Student Success Stipends

This pilot provides MCC students with the financial stability needed to pursue and complete their education and improve their job opportunities. The cash stipends offer hardworking students, often parents, enrolled in community college the support they need to cover the cost of living while completing their education and transitioning to the workforce. These stipends benefit MCC students, their families and children, and strengthen the entire community.

This pilot is for adult MCC students who are using a degree or certificate program to advance their careers. To be eligible, MCC students must:

• Be 19 years old or older
• Must be enrolled in a credit or noncredit program at MCC and working toward a credential, certificate, or associate degree
• Not be dually enrolled as a high school student, nor claimed as a dependent by parents
• Have filed for the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) within two years OR have legal custody of a child aged 5 or younger (not yet enrolled in kindergarten)

Participants will receive cash stipends for at least 12 months and up to three years, depending on income recertification. Payments are provided as consistent monthly amounts rather than a lump sum and may be phased out during the final months.

350 people will have the opportunity to participate in the pilot. There will be 350 participants in the treatment group and 400 in the comparison group (comparison group participants will not receive cash stipends, but will be compensated for their participation in the study).

Eligible MCC students will be able to apply for the program during the official enrollment window. From those who meet the eligibility criteria, a group of participants will be randomly assigned to receive the stipends as part of the pilot. This random assignment is a key part of the research design, allowing the study to compare outcomes between those who receive the stipends (treatment group) and those who do not (control group). This process ensures the evaluation is rigorous, fair, and capable of measuring true impact.

This pilot has a limited number of spots available, so not all applicants will be accepted.

Unlike the structure of many other cash pilots that people are most familiar with, the determination of the stipend amount in this pilot is student-specific.

The payment each participant receives will be tailored based on their individual financial profile, ensuring support is responsive to a family’s needs. Each profile is informed by a range of key considerations, including household size, income, wages, housing status (rent or own), and tax credits, and is measured against the Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM). The U.S. Census created the SPM to account for the actual cost of living, including geographic differences in housing, and subtracts necessary expenses like taxes and medical costs.

This is an exciting innovation in the way we are approaching the design of cash pilots by customizing stipends based on real-life expenses and family needs. It’s not one-size-fits-all; it’s a smarter, more equitable way to design cash stipends that reflects how people actually live.

The stipend amount is calculated based on the gap between a participant’s current income and the SPM threshold for their household size. The larger the gap, the higher the monthly stipends provided.

Here’s what this would mean in practice:

Family A: A single parent earning $16,000 annually with one child would receive $735/month from this pilot to bring her up to the $24,820 SPM threshold.

Family B: A family of four, specifically a two-parent household with two children, earning a combined $32,000 annually would receive $291/month from this pilot to bring them up to the $35,489 SPM threshold for a family of four.

This pilot is based on a Negative Income Tax model. The Negative Income Tax (NIT) is a policy model that provides cash support to low-income individuals by supplementing their income through the tax system. The idea is that if your income falls below a certain threshold, you receive cash assistance in the amount that allows you to hit that threshold to help meet basic needs. While this pilot is inspired by some of the flexibility offered by NIT-style models, it is not a government program or universal benefit. Instead, it is a focused, time-limited intervention focused on supporting a specific group of Nebraskan community college students at MCC, who are on the cusp of completing their education, but facing economic barriers.

Explicitly, a NIT model has not been used in a cash pilot since President Nixon tried it in the 1970s. In some ways, the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) is modeled after a NIT, but the same conditions have yet to be applied to the guaranteed income space in modern years.

The variable amount of the stipends based on financial profile and actual cost of living is what makes this groundbreaking and exciting- it can help to offer a new area of study that has not been widely explored.

The Earned Income Tax Credit is a federal program that is modeled after the Negative Income Tax, and it does offer a sliding scale of payments to families, but it is modeled on the poverty line instead of the Supplemental Poverty Measure, meaning that it does not offer enough cash to fit families’ needs.

The upside is that this is a new intervention that truly responds to a family’s needs. The more complicated piece for students is determining what exactly their stipend amount would be before they apply and get accepted. That can be difficult to explain to the general public or to the population who wants to know what to expect.

Funds will be deposited monthly to reloadable debit cards. Stipend amounts are recalculated each year.

Community Financial Resources (CFR) is the disbursement partner for the pilot. CFR distributes funds to participants using a reloadable debit card. CFR is not a bank; they work with Dash Solutions to hold and deposit funds.

Participants will contact Dash Solutions for any cardholder services-related questions, such as getting a replacement card.

Unlike most aid programs that are restricted to tuition or specific expenses, these stipends are direct cash. It doesn’t have to be used to pay for credit hours. It gives MCC students flexibility to address the barriers that most impact them: housing, transportation, food, childcare, time. This approach respects student agency and real-life needs.

By focusing eligibility on working students and parents, the pilot prioritizes those facing some of the most significant barriers to completing their education. Students who have filed for the EITC or have a child age 5 or younger are most likely navigating the dual demands of work, caregiving, and school. These are the students where a direct cash stipend can make the biggest difference in helping them stay enrolled and complete their education.

The program is built to gradually phase out during the final months of support. Stipends taper off by 10% each month to allow for a smooth transition and avoid a sharp financial cliff, encouraging stability as participants move into full-time work or continue education. This structure models other effective pilot programs in the field.

The pilot includes research from University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Guaranteed Income Research (CGIR). They are running a Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT), with 350 students in the treatment group and 400 in the control group. Researchers will measure outcomes such as graduation rates, matriculation into 4-year programs, earnings, and dependence on public benefits – and calculate the potential return on investment to Nebraska. The full research protocol is a registered clinical trial available here.

Outside of the federal expanded Child Tax Credit during the pandemic, 2025 is the first year that direct cash interventions are coming to the state of Nebraska. There is a pilot right now called Bridge Project which provides cash biweekly to 350 pregnant mothers in Omaha who are over 18 and make less than $39,000 annually. Bridge provides low-income mothers with cash on a biweekly basis during pregnancy, birth, and the earliest days of their babies’ lives to support healthy development, avoid adverse childhood experiences, and to break intergenerational cycles of poverty.

In Flint, Michigan, the recent $7,500 RxKids program, which provides a monthly check to every pregnant woman in the city, has shown significant economic and health benefits. Among participants, 80% reported feeling more financially secure, and 72% saw improvements in their health and their babies’ health. The intervention also led to a 91% decrease in evictions, a massive improvement in ensuring families stay housed.

In Santa Fe, parents enrolled in community college who received GI increased their full-time employment by 19 percentage points between the start of the pilot and 6 months after it ended.

And the nation’s largest cash experiment happened when the federal government expanded the Child Tax Credit during the COVID-19 pandemic. When families had these expanded checks, their economic wellbeing improved and childhood poverty was cut in half.

Learn more.