The North Carolina Community College System (NCCCS) announced a new program called Boost in February 2025. The program is funded by Arnold Ventures and designed to increase community college students’ degree completion and transition into high-demand, high-earning careers….

….Boost is a replication of the CUNY ASAP model, a nationally acclaimed and evidence-based program that has proven its ability to increase three-year community college graduation rates.

Understanding where this model comes from and how it works can help us prepare for Boost’s rollout at the 15 North Carolina community colleges selected to participate in it over the next two years.

Where did the model and its replications come from?

Designed and launched by The City University of New York (CUNY), the Accelerated Program in Associate Study (ASAP) model is a complementary set of wraparound student services that are designed to help students earn their associate degree….

….In the fall of 2007, CUNY launched the first cohorts of the ASAP model at each of their six community colleges. (Today, there are seven.)

In 2009, CUNY asked MDRC, a nonpartisan research organization, to conduct an independent evaluation of their model. Between 2010 and 2013, MDRC researchers tracked the progress of CUNY ASAP students at three of the six community colleges in a randomized control trial (RCT) – considered the “gold standard” in the scientific research community.

The research team’s findings were clear. The ASAP model nearly doubled three-year graduation rates: 40.1 percent of students who went through the ASAP program earned a degree compared to only 21.8 percent of students who did not experience the ASAP model. MDRC’s research team published their results in a now-seminal 2015 article.

Early reports suggested the model would be a success and led to CUNY’s expanded partnership with MDRC. They also led to the first replication of the ASAP model outside of New York as the Ohio Department of Higher Education launched the ASAP model at three of its community colleges in 2014.

MDRC released findings in 2020 from a three-year RCT of the Ohio cohorts and found similar results to the original CUNY ASAP cohorts: by the end of their third year, 35 percent of Ohio ASAP students had earned degrees compared to 19 percent of students who received normal college services.

A new MDRC report released in April 2025 shows the model has long-term impacts. Eight years after the program ended, 46 percent of students in the ASAP model earned a degree compared to 31 percent of the control group students. According to the MDRC report, the fact that this effect persists years after the program ended suggests the model helps students earn degrees they wouldn’t have otherwise completed.

The 2015 and 2020 MDRC reports played a large part in launching the ASAP model into national higher education conversations, as its success in Ohio was evidence that the model can be replicated in states as different from each other as New York and Ohio….

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