Massachusetts will centralize CC control

Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick proposed centralizing the state’s community college system in his State of the Commonwealth address, reports the Boston Globe.

“We have a skills gap,’’ Patrick told the packed House chamber at the State House. “We can do something about that. We can help people get back to work. And our community colleges should be at the very center of it.’’

A November report describes the state’s community college system as “disjointed and inadequate in its preparation of students for technical careers,” notes the Globe.

Patrick’s proposal will let a central board dole out funding to individual colleges, taking into account enrollment and several performance measures. The new plan is also intended to make it easier for students to transfer credits between colleges, a frequent source of complaints.

Patrick is proposing a $10 million increase in the community college system’s budget for the coming year to fund the transition.

The workforce development fantasy

President Obama focused on the workforce development mission of community colleges in his State of the Union Speech, calling on community colleges to train two million skilled workers for unfilled jobs.

The next day, Education Secretary Arne Duncan flew to Florida to praise job training programs at Tallahassee Community College.

Workforce development is the flavor of the month, writes Community College Dean. But it’s not as easy as politicians think to turn out skilled workers.

The most predictable lower-level workforce needs are actually the skills we expect students to pick up in their general education courses: effective communication, the ability to see the big picture, enough quantitative skill to know when an answer doesn’t sound right.  Those skills are evergreens, and like evergreens, they take time to grow.

There are always a few local employers who need workers who can be trained quickly, the dean writes. But those jobs get filled by the first or second cohort of trainees.

Many would-be workers need literacy or English as a Second Language classes. Community colleges’ developmental track is geared towards getting students into a degree program.  Adult Basic Education is a better fit, but often is underfunded and can’t meet the demand.

The dean’s advice:

If you want to improve the prospects of the local workforce, start with adult basic education, add short-term training programs, and beef up the classic academic offerings at community colleges for transfer. . . . Otherwise, you’ll just keep cycling people through training programs every few years, every time the economic winds shift.

The second word in “community college” is “college,” the dean points out. Community colleges are in danger of being defined purely as job training centers.

Repayment study left out blacks

A U.S. Education Department analysis on the relationship between race and repayment of student loans left out black students, skewing results used to justify the gainful employment rule, reports Inside Higher Ed.

For-profit colleges, which enroll many minority, low-income and older students, argue the high-risk demographics explain their students’ higher default rates on student loans. Not so, said the department in June, concluding that only 1 percent of the variance in repayment rates could be explained by the racial composition of enrollment. Sorry, never mind.

But by failing to count black students, the study understated the impact of race: the actual variance at for-profits is 20 percent over all, and 31 percent for four-year institutions, the department said in the December filing.

Eduardo Ochoa, the department’s assistant secretary for postsecondary education, said “accurate figures would have had no impact on the final regulations.”

Interesting.

The Association of Private Sector Colleges and Universities, the for-profit trade group challenging the gainful employment rules, charges the new figures show that “schools that enroll a higher percentage of minority students are more likely to fail the department’s repayment test.”

President Obama talked about defunding colleges that raise tuition in his State of the Union speech, writes Andrew Kelly on the Enterprise Blog.  That means shifting “some Federal aid away from colleges that don’t keep net tuition down and provide good value,”  according to a White House blueprint (pdf). Deciding whether a college is providing value for the money will require collecting gainful employment data on all higher education sectors, writes Kelly.

Pell for the neediest — or Pell for all?

Pell Grants should be targeted at the neediest students, argues Arthur Hauptman, a higher education policy consultant, on Inside Higher Ed. Eligibility rules have been expanded so much that half of undergraduates now receives a Pall Grant, driving up the costs. In addition, it should be easier and simpler to apply.

Instead of FAFSA, parents and students should use their federal income tax form to calculate their eligibility for student aid, Hauptman writes. Students enrolled less than half time would not be eligible.

Students who lost Pell eligibility would be able to use tuition tax credits.

Hauptman also proposes linking aid to colleges to the graduation rate of Pell recipients.

Middle-class families can’t afford college, writes Hamid Shirvani, president of California State University at Stanslaus. He proposes expanding Pell eligibility to families earning up to $100,000 and awarding larger grants.

Tuition tax credits, which help wealthier families the most, should be eliminated, Shirvani writes. That would cover some of the cost of an expanded Pell program.

Free courses may shake universities’ monopoly

Free or cheap online courses may shake universities’ monopoly on credentials, writes the Hechinger Report.

“If I were the universities, I might be a little nervous,” said Alana Harrington, director of Saylor.org, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit established by entrepreneur Michael Saylor that offers 200 free online college courses in 12 majors.

Among other similar initiatives are Peer-to-Peer University, or P2PU, which also offers free online courses and is supported by the web-browser company Mozilla and the Hewlett Foundation, and University of the People, which charges $10 to $50 for any of more than 40 online courses, and whose backers include the Clinton Global Initiative. Both are also nonprofits.

The content they use comes from top universities, including MIT, Tufts, the University of California at Berkeley and the University of Michigan. Those are among some 250 institutions worldwide that have put a collective 15,000 courses online in what has become known as the open-courseware movement.

Traditional colleges and universities are reluctant to accept transfer credits from these programs, claiming they can’t judge the courses’ quality.

“Libraries are free, too,” says Carol Geary Schneider, president of the Association of American Colleges and Universities. “You can roam around, read books and study. But hardly anyone would say that spending time in the library is a good preparation to work in any economy, much less this one.”

Traditional colleges deny academic credit to squelch competition, said Philipp Schmidt, cofounder and executive director of P2PU.

Debbie Arthur, who’s taking StraighterLine courses with hopes of earning an education degree, says most university classes don’t offer more personal contact than online classes.

“The Pollyanna version of college is that you’re learning and discussing things with your professors,” said Arthur, a custom-jewelry maker who lives in Kingsport, Tenn. “The reality is that you have 450 kids in an auditorium listening to a teaching assistant. They’ve killed the golden goose themselves by being greedy, and I think people have started looking really closely at alternatives.”

After 160,000 people worldwide signed up for his free, online class on artificial intelligence, Sebastian Thrun quit his job as a Stanford computer science professor to fund Udacity, a free online university. It’s a udacious idea.

Students will be able to take tests to show mastery of critical thinking skills, writes Jeffrey Selingo. That will help the alternatively certified to compete for jobs with people who’ve spent four (or more) costly years pursuing a bachelor’s degree, adds Richard Vedder.

States cut higher ed funds by 7.6%

States spent 7.6% less on higher education in 2011-12 than in the previous year, concludes the annual Grapevine study by the Illinois State University Center for the Study of Higher Education and the State Higher Education Executive Officers. The declines were “driven heavily by the depletion” of federal stimulus funds, notes Inside Higher Ed.

. . . all but nine states experienced one-year declines from their 2010-11 totals. The 41 states that cut their spending did so by widely varying proportions, from as little as 1 percent (in Indiana and North Carolina) to as much as 41 percent (New Hampshire), with a full third seeing double-digit drops.

. . .  Twenty-nine states allocated less money to higher education in 2011-12 than they did in 2006-7, and nearly half — 14 — provided at least 10 percent less than they did five years ago.

The Grapevine study does not analyze funding per student and is not adjusted for inflation.

Regardless, the cutbacks in state funding come at a time when many states — and the country as a whole — are striving to increase the number of people they educate and the number of degrees, certificates and other credentials they award.

California, which cut funding by 11.8 percent, has restricted enrollment at community colleges and California State University campuses. Gov. Jerry Brown has pledged to put a temporary sales and income tax increase on the November ballot to fund K-12 and community colleges, but the plan is a “hard sell” even with the education community, writes John Fensterwald, my former colleague, on Educated Guess.

Again, Obama touts community colleges

President Obama touted community colleges as “community career centers” in his State of the Union speech. He proposed training 2 million people for skilled jobs through business-college partnerships, not a new idea.

Obama cited the experience of Jackie Bray, a single mom in North Carolina who was laid off from her job as a mechanic. “Then Siemens opened a gas turbine factory in Charlotte and formed a partnership with Central Piedmont Community College,” Obama said. “The company helped the college design courses in laser and robotics training. It paid Jackie’s tuition, then hired her to help operate their plant. I want every American looking for work to have the same opportunity as Jackie did.”

The president also pledged to make a college education affordable, pitching his student aid promises to middle-class families.

Some college, no degree

Thirty-seven million Americans have some college credits but no degree, reports Emily Hanford of American RadioWorks.

Marilyn Johnson Jackson could only manage the stress of night classes, two jobs and life as a single mom for so long. She gave up on the idea of ever getting her degree — and then discovered a new online program. . . .

Jackson: I can get out of the bed and walk right in here to my computer, do my homework, and I’m through for the day.

Getting students like Jackson to come back by offering flexible and convenient programs was once a market owned mostly by for-profit colleges, but traditional schools are catching on. Jackson finished her degree online through a community college.

After seven years of military service, John McGee didn’t like taking classes with 18-year-olds. An online program that gave credit for his experience enabled McGee to finish an associate’s degree in less than a year.

Aids experts discuss Pell reforms

Pell Grants must change to remain viable, concluded financial-aid experts at the The State of College Access 2012 Forum in Washington D.C., reports Ed Week‘s College Bound. The National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators (NASFAA), which hosted the event, released an issue brief on the role of Pell Grants in access, persistence, and completion.

If Pell can improve its efficiency and effectiveness, it will be able to make a stronger argument for funding, said Sandy Baum, a higher education policy analyst.

“We need to think creatively about options for the future, not at the last minute, but in advance,” said Baum. “If the program collapses of its own weight, we have a huge problem.”

Pell expenditures have increased six-fold since 1976 in constant dollars as more undergraduates receive the grants, which are capped at $5,550. Now costing $41 billion, Pell escaped serious cuts this year, but could be back on the chopping block next year.

Baum is working with College Board on a Gates-funded analysis of Pell Grants. Several changes are under discussion:

Complexity – To make dollars more effective, let students know ahead of time what they could get, perhaps with a simple table to see how much they qualify for based on income. .

Tax benefits – In reviewing federal student aid, look also at how much subsidy is going to offset college costs with education tax credits for students at all income levels (25 percent of tax deductions benefit families making more than $100,000) and not just Pell Grants that help low- and moderate-income students.

Structure – Think carefully about whether the same criteria and regulations work well for 18-year-old students just out of high school and 30-year-olds looking for short-term job retraining.

Incentives – Find ways to encourage institutions not to just open the doors to college but to accelerate completion.

Savings accounts – Create a college-savings program for the children of low-income tax filers so families have a stake in college education. Consider linking the amount of Pell Grant available to how long families were considered low income.

While the federal government doesn’t track graduation rates for Pell Grant recipients, it’s believed that success rates are low.

NASFAA’s site has advice on applying for federal financial aid.

College is the path to the American Dream

To keep open the path to the American Dream, we must tackle college productivity and affordability, writes Jamie Merisotis, CEO of the Lumina Foundation in the Huffington Post.

To increase productivity, institutions and systems must find ways to graduate significantly more students while controlling costs and delivering high-quality degrees. We believe that part of the solution lies in performance-based funding that rewards institutions not for the number of students they enroll, but for how many of their students succeed.

Tennessee is linking 70 percent of higher education appropriations to results and quality rather than enrollment.

Ohio’s public colleges and universities have saved more than $900 million over the last few years through joint purchasing of products and services, Merisotis writes.

Technology also can help students cope with college costs.

Research shows that prospective college students and their families still find it difficult locating information about college, and particularly the availability of financial aid and grants. We recently announced the winners of our NextGen planning grants and now six college access organizations are developing innovative technology solutions that will help students gain easier access to information about paying for college and applying for financial aid within college admission.

Employers must help colleges train skilled workers and help workers pay for advanced training, Merisotis adds.