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.

College for all — with easier math

Math teachers at my daughter’s old high school oppose a plan to require all students to pass college-prep classes required for admission to California universities, known as A-G courses. They say some Palo Alto High students — disproportionately black, Hispanic and disabled — can’t pass the school’s demanding Algebra II class, which requires more than the UC/CSU standard.  Water it down to the minimal level and students will end up in remedial math in college, the teachers warn.

The department chair, Radu Toma, wrote the letter (posted on wecandobetterpaloalto.org), which is signed by his colleagues. He taught my daughter Geometry in ninth grade and AP Calculus in 12th grade. Her Algebra II and pre-calc teachers signed too.

The math teachers are snobs who only want to teach advanced classes, argues LaToya Baldwin Clark in the Palo Alto Weekly. Require A-G for graduation, she writes, and create an easier Algebra II class for average students who don’t have parents who can tutor them — or pay for tutoring.

By the department’s own admission, even the regular lane Algebra II class greatly exceeds the UC/CSU. In the view of Toma and his colleagues, “diluting the standards in our regular lane to basic benchmarks which might allow every student to pass Algebra II would end up hurting the district’s reputation.” The department refuses to teach an Algebra II that satisfies UC/CSU requirements that students can actually pass. And where does the Paly math department think those students who fail to complete Algebra II should go, rather than to college? They can “go on to community colleges or jobs for which district prepares them better than most districts.”

The reputation of a high school is enhanced when all students go to four-year colleges.

Last year, 85 percent of all high school graduates in the district met the UC/CSU requirements. But only 5 percent of special-ed students, 15 percent of blacks and 40 percent of Hispanic graduates were eligible for state universities.

Many of the black and Hispanic students have transferred from neighboring East Palo Alto, a low-income and working-class town, under a desegregation agreement. Many of the Palo Alto students are the children of very well-educated parents who work in high-tech or at Stanford. There’s no question that Palo Alto’s two high schools are designed to prepare students for very competitive colleges and universities.

The local community college, Foothill, is one of the best in the state. But graduation rates are low for community college students. Starting at a four-year university — San Jose State is the likely choice — would raise the odds of earning a bachelor’s degree.

But we’re still talking about long odds. Most remedial math students never earn a degree.

If a basic Algebra II is created, it should be aligned with college placement tests, so students know if they’re on track to take college-level or remedial classes. If the high school maintains high standards in its regular-lane Algebra II, then teachers need a strategy to help math-challenged students pass.

There’s another option: Work with Foothill to create a career-prep track. Community colleges offer programs that qualify students for a “middle-skill” job in two years or less. Some require advanced algebra, but others do not. But this would be seen as setting low expectations for other people’s kids. It wouldn’t fly.

Who graduates? White women do best

Nearly three quarters of Black and Latino degree‐seeking students did not earn a community college degree in six years, according to a supplemental analysis to Divided We Fail: Improving College Completion and Closing Racial Gaps in California’s Community Colleges. Women are more likely to graduate than men,  concludes the report by the Campaign for College Opportunity, the Institute for Higher Education Leadership & Policy (IHELP) at Sacramento State, Hispanas Organized for Political Equality (HOPE), and the Women’s Foundation of California.

While 39 percent of white women earn a degree, the completion rate is only 27 percent for black women and 23 percent for Latinas.

Minority men do much worse. Nearly 80 percent of male Black and Latino college students in California enroll in a community college. After six years, 80 percent have failed to complete a credential.

“For young black men, community colleges are critical in their hopes to learn and become prepared for the workforce so they can improve their standard of living. Unfortunately, many of our men go to community college and then disappear – no training, no degree, no strong employment opportunities,” said Deacon John Wilson, education director of the West Angeles Church of God in Christ.

The state budget crisis may mean more tuition hikes and cuts to student services, warned Michele Siqueiros, executive director of the Campaign for College Opportunity.

Black and Latino students who transfer to a four-year institution often choose a for-profit college, risking substantial debt, the report found.

Only 13 percent of Latino men and 15 percent of Latinas transfer compared to nearly 30 percent of white women.

Although Black students were more likely to transfer to a university than Latinos, they were significantly less likely to complete a transfer curriculum or earn an associate degree.

Neither a borrower nor a graduate be

Afraid of debt, college students are working more, taking fewer credits and starting at community colleges. These debt-dodging strategies raise the risks students won’t graduate, reports AP.

“There’s been such attention on student debt being unmanageable that current students have internalized that,” said Deborah Santiago, co-founder and vice president for policy research at the group Excelencia in Education, a nonprofit advocacy group. In fact, “If you can take out a little bit of loan you’re more likely to complete. If you can go to a more selective institution that gives you more resources and support, you’re more likely to complete.”

Students are borrowing less in real dollars, College Board reports. Private loans are way down as students turn to federal aid.

What’s the upside of borrowing? Federal data analyzed by Santiago’s group and The Institute for Higher Education Policy (IHEP) in 2008 shows roughly 86 percent of students who borrow for college are able to attend full-time, compared to 70 percent of students who don’t borrow. That matters because roughly 60 percent of full-time students receive a bachelor’s degree within eight years, compared to 25 percent of part-time students.

Comparably qualified students are more likely to graduate from a four-year university than a community college, other research shows.

Student debt aversion is most pronounced among Hispanics and Asians, who borrow at lower rates than whites despite having higher financial need. And it appears to have the greatest consequences for Hispanics and blacks.

Fifty-one percent of blacks who had financial need but decided not to borrow had left school within three years without a degree, compared to 39 percent of those who borrowed, the study by Excelencia and IHEP found. For Hispanics, 41 percent of non-borrowers had left, compared to 32 percent who borrowed.

Despite recent tuition jumps at California community colleges, few students take out loans. But they work long hours to pay living expenses, often studying part-time.

Debt aversion is more dangerous than debt, says Eloy Oakley, the president of Long Beach City College.

“The longer they’re in school, the more opportunity they have to be distracted by life events, jobs, families, situations that change in their own families,” says Oakley, whose student body is 41 percent Hispanic and 16 percent Asian. “If we can minimize those exit points and shorten their time to degree, that’s much more advantageous to them.”

Students need “financial literacy” training to understand how to access financial aid and federal loans, balancing reasonable debt against future incomes, advocates say.

However, low graduation rates make debt a higher risk for community college students. A nurse will earn enough to pay off her loans. But most would-be nurses never make it to a degree.

Apologies for ‘racist’ cartoon

A “racist” cartoon in the student newspaper has sparked controversy at Solano Community College in California. The four-strip panel, drawn by a black male student, showed black women complaining about black men’s irresponsibility and concluding: “(We) need to get rid of them ALL!! A toast ladies — Black men need to just GO AWAY.”

Student editor-in-chief Sharman Bruni said the Tempest has “no tolerance for racism in the newsroom,” according to a statement posted on the school paper’s website and which she read to about 125 students and administrators who attended a noon panel discussion in the Solano College Theatre.

The cartoon strip was part of a series which would have shown “the innate strength of black male and female relationships” and that “there is nothing that black men and women cannot overcome,” Bruni said. “We acknowledge that there was an error in judgment in publishing the strip without proper context and we take full responsibility for this.”

At the open forum, Tempest staff members, the faculty advisor and cartoonist Phillip Temple spoke to critics. Temple, who was booed by black students, said the cartoon was meant to be part of a series with a positive message for black women and men.  The Tempest has canceled the series.

SCC President Jowel Laguerre also condemned the cartoon as “highly offensive, insensitive” and something which “contradicts our district’s philosophy, core values and mission,” according to a written statement.

“Joking about “getting rid” of black men next to an editorial about a black man who was killed was horrible judgment. And the cartoon wasn’t funny. But I can’t help thinking there must be few molehills and many mountains on the Solano campus.

Students do better with same-race prof

Community college students perform better when the instructor is the same race or ethnicity, according to a study published by the National Bureau for Economic Research. The effect is greatest for blacks and younger students, concludes “A Community College Instructor Like Me: Race and Ethnicity Interactions in the Classroom.”

Researchers studied the grades and persistence of more than 30,000 students at De Anza College near San Jose.  A majority (51 percent) of De Anza students are Asian-American with some coming from low-income immigrant families and others from affluent homes. Twenty-eight percent are white, 14 percent Latino, 4 percent black and 3 percent “other.”

Approximately 70 percent of instructors are white, 15 percent are Asian-American, 8 percent Latino and 4.5 percent black.

I wonder if the results would be the same at a college with more black and Latino students and instructors.

All groups did best in course completion and grades with a same-race instructor and worse with a different-race instructor, notes Inside Higher Ed.

Among all nonwhite groups, the study found a gain of 2.9 percentage points in the proportion of students completing courses taught by instructors of the same race as students — cutting in half the gaps in minority vs. white course completion rates. (Among all students in all non-recreational courses, 24 percent of white students drop out, compared to 26 percent of Asian students, 28 percent of Latino students, 30 percent of black students and 28 percent of other, nonwhite students.)

. . . of those students who don’t drop out, 89 percent of white and Asian students pass, compared to 82 percent of black students; and 68 percent of white and Asian students who complete courses earn at least a B, while only 53 percent of black students do. For black students taught by a black instructor, there was a gain of 13 percentage points — among those who completed the course — in the proportion earning a B or higher.

It’s not likely that minority instructors grade same-race minority students leniently, researchers conclude, pointing to dropout rates that occur before the instructor has handed out any grades. In addition, same-race instructors have little effect on achievement by students 22 and older.

If the students were reacting to discrimination by instructors, the impact should be evident among older students as well, the authors write. The authors write that they suspect younger students “are likely to be susceptible to role-model effects, while older students are not.”

While hiring more black and Latino instructors would give an academic boost to traditional-age students in these groups, it would hurt the performance of Asians and whites, the researchers pointed out.

Hispanic college enrollment surges

Hispanic college enrollment surged by 24 percent from 2009 to 2010 according to a Pew Hispanic Center analysis of Census data. In 2010, 32 percent of Hispanics 18 to 24 years old were enrolled in college, compared to only 13 percent in 1972 and 27 percent in 2009.

The Hispanic enrollment increase is a result of population growth — 19 percent of the nation’s 18- to 24-year-olds are Hispanic — and rising high school graduation rates.

“This isn’t just about population growth,” Richard Fry, the report’s author, told the New York Times. “They are narrowing the gap.”

The high school graduation rate for young Hispanics soared from 59 percent in 2000 to 72 percent in 2010.

As more Hispanic, black and Asian-American students enroll in college, the number of young whites declined, Pew reports.

From 2009 to 2010, the number of Hispanic young adults enrolled in college grew by 349,000, compared with an increase of 88,000 young blacks and 43,000 young Asian Americans and a decrease of 320,000 young non-Hispanic whites.

Young Hispanics now outnumber young blacks on campus, even though black college enrollment has grown steadily for decades.  In 2010, 38 percent of all 18- to 24-year-old blacks were enrolled in college, up from 13 percent in 1967 and 32 percent in 2008.

Blacks are closing the gap with whites: 43 percent of young whites are enrolled in college. With a 62 percent college enrollment rate, young Asian-Americans are way ahead.

Forty-six percent of young Hispanic college students attend two-year colleges, the report found.  That’s significantly higher than the percentage for Asians (22 percent), whites (27 percent) or blacks (37 percent).

Community college students are much less likely to complete a degree — associate or bachelor’s — compared to students who start at a four-year institution.

CUNY will help train black, Latino males

Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s Young Men’s Initiative will offer basic skills classes, job training, paid internships and mentoring to young black and Latino men. City University of New York hopes to play a key role, reports Inside Higher Ed.

Whenever there’s a conversation about educational or workforce preparedness goals in New York City, CUNY is going to be involved,” said Suri Duitch, associate university dean for continuing education and deputy to the senior university dean for academic affairs at CUNY. “

LaGuardia Community College will get funding to expand its health training program and Bronx Community College will be able to spin off a peer mentoring program for young men seeking a GED.

CUNY is also incorporating some of the findings from the city’s original round of research into other programs already in place. “One commonality of all the effective programs is that they helped young men find and keep a stable adult in their lives,” Duitch said. “And we will incorporate those into our models as well.”

As part of the initiative, city high schools’ performance grades will factor in the success rates of black and Latino male students.

For-profits accused of ‘astroturf’ campaign

For-profit college trade groups are running ads trumpeting black and Hispanic opposition to rules that would cut student loans and grants for career programs with high debt-to-earnings ratios and default rates. But other minorities strongly support the “gainful employment” rule, saying it will protect students from going into debt for degrees of dubious value, reports Bloomberg.

Most minority House members voted to let the rules go forward in February’s budget negotiations.

“The way the for-profits and their lobbyists point to their supposed care for and support of low-income students and people of color is, to me, offensive,” said California Representative Maxine Waters, a Democrat and member of the Congressional Black Caucus.

The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, a coalition of more than 200 U.S. advocacy groups for minorities and the poor, and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People support the proposal, called the gainful employment rule.

The for-profit sector has lobbied strenuously against the regulation, generating a flood of comments that have delayed publication of the rule, notes Higher Ed Watch. “Mad Libs’ Career College Edition,” quotes a form letter signed by a student named Farnaz:

I am a career college student at [INSTITUTION] studying [PROGRAM]. [INSTITUTION] is providing me with the education and training necessary to obtain the job I`ve always wanted as a [CAREER]. The Department of Education`s proposed gainful employment rule could take this dream away from me and thousands of other students by denying us the federal financial aid to which we are entitled [EXPLAIN ANY OTHER CONCERNS YOU HAVE ABOUT LOSING ACCESS TO THE PROGRAM OF YOUR CHOICE AT YOUR INSTITUTION.]

Farnaz didn’t bother to fill in the blanks.

Closing the graduation gap

Universities brag about recruiting minority students, but what about graduating them? The college graduation gap for blacks and Hispanics is disturbing, reports Education Trust.

At private institutions, 73.4 percent of white students earned their degrees within six years, while only 54.7 percent of black students and 62.9 percent of Hispanic students made it through the schools they started.

Some colleges and universities have closed the graduation gap, such as Georgia State and University of Miami.  Others show huge gaps: University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee graduates 17.9 percent of blacks, 26.1 percent of Hispanics and 46.1 percent of whites.