The need: Improving community college students’ graduation rates
Career and technical education for the automotive industry has a longstanding need to improve student retention and persistence. In addition, despite recent efforts toward greater representation, racial and gender diversity in this field remains inadequate.
Greater cultural diversity has many benefits. For example, it has been shown to contribute to better organizational performance, strategic decision-making and innovation in automotive component manufacturing.
Stress is one factor contributing to students’ dropping or stopping out, especially at community colleges. Students struggle with mental health and work-life balance. In addition, a 2014 study reported over 74% of community college students as experiencing financial distress.
Community college counseling centers, although designed to support students, are unable to keep up with the demand for services. In 2022-2023, a study by the Center for Collegiate Mental Health reported that over 185,000 college students visited counseling centers.
They reported concerns related to mental health wellness, yet most only visited once. They might have had a consult or an in-take appointment, but they never returned for counseling.
“Graduating these students with the tools needed to manage their financial stress will help them succeed, not only in their jobs after college, but in life — as informed citizens who make good decisions about themselves and their roles in society.”
- Matthew Mayhew, project principal investigator and the Flesher Professor of Educational Administration
EDiCT 1.0: The first ECMC Foundation grant
In 2022, Matthew Mayhew, the William Ray and Marie Adamson Flesher Professor of Educational Administration, Emily Creamer, research director, and the team in the College Impact Lab conducted Enhancing Diversity in Career and Technical STEM (EDiCTS 1.0) with support from the foundation.
For the project, Mayhew and his team in the College Impact Lab partnered with the Ford Motor Company’s Automotive Student Service Educational Training (ASSET) program. ASSET engages 40 community colleges in 29 states with Ford or Lincoln dealerships. Its two-year programs allow students to earn an associate’s degree, gain a year of paid work experience and earn up to 19 Ford certifications.
The first grant worked with four community colleges in a mixed research study and program assessment. It focused on understanding the recruitment, persistence, graduation and employment of students in the ASSET program.
To support student success, Mayhew and his team added extracurricular elements to ASSET. They included having students set goals for their academic, work and social activities. Students met with their advisors for support in reaching these goals.
They also conducted a self-assessment of their strengths and weaknesses in the ASSET program. Follow-up activities focus on how they can boost their strengths. Students earned financial incentives for all these activities.
Mayhew and his team assessed the impact of additional activities, which were shown to be effective interventions for increasing the retention of ASSET students from year one to year two of the project.
As he explained in an opinion piece in Inside Higher Ed, “Not only can these certifications increase the number of skilled workers for employers, but academic programs can provide technical certifications that increase the students’ salary, life quality and upward mobility.”
Based on results from EDiCTS 1.0, researchers, faculty and practitioners believe the findings can be generalized to the entire United States community college system.
EDiCTS 2.0: Drive to Thrive: The new grant
Student feedback from the first phase of EDiCTS indicated a need for mental health support and enhanced financial literacy. To improve the total wellness of community college students in the ASSET program, Mayhew now has a new, two-year grant, Drive to Thrive, from the ECMC Foundation for $975K.
The goals of the project are to increase automotive technology students’:
- Success, persistence, degree attainment and workforce entrance
- Financial literacy skills through learning modules
- Healthy life choice behaviors through learning modules
One thousand students will take part, including engaging in the same personal goal setting, self-assessment and meeting with advisors as in EDiCTS 1.0. One thousand more students will serve as a control group, conducting business as usual.
To assess program outcomes, Mayhew and team are developing financial literacy and wellness modules as well as quantitative and qualitative measures to assess the modules’ effectiveness. Use of the modules and data collection will occur in 2025.
“Centering students in research means listening and learning from them,” Mayhew said. “During EDiCTS 1.0, we learned that these future automotive technicians carry financial stressors that they associate with anxiety and poor choices regarding substance use. In this project, generously funded by ECMC Foundation, we offer and test financial literacy interventions tailored to the nuanced needs of these students.”
In 2025, Mayhew and team will visit the 40 community colleges with Ford ASSET programs to administer the surveys and modules, conduct focus groups with students and interview faculty, staff and students one-on-one.
In addition, they will offer student activities geared at enhancing student success and retention. ASSET students will participant in the same goal setting and self-assessment activities as in EDiCTS 1.0, this time with the research team.
Overall, Mayhew, Creamer and team will assess ASSET with these added supports for their impact on student outcomes. Impacts include student enrollment, retention and persistence in ASSET, degree attainment and workforce entrance. The data will be compared to the control group’s outcomes, which includes students in other automotive technology associate degree programs.
“Graduating these students with the tools needed to manage their financial stress will help them succeed, not only in their jobs after college,” Mayhew said, “but in life — as informed citizens who make good decisions about themselves and their roles in society.”
Long term, the aim is for this project to reshape the delivery of degree requirements at community colleges. Ultimately, it can transform automotive technical education practices.
