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By Evan Weissman, Dan Cullinan, Oscar Cerna, Stephanie Safran and Phoebe Richman, with Amanda Grossman. National Center for Postsecondary Research (NCPR) Teachers College Columbia University. February 2012. Link to full report at the bottom of the summary on this page. The colleges in this study are two of six in the NCPR Learning Communities Demonstration, in which random assignment evaluations are being used to determine the impacts of learning communities on student success. NCPR has presented finding from all six colleges. They show that when one-semester learning communities have impacts, they tend to be concentrated in the semester in which students are enrolled in the program. Another report, a final one will be released in 2012. That report synthesizes the findings across all colleges studied and includes an additional semester of student follow-up at each college.

By Jennifer Gonzalez, Students column, The Chronicle of Higher Education, April 10, 2011. Studies conducted by MDRC have found that, "while students [in learning communities] do make academic gains, such as progressing more quickly through developmental courses, the gains don't persist beyond the semester students are involved in the learning community." Authors acknowledge that these are early findings and that later findings may prove different results.