The Net Benefits of Raising Bachelor’s Degree Completion through the City University of New York ACE Program

In 2015, the City University of New York (CUNY) launched a new program— Accelerate, Complete, and Engage (ACE)—aimed at improving college graduation rates. A randomized-control evaluation of the program found a nearly 12 percentage point increase in graduation five years after college entry. Using this impact estimate and national data on earnings by gender, age, and degree status; we estimate incremental expected long-run benefits and costs for participants, as well as intergenerational effects for the children of participants, relative to “business as usual” for the control group. Our main estimate indicates net social benefits of more than $48,000 over a lifetime per participant from greater earnings and labor force attachment, improvements in health, and savings in public transfers. A major contribution of our analysis is the estimation of second-generational benefits. Including intergenerational benefits for children who grow up in newly higher-earning families nearly triples this estimate, to over $130,000 in net social benefits per participant. These results are sensitive to assumptions about whether the impact on graduation after five years persists indefinitely, or whether the control group eventually catches up. Still, net social benefits are strongly positive even under our most conservative assumptions.