Bridging the Gap: Empowering College Stop-outs Through the Bridge Back to College Program

Emily began her higher education at Bronx Community College of the City University of New York (CUNY). Due to an outstanding financial balance and the need for social-emotional support for her mental health issues, she decided to take a break from her studies. Searching for purpose and motivation, Emily joined the Bridge Back to College Program at New Settlement. The Bronx-based organization stands with community members to break systemic barriers, advance justice, promote leadership, and strengthen neighborhoods. One of many programs offered by New Settlement, the Bridge Back to College Program was designed in 2020 specifically to support students who left a college degree program. Throughout the course of the 12-week program, Emily attended trainings, received personalized counseling, and partook in community building activities aimed at supporting her career development and planning. After her counselors nominated her for a new CUNY initiative during the pandemic, she received help with tuition balances to support re-enrollment. Emily re-enrolled full time at Bronx Community College, where she majors in psychology (given her personal experiences) and works full time. Emily credits the social-emotional support from Bridge Back as being instrumental in getting back to college.

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Emily’s experience is just one of many stopout success stories coming out of the Bridge Back to College Program—an exciting model for how a long-standing organization can change institutionally to better support young people on their paths to educational and career success, economic mobility, and self-actualization.

JobsFirstNYC supported the incubation and implementation of New Settlement’s Bridge Back to College Program for three years, facilitating design and planning meetings with the program’s team, developing curricula, designing surveys, conducting evaluations, and documenting practices and insights along the way. We’re proud to share the findings in our newly released brief, some highlights of which can be found below.

Key Insights from the Bridge Back to College Brief

College stopout rates present a rising challenge. The term “stopouts” reflects the reality that many students who take a break from college eventually return. The college stopout rate remains a pressing problem in the US, exacerbated by the increasing costs of higher education and impacts from the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2020, the total number of stopped out students reached 39 million, which represented an 8% increase from the previous year. More than 25% of freshmen do not return to college for their second year; at community colleges in particular, this number reaches 41%.
Stopouts leave for many reasons. Financial hardships, family obligations, and dissatisfaction with the college experience are major factors. Surveys reveal that many stopouts are women, low-income students, or those needing to work while studying.
There is high re-enrollment potential. Research indicates over half of students who stop attending college are likely to return within a year, despite numerous barriers such as accumulated debt and lost tuition revenue, which impacts both institutions and students financially.
The idea of a “degree” is not enough to motivate students to re-enroll. Students often do not re-enroll in college because they struggle to link their time in college to future career opportunities. In other cases, students do not know how close they are to graduating and do not know the steps required to re-enroll.
If students have tangible career opportunities to work toward, they are more likely to be motivated to re-enroll in college and to work through challenges that may arise. The Bridge Back curriculum is designed to directly link educational efforts to future employment opportunities. It includes components such as career planning, resume and cover letter development, and informational interviews with mentors, which are crucial for aligning students’ educational paths with their career aspirations.
Tailored support is pivotal in making the re-enrollment process less daunting and more achievable for students. Each Bridge Back participant received personalized advisement through 1:1 sessions, where they set educational and career goals, developed actionable plans for re-enrollment, and addressed potential obstacles.
Intentional collaboration between departments and organizations that address the different barriers students may face is key to improving student outcomes. To meet the holistic needs of young adults, including workforce training, college counseling and socio-emotional counseling, the Bridge Back to College Program integrated two departments at New Settlement that traditionally did not operated programs together: the College Access Center (NSCAC) and the Young Adult Opportunity Initiative (YAOI). This integration enabled the program to offer comprehensive support that addressed both academic and non-academic barriers, fostering a more comprehensive approach to student re-engagement and success.

Conclusion: Connecting Systems to Re-engage Youth

Since the start of Bridge Back to College, 43 individuals have completed the program. Of those individuals:

67% enrolled in postsecondary education, skills training, or service fellowship.
16% have graduated from a degree program, including 12% attaining an associate’s degree. 6% have transferred to a bachelor’s degree program.
7% of participants have been referred to skills training, and one student has completed training.
33% have found employment in a full-time job, and 1 student has their own small business in fashion retail.

“Through the Bridge Back to College program, I participated in informative interviews, took assessments on what career field was the best fit for me, and recognized the importance of being in a space with young adults facing the same situation as me. The commonality between fellow Bronx locals was great because we all felt comfortable with each other, and were open and honest about our situations. That will always stick with me. —Caroline A., Program Participant

The Bridge Back to College program stands out not just for reconnecting students to education but for its broader win of connecting the siloed resources and systems that young people rely on in the first place. By bringing together all of the resources that New Settlement has to bear across its college, workforce development, and youth development programs, this program meets students where they are. It creatively co-designs a pathway with each participant to remove barriers to educational success, careers of interest, and better professional opportunities. In this way, Bridge Back offers a new and successful model to support young people’s holistic development—a much-needed solution to the fractured systems that only add barriers between young people and the actualization of their future goals. New Settlement and JobsFirstNYC look forward to future opportunities to scale this model and better support young adults across their City as they access pathways to meaningful, family-sustaining careers.

New Settlement is a member of the Bronx Opportunity Network (BON). To learn more about the BON see here: https://jobsfirstnyc.org/solutions/bronx-opportunity-network.