Conventional two- and four-year public colleges serving low-income students are often costly and under-performing. Most low-income students who attempt
degrees drop out because of cost, inadequate preparation, a college academic program that lacks rigor and relevance, or the daily challenge of work and
family.
In Massachusetts, fewer than 16% of students that enroll in an associate’s degree graduate within three years according to a recent Boston Globe
feature.
Bob Hill, who is a former teacher at Match Public Charter School in Boston, now coaches alumni from high schools across Boston on college completion, in a
new program set up by Match Education. The program is called Match Beyond, and it marries College for America
(CFA), an innovative new competency-based degree program (see feature) from Southern New Hampshire University, with intensive coaching, academic support and jobs counseling from Match Education. The
goal of the program is to produce high degree completion rates and employment for low-income high school graduates across Boston who either never went to
college or who left high school before completion.
Hill, his boss Stig Leschly, and the team at Match Education created the hybrid college and jobs model in close collaboration and partnership with CFA.
They launched the program late last year recruited a cohort of 47 students, four have already competed degrees and 40 are on track to do so in the next 18
months. Over the next few years, they will grow to 400-500 students per year in Boston.
Match Education. Stig Leschly had some early career success as a high-tech entrepreneur (he sold his e-commerce company to Amazon in his late twenties) and
for the last 15 years has been working in education, the last four years as CEO at Match Education.
Match Education, run by Leschly, is a diverse and innovative platform for reform. Its charter schools serve 1250 K-12 students on four Boston campuses, and
it produces extraordinary results in part because of an innovative one-on-one or small group tutoring program. Match Education also runs a longstanding,
fully approved graduate school of education that trains teachers and instructional leaders for high-poverty
schools in intensive, practice-focused residencies. Match’s graduate school of education is a close cousin the Relay GSE, set up by KIPP, Achievement
First, and Uncommon Schools, and it was the first new graduate school of education approved in Massachusetts in the last half decade.
Alarmed by few viable paths to quality, affordable degrees and eventual employment available to graduates of Boston’s general high schools, Leschly and his
team struck out with Match Beyond and in close partnership with CFA to disrupt the sector.
Andew Balson, who recently joined Match Education to lead Match Beyond, believes the model, if successful, can be easily replicated across the US since it
is, at its core, an easily repeated partnership between an online degree provider and local coaching service. Balson, like Leschly, is a convert from the
business sector (prior to working at Match Education, he spent 20 years at Bain Capital, one of the largest private equity firms in the world).
The Right Degree. The CFA program is ideal for young adults from low-income communities because it is affordable, flexible, and relevant to employment.
CFA tuition is $5,000 per year. In most cases, Match Beyond students pay tuition to CFA with the help of a Pell Grant and, as a result, incur no financial
burden from enrollment.
In 2013, the Department of Education began to make competency-based programs like CFA eligible for Pell grants and federal loans.
The CFA program is project and competency-based which allows Match Beyond students to work at their own pace often maintaining employment and avoiding the
cost of room and board associated with a campus-based program.
The degree program is made up of 20 career-relevant projects that help students develop and demonstrate 120 competencies to earn an associate degree. With
another 20 projects, students can earn a Bachelor’s degree.
The Right Supports. Match Beyond provides face-to-face study support, personal coaching, and jobs placement services to students in the CFA degree program.
These relationship-based support services improve the probability that students will complete their degrees and find jobs.
Match Beyond is designed for replication. If successful in Boston, community-based service providers in other cities could create similar partnerships with
CFA.
Coursera
has seen similar success with Learning Hubs, local support groups formed around Specializations, a sequence of career-focused online courses.
As recently noted, there are advantages of a traditional
liberal arts education where students sampling a sequence of disconnected, sometimes compelling, and very expensive courses. There are critics of online
and competency-based approaches but they don’t seem to appreciate the plummeting return on investment of traditional higher education or the disastrous
consequences of attempting college, racking up debt and not finishing.
College for America, to its credit, is extending access to college and a shot at participating in the idea economy. And, Match Beyond is demonstrating that
when you add focused support to a flexible and affordable degree program, the results are very promising. Match Beyond, and programs like it, could lead to
dramatic improvement in degree attainment among young adults from low-income families.
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