A Guaranteed Income Program for Community College Students

Brenda Olazava, 39, didn’t know if she’d be able to stay enrolled at Los Angeles City College this semester.

She found out she was no longer going to receive a cash benefit from the county for low-income families, which helped pay her rent while she studied for an associate degree in psychology and sociology and worked part-time at the front desk of the college’s counseling department. Money had been tight before for Olazava, a single mother of two children, now 20 and 15. But this time, she thought she might have to discontinue her studies to work full-time.

Then she got an email from the Los Angeles Community College District inviting her to apply for a new form of aid, a guaranteed basic income program called Building Outstanding Opportunities for Students to Thrive, or BOOST. The program would give her, and other students majoring in health-related fields, $1,000 per month for a year, no strings attached. To apply, she had to qualify as low-income by L.A. County standards and report that a lack of money affected her ability to pay college costs or living expenses in the past year, among other requirements. But she qualified and found out she was admitted to the program this week. The first payment is expected to land before Thanksgiving.

“I didn’t believe it,” Olazava said. “I’m like, ‘Really? Can it be?’ … I was debating if I had to stop doing my work-study and look for a full-time job or find another part-time job, just so that I can figure out how to pay my rent for next month … It completely took a load [off] my shoulder.”

Guaranteed basic income is a buzzy idea that tends to circulate among Silicon Valley tech types, but on Tuesday the LACCD announced the launch of its own version of the concept.

The district is promising to dole out $3 million in unrestricted monthly payments to a cohort of 250 students. The funds, along with support for the program, come from private donors: a little over $3 million from the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation and $867,500 from the California Community Foundation. Four of the district’s nine colleges will offer BOOST, including L.A. City College, East L.A. College, L.A. Trade-Technical College and L.A. Southwest College.

Philanthropic support “allowed us to think big,” said Kelly King, chief advancement officer for the LACCD and executive director of the Foundation for the Los Angeles Community Colleges. She said district officials asked themselves, “What has a proven track record of helping people, but we haven’t really applied it to the higher education space?”

BOOST focuses on students pursuing health careers to help them work toward well-paying jobs and to address health-care workforce gaps in Los Angeles. The hope is that the monthly payments will help students persist, graduate and fill these roles at higher rates.

“Over the past several decades, pathways to good jobs have become longer and more challenging to navigate,” Gerun Riley, president of the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, said in a news release. The goal of BOOST is to “accelerate and strengthen the credentialing process for young people pursuing careers in the medical field, benefiting students and their families while also addressing healthcare labor shortages.”

A New Venture

Guaranteed basic income programs are practically unheard-of in higher ed.

As far as LACCD district leaders are aware, the only other program that specifically targeted community college students was Santa Fe LEAP, a pilot that gave $400 monthly disbursements from the city of Santa Fe to young parents enrolled in certificate or degree programs at Santa Fe Community College. California state senator Dave Cortese floated a plan for a guaranteed income program for students at several California State University campuses several years ago, though the idea never got off the ground. His bill to launch a guaranteed income program for homeless high school seniors was blocked in the Assembly appropriations committee this summer.

But guaranteed basic income programs in general have taken off across California, with an increasing number of cities and counties piloting them. BOOST was partly inspired by BIG: LEAP, a guaranteed income pilot by the city of Los Angeles for low-income, pregnant or parenting residents who suffered hardship due to COVID-19, which launched in 2021, and BREATHE, the county’s guaranteed income program for low-income residents affected by the pandemic or former foster youth, which collectively dole out monthly payments to thousands of local residents.

King hopes that if BOOST is successful, the district could launch more guaranteed income programs for students in other fields of study, or for groups of students who need particular support, including those with children.

“We hope this is creating a model,” she said.

Studying Outcomes

BOOST will be accompanied by a randomized controlled trial—conducted by the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Guaranteed Income Research—to study how payments affect students’ lives, including their persistence, graduation, transfer and job-placement rates.

The study includes a control group of about 370 students who applied but weren’t chosen in the random selection process. All students, including those who don’t receive the disbursements, will be tracked for 18 months.

King believes data from students who aren’t in the program will also be revealing.

“The control group will just allow us to know what’s happening in the lives of students without any other intervention,” she said. “I think it’s going to tell us so much about the challenges and opportunities and how we can improve supports for students, well beyond this particular model.”

The district will also gain some insight into how students in the program spend their guaranteed income, since payments will be disbursed to students on debit cards, with expenses processed each month. King said past research on guaranteed basic income programs shows people tend to use the money for basic living expenses, like food and rent, but more granular data could be helpful.

“If we’re able to capture through the actual data about spending habits, as well as the surveys and the interviews … [that] a large number of students spend it on something like childcare, that would lead us to say … that’s clearly one of the barriers—how do we double down on making childcare more affordable for our students?” she said.

The study will also be able to track program participants’ lives even if they stop out of college, because students will continue to get payments whether or not they stay enrolled, bucking the norm for most college scholarship and aid programs.

That aspect of the program challenges traditional notions of “how we think about who is our student and for how long and under what conditions do we keep the door open to serve them well?” King said. The program, and the study, are “going to persist, even as students have peaks and valleys to their educational career.”

Olazava said she’s excited and relieved that a payment is on its way. She believes the monthly disbursements—which she plans to mostly put toward rent and bills—will help her toward her goals: to graduate this June; transfer to California State University, Los Angeles; and earn her bachelor’s degree in psychology and eventually her master’s in social work. She hopes to work with the city’s elderly population or people struggling with addiction.

“The struggles are hard. As a single mom, it helps,” she said of the program. And with the holiday season fast approaching, “this is perfect timing … I’ll be able to give my children something extra.”