Anne Roder and Mark Elliott
June 2020

Project QUEST was founded in 1992 to enable San Antonio residents to prepare for good jobs in growing sectors of the local economy. Since then, it has helped more than 7,000 people complete training conducted primarily by local community colleges. Mobility’s randomized controlled trial evaluation found:

• Large, statistically-significant earnings impacts over the nine-year follow-up period. The annual earnings gains grew over time, exceeding $5,000 in the ninth year.
• These earnings impacts were accompanied by sustained education gains, equal to or greater than the education impacts of other successful programs.
• QUEST participants were twice as likely as the control group to earn credentials by the end of the third year, and the impact continued to grow through the entire nine-year evaluation.

The findings are among the most impressive of any rigorous evaluation of a workforce development program and are a strong endorsement of the potential value of long-term skills training for low-income job seekers.

Read the report here