Georgia State University Foundation
Project Title
For project support to the National Institute for Student Success to increase graduation rates and help transfer students succeed
Date
Sep. 10, 2026
Duration
30 months
Description
The National Institute for Student Success (NISS), founded at Georgia State University in 2020, works with colleges and universities to identify and resolve institutional barriers to college completion. Fewer than one in five community college students who intend to earn a bachelor’s degree do so within six years. While some causes, such as college costs, are difficult and expensive to address, others are within an institution’s control, including fragmented advising, lost transfer credit, and academic pathways misaligned with bachelor’s degree requirements. NISS addresses this through a diagnostic that identifies where transfer students fall off track, a customized playbook of evidence-based reforms, and a year of implementation support. This model is grounded in Georgia State’s own results, including a 70 percent improvement in bachelor’s graduation rates, and has since scaled to more than 170 colleges and universities and 11 state systems, reaching 1.8 million students and driving rising retention rates across partner institutions. With Carnegie’s support, NISS will apply this model to nine institutions across two community college transfer ecosystems to address both institutional barriers and regional breakdowns in transfer-credit policy and advising.