These LA community college students are getting paid to go to school

Associated Press

6 hours ago

In November last year, Los Angeles City College student Brenda Olazava got an email notifying her that she had been selected to participate in a guaranteed income pilot program. She would receive 12 monthly stipends of $1,000 to spend however she wanted.
'We'll see if this is true or not,' she thought.
The pilot program for the Los Angeles Community College District, Building Outstanding Opportunities for Students to Thrive, or BOOST, provides monthly payments for one year to eligible community college students majoring in a health care field. Olazava's skepticism disappeared when she received her first monthly stipend in time for Thanksgiving 2024.
Throughout California, dozens of guaranteed income programs provide participants with monthly stipends. But only a few reach college students. Even fewer reach community college students.
In Santa Clara, a pilot program provides a $1,200 monthly stipend for two years to unhoused students between the ages of 16 and 20. In another pilot program, some former foster youth, formerly incarcerated people and CalWorks recipients at 10 California community colleges started receiving monthly guaranteed income in March 2024 through Hire UP.
BOOST is unique because it specifically targets health care students as part of an effort to address California's chronic nursing shortage. California community colleges offer academic pathways to jobs in health care, but many of the nursing programs in the Los Angeles Community College District have some of the highest attrition rates in the state. The program also provides students stipends during the critical period after they complete their degrees and transition into employment.
Guaranteed income helps student focus on psychology program
Though Olazava was skeptical when she heard about the program, she figured, 'Why not apply?'
The money has made a difference. Olazava now pays her bills on time, takes her kids out to eat and buys her son the clothes and shoes he needs. She has more time to study, has As in her courses and is on the honor roll.
Olazava found her passion taking care of elderly adults during the pandemic. She was fascinated by how the body and mind function following accidents or as individuals age. But after a work injury in 2021 sidelined her, she realized she needed to find a new career. Her therapist suggested going back to school.
Olazava signed up for a psychology class at Los Angeles City College, even though the semester had already started. She loved the class and decided to keep going. She signed up for a full course load and took classes in sociology, psychology and humanities.
A decade earlier, Olazava had earned her associate degree in criminal justice as a single parent to an infant and a toddler. Now she returned to school full time as a single parent to two teenagers.
She worked on campus as a student employee and drove for Uber Eats or Lyft at night. She was managing, but it was a struggle.
'Just being a single mom, it's just overwhelming financial needs all the time,' she said.
Since her first payment in November, Olazava has saved some money for when she transfers to Cal State Los Angeles in the fall. The extra $1,000 a month gives her more time to study and be with her kids. She has less financial stress and can splurge on ice cream for her kids or a late-night snack.
She graduated on June 10 with four associate degrees in psychology, sociology, social and behavioral science and liberal arts. She will transfer to Cal State Los Angeles to study psychology and plans to pursue a master's degree in social work.
When Olazava started college for a second time at age 37, her kids were skeptical that she'd persevere.
'But I always told my kids, it doesn't matter how old you are, as long as you want to do something, go ahead and do it,' she said.
Guaranteed income recipients plan to enter health fields
The pilot includes 251 students at East Los Angeles College, Los Angeles Southwest College, Los Angeles City College, and Los Angeles Trade-Tech College in the Los Angeles Community College District, which serves about 250,000 students.
About half the students in the community college district report incomes at or below poverty level, according to Kelly King, chief advancement officer for the Los Angeles Community College District and executive director of the district's foundation, which manages the BOOST program. The monthly stipend is not tied to enrolled units or grades and students choose how they spend the money, whether on diapers, groceries, car repairs or to pay down debt.
While few guaranteed income programs target community college students, the need is there. More than two-thirds of nearly 67,000 California community college students surveyed struggle to meet their basic needs, according to the 2023 RealCollege Survey.
BOOST's program is studying two groups: the 251 health care and psychology students who receive the monthly income, and a control group of 370 who don't receive the stipend.
The monthly amount is not intended to fully cover the high living costs in L.A. County, but to help participants ease financial stressors.
Participants in other community guaranteed income studies who received a $1,000 monthly stipend reported lower stress levels, fewer skipped meals, and the ability to plan ahead, lower their debt, or upgrade their housing, King said.
Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania cite one other guaranteed income pilot program for community college students in Santa Fe. They found that giving students $400 a month for one year led to positive outcomes. At the end of the pilot program, more recipients were employed, felt they could weather a $400 emergency, spent more time with their children, and were able to save more. Most of the participants said the money went to running the household and buying food, according to the report.
Higher education researchers and policy makers often assess the value of guaranteed income in terms of progress toward economic mobility. But the Santa Fe study revealed more intangible benefits.
Participants described pursuing higher education for reasons distinct from job training, said Amy Castro, lead researcher on the BOOST study. 'These students were saying, 'I am pursuing higher education to be somebody who has a degree, and I want to learn because it has value for me and dignity to me, and it's the way that I want to honor my family,'' she said.
Decoupling the guaranteed basic income from academic requirements allows researchers to continue to observe effects of guaranteed income on community college students through periods when they may not be enrolled due to life events, scheduling challenges or academic recesses. '(This) provides a really fascinating window into the actual lives and progression of our students,' King said.
The BOOST pilot provides researchers a first-of-its-kind, randomized, controlled trial in higher education at this scale, said King. Because the participants share a common goal – employment in a health field – researchers can study the impact of guaranteed income on progress toward a specific outcome.
Costs of attendance for community college students can exceed costs for the University of California or California State University, especially in high cost of living regions like L.A. County, King said. California community college students receive less state aid than UC and Cal State students. And across the state, the costs of college have risen exponentially over the last three decades.
Private donors provided the nearly $4 million needed to run the pilot program. The Broad Foundation gave nearly $3.2 million and the L.A. Community College Foundation contributed nearly $870,000 from its Young Adults Forward Fund.
Initial BOOST success guides disaster relief grants in LA
Informed by the research on and success of guaranteed income pilot programs, the Los Angeles Community College Foundation will offer ongoing financial payments to a small group of students who lost housing for a long period of time or experienced significant hardship due to the January 2025 wildfires.
The hope is to help students recover from the losses incurred by the wildfires and to continue on their educational path. The grants provide $1,000 a month for 12 months to 24 eligible students. The foundation raised more than $3 million in private donations for disaster relief, which will fund the monthly payments to Los Angeles students as well as go to disaster relief programs at Glendale and Pasadena community colleges, according to King.
The BOOST pilot program brings together strategies to help students stay on track with their studies and a year of guaranteed monthly income. King said the foundation applied this formula to long-term disaster funding, to ask how disaster response grants could accomplish two types of goals: supporting students in their education through the disaster and making sure their future educational or career training goals weren't disrupted.
Next, King plans to create a guide for other colleges to start similar programs. She also aims to secure funds for future pilot guaranteed income programs for health care students, as well as for students raising children while attending community college.
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This story was originally published by CalMatters and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.