Obama shifts higher ed policy
President Obama’s higher education plan represents a policy shift away from low-income students and toward the middle class, writes Inside Higher Ed.
“They’re sending a strong signal about where the second Obama administration, if we have one, is likely to go,” said Kevin Carey, policy director at Education Sector, a think tank. “They’re not going to just keep putting millions of dollars into the Pell Grant Program and letting the chips fall where they may.”
Expanding Pell Grants would do more to make college accessible, said Sara Goldrick-Rab, an associate professor of higher education policy at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
“I don’t have high hopes for [the new plan] being very effective in helping him achieve what I thought his goal was, which is getting more students from low-income families to be college graduates,” Goldrick-Rab said, describing the plan as “a little all over the place.”
“This is going to cause problems for the institutions that have the least resources to begin with.”
Judging whether a college provides “good value” is complex, writes Robert Sternberg, provost of Oklahoma State, in an open letter to the president.
Open-admissions colleges with many disadvantaged students won’t have the same graduation rates as elite institutions, he writes. “Over-focusing on completion can lead one to disregard the important issue of whether the education being completed is of the best quality our institutions of higher learning can provide.”
In addition, job preparation isn’t the only mission of colleges, Sternberg writes.
Rising tuition isn’t the biggest scandal in higher education, writes Jonathan Zimmerman, an NYU education and history professor, in the Los Angeles Times. It’s college’s failure to figure out whether students are learning. “Millions of American students and their families are mortgaging their futures to pay for a college education. We owe them an honest account of what they’re getting in return: not just what it costs, or where it will take them, but what it means.”
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.
Chicago college leaders’ jobs are on the line
Very low completion rates at Chicago City Colleges will improve or college presidents will lose their jobs, reports Inside Higher Ed in a look at Chancellor Cheryl Hyman’s “reinvention” campaign.
Measurements of the plan’s goals – more credentials earned, increased transfer rates, improved remediation outcomes and better success numbers for adult students – were written into the presidents’ job descriptions. And the board has required that campus chiefs provide “strong, decisive leadership” toward “dramatically” improved student success.
Faculty also are feeling pressure to improve completion rates, reports Inside Higher Ed.
“We’re the enemy. That’s the way we feel,” said Polly Hoover, president of the district-wide Faculty Council, and a professor of humanities at Wilbur Wright College. “We have been represented as the problem.”
Only 7 percent of full-time, first-time students at Chicago City Colleges complete a certificate or associate degree in three years. But that U.S. Education Department metric excludes nearly two thirds of students. Tracking all degree-seeking students over a longer period doesn’t improve the numbers by much.
When part-time students are included, the graduation rate bumps up a tick to 8 percent. And when time to degree is doubled, to six years, still only 13 percent of City College students make it to graduation.
More than half of degree-seeking students leave City Colleges after six months, and only 16 percent of students transfer to four-year institutions.
Most City College students are graduates of Chicago’s public schools. More than 90 percent need remediation.
Under the reinvention plan, City Colleges have hired more counselors and opened wellness centers. Colleges also are partnering with employers on job training programs.
Technology will help — but not yet
Technology will help improve student success rates — in the future, said James Applegate, a Lumina Foundation vice president, at the Higher Ed Tech Summit in Las Vegas.
Executives agreed that technology won’t change teaching and learning immediately, reports the Chronicle of Higher Education.
“We’re beginning to get lots of data on things like time of task, but we don’t have the outcomes yet to say what leads to a true learning moment. I think we are three to five years away from being about to do that,” said Troy Williams, vice president and general manager of Macmillan New Ventures, which makes the classroom polling system called I-clicker.
“These are really early days,” agreed Matthew Pittinsky, who runs a digital transcript company called Parchment and was one of the founders of Blackboard.
Technology can provide a great deal of information to students or instructors, but it’s not clear they’ll know how to use it.
Technology companies will have to work with colleges to link “learning analytics” tools to teaching and learning outcomes, Applegate said.
Texas billboards hit low graduation rates
8% of DCCCD students graduate in 3 yrs. Is that fair to the students? asks the Texas Association of Business in a billboard hitting the Dallas County Community College District. In October, the group criticized Austin Community College for a 4 percent graduation rate on a billboard asking: “Is that a good use of tax $?”
“Ouch,” as Inside Higher Ed puts it.
Austin Community College’s completion-and-transfer rate is 43 percent in three years, responds President Richard Rhodes. He notes the statistics cover only first-time, full-time students, who make up 5.5 percent of enrollment. (However, graduation rates are higher for this group than for older and part-time students.)
The billboard shows a “fundamental lack of understanding about the mission of community colleges and who our students are,” (pdf) responded Wright L. Lassiter Jr., chancellor of the Dallas County Community College District, in a letter to Hammond. The average student is 27, Lassiter wrote.
“They must balance work with family responsibilities and attending college. Yes, it seems they have lives that might interfere with the Texas Association of Business’s limited timeline.”
Completion rates are low for part-time students too, the association replied. Only 24 percent of part-time community college students who said they were seeking a degree complete a certificate or degree in six years, including transfer students who earned a bachelor’s degree.
The business group started looking at graduation rates three years ago when members complained they couldn’t find qualified workers, Bill Hammond, the association’s president and CEO, told Inside Higher Ed.
Hammond said the billboard campaign’s goal is a “better-educated workforce,” and community colleges aren’t getting the job done. About 9 percent of first-time students who enroll at two-year colleges in Texas graduate with an associate degree within four years, according to Complete College America.
“In Texas for a long time we have successfully focused on access,” Hammond said. “We’re spending a lot of money and not getting much in return.”
Hammond said he hopes both lawmakers and community college leaders tune into the group’s message. “They need to turn their focus to completion.”
Colleges should be funded based on performance, such as graduation rates, rather than enrollment, Hammond said.
Costly dropouts
Federal, state and local taxpayers spend billions of dollars on community college dropouts, I write in U.S. News.
Fewer than 45 percent of college-ready students and just 20 percent of remedial students earn a certificate or degree in four years at Valencia College in Orlando, Fla. That’s “nearly three times the rate” of similar urban community colleges and impressive enough to earn Valencia the first Aspen Prize for Community College Excellence, awarded Dec. 12 in Washington, D.C.
In short, even at one of the most successful community colleges, most students don’t complete a certificate or degree.
More graduates, but progress is slow
More Americans are earning college degrees, but not fast enough to meet ambitious college completion goals, concludes a new College Board report.
Currently, 41.1 percent of adults ages 25 to 34 have an associate degree or higher, up from 38.1 percent in 2000. At this pace, 46 percent of young adults will hold a degree by 2025. College Board’s goal is 55 percent. President Obama is shooting for 60 percent by 2020.
Among young adults, 69.1 percent of Asians, 48.7 percent of whites, 29.4 percent
of blacks and 19.2 percent of Hispanics have an associate degree or higher. Younger Asians and whites are more educated than their elders, while younger blacks and Hispanics are not.
A College Board commission in 2008 suggested 10 ways to boost completion rates, notes College Bound. The 2011 report found progress in preschool and kindergarten enrollment, high school graduation rates, simplification of the college-admissions process and high school standards.
However, there was little change in graduation rates.
Although persistence rates are up for full-time college students, three-year graduation rates for associate-degree-seeking students (34.1 percent) and six-year completion rates for bachelor-degree-seeking students (57.7 percent) have been relatively unchanged.
. . . Among the other recommendations the College Board suggests to help boost completion: Improve middle and high school college counseling, provide more need-based financial aid, increase transparency in the financial-aid process, control college costs, reduce college dropouts with data-based retention strategies, and ease transfer processes.
Need-based grant aid increased by 1.7 percent for low-income students at community colleges, the report found.
Mixed verdict on dual enrollment
When Florida high school students take “dual enrollment” classes at college campuses, they improve their chances of enrolling in college and earning a bachelor’s degree, concludes research by the Community College Research Center at Teachers’ College, Columbia. But students who take college classes taught on high school campuses don’t show gains.
It’s believed classes taught on college campuses are more rigorous.
Compared to Advanced Placement students, dual-enrollment students were more likely to start in community colleges but just as likely to complete a bachelor’s degree.
In a second study, high school seniors who passed a math placement test and enrolled in a rigorous college algebra class were 16% more likely to go to college and 23% more likely to earn a college degree than similar students who did not take the class.
However, marginal students — those who just met the minimum requirements for dual enrollment — were no more likely to enroll in or complete college than similar students who did not participate in dual enrollment.
Persistence
Three fourths of community college students enrolled in fall 2010 were enrolled — or graduated – in the next term, according to a National Student Clearinghouse snapshot report. Students who transfer are counted as persisting, which makes sense but is not the common practice.
Private, nonprofit four-year colleges had the highest persistence rate: 91.4 percent of students persisted from one semester to the next.
