Bridging the Opportunity Divide for Low-Income Youth: Implementation and Early Impacts of the Year Up Program

Year Up is a training program for urban young adults between ages 18 and 24. The program provides six months of full-time training in the IT and financial service sectors, followed by six-month internships at major firms. The full-time program provides extensive support and puts a heavy emphasis on the development of professional and technical skills.

Year Up is one of nine programs in the federally sponsored Pathways for Advancing Careers and Education (PACE) evaluation.

Study Goals:

This evaluation used implementation and impact studies to build on evidence for other career pathways approaches. It explores the possibility that more comprehensive interventions will prove more effective than lower-intensity programs.

Research Questions:

The research questions were:

• Was the Year Up program model implemented as designed across the program’s eight offices?
• How did employment, training, and related service experiences differ between young adults randomly selected to participate in Year Up (the treatment group) and those who could not access the program (the control group)?
• What were the effects of access to Year Up on earnings, career-track employment, postsecondary education, and related outcomes? How did these effects vary across subgroups and across the eight local offices?

Findings:

The evaluation found the following:

• Year Up implemented its program with high fidelity to its design.
• Year Up had positive effects on the scope and nature of services received by its students.
• Effects on earnings were consistently large and positive.

For more information, download the full report, appendices, and report brief.