Advancing Equity With Policy

Despite having one of the strongest K–12 systems in the nation, New Jersey’s higher education outcomes reveal persistent inequities. The six-year completion of post-secondary education rate is 61%, which places New Jersey 25th nationally and well behind nearby states such as Rhode Island (72%) and the District of Columbia (82%). Full-time students graduate at a rate of 66%, compared to just 32% of part-time students. However, it is noted that adult learners struggled more with completing their degree than younger learners. 64% of students aged 20 or younger completed their degree, while only 34% of students aged 21–24 and 30% of students aged 25 or older completed their credentials within six years (Policy Lab at Rutgers, 2024). Gaps in degree completion contribute to a large ‘some college, no degree’ population. More than 757,000 working-age New Jersey residents fall into this category. Yet re-engagement is minimal as in 2023–2024, just 17,400 of these adults re-enrolled, and only 4.4% earned a credential (Bloustein School of Planning & Public Policy, 2024). 

Disparate degree completion is also present for low-income and first-generation student,s as they are nearly four times less likely to graduate in six years compared to peers from higher-income, continuing-generation families (Rutgers University, 2024). Based on these results, New Jersey’s post-secondary institutions are not appropriately supporting part-time, older, low-income, or first-generation students, resulting in lower degree completion rates. 

New Jersey also faces a unique attrition issue as more students leave New Jersey for university than in any other state. Nearly 30,000 high school graduates, about 40% of the state’s college-bound seniors, attend college elsewhere each year, and many do not return (OSHE, 2022). This long-term ‘brain drain’ compounds inequities in completion and undermines the state’s workforce pipeline. By 2031, an estimated 68% of New Jersey jobs will require post-secondary education: 28% a bachelor’s degree, 7% an associate degree, and 17% a certificate or license (NJBIA, 2024). Without systemic reforms to raise completion, re-engage adult learners, and reduce out-migration, New Jersey risks falling short of its workforce and equity goals, which will impact New Jersey’s economic and educational future for generations. 

Solutions from New York

New York has addressed the challenges of low completion, adult learner attrition, and out-migration through innovative programs like CUNY ASAP and SUNY/CUNY Reconnect. These initiatives tackle the affordability of post-secondary education but also integrate wraparound services that directly tackle the barriers students face outside the classroom.

The CUNY ASAP provides tuition and textbook coverage as well as embeds a comprehensive system of supports designed to remove the everyday obstacles that derail student progress. Each student is assigned an advisor with a small caseload to promote sustained mentoring and proactive problem-solving. Students receive regular academic tutoring, career counseling, and early alerts to prevent them from falling off track. Transportation subsidies, such as free MetroCards, eliminate the cost and logistical barrier of commuting, which is an often-overlooked factor in persistence. Due to these supports, CUNY ASAP nearly doubled three-year graduation rates for community college students, from 22% to 40%, while increasing credit accumulation and continuous enrollment (Kolenovic & MDRC, 2019). These benefits were especially strong for Black and Hispanic students, proving that wraparound supports directly advanced equity. This model can impact New Jersey state-funded universities as an overall initiative that has the potential to reach marginalized communities.

SUNY and CUNY Reconnect extends the CUNY ASAP model to meet the needs of adult learners, who often juggle family responsibilities, employment demands, and prior debt. Historically, this population has the least attrition due to their daily life responsibilities. Reconnect pairs students with a success coach or advisor who guides them through financial aid processes, course scheduling, and transfer credits. The program also includes proactive outreach to students who previously dropped out and re-engaging them with structured, tailored supports. By combining tuition and book coverage with coaching and outreach, Reconnect reframes higher education as not only affordable but also navigable (Hochul, 2025). Together, these initiatives prove that tuition assistance paired with robust wraparound services, advising, coaching, tutoring, transportation, and basic needs supports can transform enrollment into persistence, and persistence into completion. New Jersey’s challenges mirror those that New York set out to solve. If New Jersey can adapt aspects of these models to community college and state-funded 4-year universities, New Jersey can raise completion rates while also reducing attrition, brain drain, and ensuring its higher education system produces graduates ready to meet the demands of the state’s economy.

Policy Recommendations for New Jersey

While New Jersey has made significant strides in affordability through the Community College Opportunity Grant and Garden State Guarantee, affordability alone has not eliminated inequities in persistence or curbed out-migration. For many students, they lack guidance in navigating aid systems, struggle to balance family and work responsibilities, or face unmet basic needs. For example, nearly 25% of undergraduates experience food insecurity, yet many do not access available benefits due to stigma and bureaucratic hurdles (Education Finance Council, 2023).  To make the Community College Opportunity Grant and Garden State Guarantee successful in improving student outcomes, New Jersey should launch a statewide initiative modeled on CUNY ASAP and SUNY/CUNY Reconnect, beginning with community colleges and scaling to four-year institutions. The program, coined Jersey Complete, should pair tuition and fee coverage with embedded wraparound supports based on the following four tenets: 

• Each student should have a dedicated advisor or success coach with a limited caseload, providing academic guidance, career planning, and financial aid navigation.
• Institutions should integrate financial supports for books and transportation into the cost of attendance.
• Colleges should serve as access points for SNAP, housing aid, and childcare subsidies, reducing stigma and ensuring uptake. Colleges would take a community school model, becoming hubs for non-profits, local healthcare support, and food banks to limit the hurdles facing students. 

Jersey Complete should be funded through recurring state appropriations to ensure long-term sustainability and stability for institutions. Short-term grants and pilot programs are insufficient at building the staffing infrastructure necessary for intensive advising, success coaching, and basic needs coordination. By making Jersey Complete a recurring budget priority, lawmakers can guarantee that students entering the program today will continue receiving consistent support throughout their degree pathway. In return for this sustained investment, institutions participating in Jersey Complete would be required to track and publicly report outcomes disaggregated by race, income, age, and enrollment status (full-time vs. part-time). This level of transparency would provide insight on where wraparound services are most effective, where inequities persist, and how resources can be adjusted to maximize impact. 

Conclusion

By combining sustained funding with accountability to provide wraparound supports to students, Jersey Complete would expand access to higher education while ensuring that students finish their degrees. This design moves beyond affordability alone, embedding advising, success coaching, transportation, and textbook assistance, and connections to food and housing supports as core features of the program. As New Jersey faces a dual challenge of inequitable degree completion and chronic student attrition, New York’s CUNY ASAP and SUNY Reconnect offer a clear blueprint for addressing these challenges, showing that when wraparound supports are paired with affordability, persistence, and completion rise dramatically. Lawmakers should be focused on improving equity, economic growth, and keeping talent in-state. If this is the case, the evidence is clear: comprehensive wraparound services are the most effective strategy to support students from enrollment to graduation and carry New Jersey’s workforce into the future.