Prior behavioral science interventions have successfully improved student retention and academic performance, for instance, by enhancing students' feelings of belonging.

Building on this foundation, Axim is partnering with the Behavior Change for Good Initiative at the University of Pennsylvania, which boasts an interdisciplinary team of over 180 behavioral science experts, to support a massive research undertaking testing interventions to increase student success across 90,000 first-year students. There are 29 U.S. higher education institutions participating in the study, which serve large numbers of Pell-eligible students and have strategic goals to increase graduation rates, with the majority having six-year completion rates below 70%.

Using state-of-the-art analytic techniques, the study will identify which programs are most effective overall and which work best across different campus settings.

Researchers will track student persistence and academic performance, monitoring enrollment, graduation rates within six years, and GPA during the first year. The interventions are designed to be deployed using technical infrastructure that all institutions already have access to, so they can be easily implemented at scale. This study will greatly accelerate the development of effective interventions to support student success.