they were hungry. Those are impediments to a successful education."

Students, she said, often were afraid to reach out to ask people for help. Single Stop allocated $120,000 for Hostos to hire service providers, but with the blessing of the new college president, additional resources were directed to bring on a third full-time person. Recruiting staff that had a personal touch was crucial.

In 2009, Hostos helped 400 students. That grew to 700 in 2010, and by 2013, the program's reach extended to 1,900 students. The majority of the students seeking assistance have been Hispanic or AfricanAmerican, a reflection on the overall student demographics at Hostos.

In the end, Gómez said, "the students became Single Stop's biggest ambassadors. They told their friends they got assistance. It was like a buddy system. We don't only help students; we help their families, because some of our students are dependent on their parents."

Madeline Cruz, coordinator of Hostos' Single Stop program since 2010, is on the front lines of the program, day to day. "We are trying our best to educate the students about credit, budgeting and other financial matters," she said.

She recalled enlisting student volunteers to distribute information in classrooms. The students were dispatched across campus, and when they returned, it solidified her instinct that Single Stop was catching on: volunteers reported that peers responded, "We went there! That's a great service!"

One such beneficiary was Nancy Acosta, a South Bronx resident who is pursuing a nursing degree at Hostos. She remembers spotting the Single Stop posters wallpapering Hostos, identifying services she thought she could use.

"I first sought the services when I had a problem with my tuition and felt like I didn't have anywhere to go," Acosta said. "I wasn't anticipating a lot of help. But if it wasn't for me going there, I wouldn't be in college right now."

Single Stop helped her explore other financial opportunities, such as a tuition support pipeline, and a grant to assist with back tuition. She also took advantage of the program's legal services support, and credited the one-to-one assistance she received.

"1 wasn't so much nervous as I was reluctant because I had gone to so many places and kept getting the runaround. When I came here, it seemed so simple. They helped me fill out everything, step by step," she said.

Goldrick-Rab praised the Hostos program. "There is also a real connection with the staff at Hostos," she said. "The students treat the woman who works in the office like family and that's superimportant because family is so often important to these students because often, when students come to a school it doesn't feel like family."

Because the Single Stop USA program is relatively new, information regarding its outcomes if still "preliminary and promising," note the authors of the Clearing the Path analysis. They report that Single Stop clients outperform other students on year-to-year retention rates. At CUNY, for example, they report annual college retention rates for Single Stop clients are around 73 percent, with just over half enrolled full-time and completing more than 80 percent of their attempted classes.

"Single Stop does bring a double bottom line," she said. "You are bringing money to the students so there is a return to the student getting a degree, and there's a return to the college for the student getting a degree."

Both she and Brown pointed out that colleges and universities should explore the Single Stop USA model and rethink how they can better meet their students' needs. The report's authors recommend modernizing student services, reforming federal financial aid, coordinating social and education policy, and evaluating evidence that shows improved student outcomes.

Said Brown: "As I've traveled to Single Stop locations and talked with students I am absolutely convinced that this is the way we should be thinking about students in the broader context, in particular to those in our colleges that need special support and services in order to be successful.

"I know that once we can get them into college and give them services and benefits they need, we can keep them in college and vastly improve their economic circumstances. And, I would argue that's in all of our best interests."