When students face financial hardships, these colleges step up

A new report from the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities encourages schools to use predictive analytics to identify at-risk students and continue to track their progress after they’ve received grants. The suggestions are a part of guidelines for schools interested in using small grants to improve retention and completion. The report highlights several schools with successful programs, including Virginia Commonwealth University. The Richmond school has a program that uses big data to flag students nearing graduation who have not registered for their final semester. If they owe $5,000 or less and are in good academic standing, VCU kicks in the cash.