A brief intervention to improve college success and equity

A large-scale experiment focused on social belonging shows impacts on first-year full-time completion Around the world, substantial proportions of students who begin postsecondary education do not complete their degree ( 1 , 2 ). Overall graduation rates often mask considerable differences by race, gender, age, and institutional type ( 1 , 2 ). In an effort to promote student success and equity, social psychologists have created interventions that seek to reframe challenges that students may face in their college environments to help them overcome obstacles and persist in school. On page 499 of this issue, Walton et al. ( 3 ) describe an ambitious randomized controlled experiment that tested a social-belonging intervention among >26,000 incoming students at 22 US colleges and universities. This brief intervention increased the proportion of students who completed their first year as full-time students, which is a key leading indicator of future college graduation ( 4 ).