WASHINGTON, D.C. - In an effort to distinguish itself within the embattled for-profit college sector, DeVry Inc. presented research Wednesday that portrays the company as employing some of the best student-centered practices for helping first-generation, low-income students achieve success.

But while the practices touted in the study—titled “Promising Practices Supporting Low-Income, First-Generation Students at DeVry University”—have been shown to be effective in prior research, the authors of the study conceded that it is not yet known how effective such practices have been at DeVry University in Chicago, which was the focus of the study.

“It’s still a little early to find out how this will affect graduating rates,” said Abby Miller, co-author of the study and Research and Project Manager at The Pell Institute for the Study of Opportunities in Higher Education, which examined things for DeVry Inc.

Miller was speaking at a policy forum held Wednesday at the American Institute of Architects building in Washington, D.C. The specific practices adopted by DeVry that were mentioned in the report include approaching support services for students as “customer service”; providing “early, in-depth, on-campus student opportunities”; and establishing and sustaining a “shared sense of community.”

The forum was heavy on commendations for DeVry but scarce on hard data.

Upon being questioned by Diverse: Issues in Higher Education, DeVry officials related that they paid The Pell Institute $75,000 to conduct the study, which was largely qualitative and devoid of specific institutional data regarding the persistence and graduation rates among the specific groups of students that represented the focus of the study.

The study itself says “data are not yet available that can determine the effectiveness of DeVry University’s recent support initiatives.”

The reality is that only about a third of students at DeVry University in Chicago—34 percent, to be precise—graduate within the six-year timeframe used to calculate graduation rates among four-year colleges, according to the federally maintained Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, more commonly known as IPEDS.