Community colleges draw more young, middle-class students

Community colleges will become “separate and unequal” unless they recruit more middle-class students, argues a Century Foundation task force.

In hard times, middle-class families are taking a second look at low-cost community colleges. Nationwide, 22 percent of college students with family incomes over $100,000 attended community colleges last year, up from 16 percent four years ago, according to Sallie Mae.

Younger, wealthier students demand more from community colleges, reports Inside Higher Ed.

“Community college gradually is gaining wider acceptance as the default option out of high school,” said Stephen G. Katsinas, director of the University of Alabama’s Education Policy Center.

Relatively affluent young students are typically better-prepared academically and have a good chance of earning a degree. They are also more likely to attend full-time, require less remediation than their peers and can be cheaper for community colleges to educate.

But this group is also demanding, as traditional-age students want a full campus experience with amenities like fitness centers and extracurricular activities, which can mean new buildings and strained student service budgets. They are also more likely to seek out counselors, experts said.

Raritan Valley Community College in suburban New Jersey is seeing a surge of young, middle-class students who plan to earn bachelor’s degrees. The college remodeled the cafeteria, expanded the fitness center and started planning a new student life and leadership center.

The increase in full-time students paying full-time tuition — usually for less-expensive general education courses — has helped offset the costs.

The rise in middle-class students seeking academic classes is good for low-income and career-tech students, writes Community College Dean. When the Great Recession raised enrollment, his college saw some displaced workers and many 18-year-olds who would have started at four-year colleges in better times.

The well-intended political leaders who are looking at cc’s as training centers should be careful what they wish for. The vocational programs we run are generally far more expensive to run than the classic liberal arts classes; they require specialized equipment and facilities, for starters, and the class sizes tend to run lower. A dirty little secret of higher ed finance is that certain disciplines – the chalk-and-talk liberal arts classes, mostly – subsidize higher-cost disciplines. All those full-to-the-brim psych classes help pay for the small and expensive nursing clinicals. Take away the psych classes, and the college’s per-student costs will skyrocket.

When privileged students demand the services that “real” colleges offer, then single moms will have access to those services too, the dean writes.

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.”

The death of voc ed — and the middle class

The death of vocational education is hastening the demise of the middle class, argues Marc Tucker in Ed Week.

Years ago, almost all the larger cities had selective vocational high schools whose graduates were virtually assured good jobs, Tucker writes. Employers made sure these schools had “competent instructors and up-to-date equipment,” so graduates would meet job requirements.

That ended when vocational education became just another class, often crowded out by academic requirements, Tucker writes.

I will never forget an interview I did a few years ago with a wonderful man who had been teaching vocational education for decades in his middle class community.  With tears in his eyes, he described how, when he began, he had, with great pride prepared young men (that’s how it was) for well-paying careers in the skilled trades.  Now, he told me, “That’s all over.  Now I get the kids who the teachers of academic courses don’t want to deal with.  I am expected to use my shop to motivate those kids to learn what they can of basic skills.”  He was, in high school, trying to interest these young people, who were full of the despair and anger that comes of knowing that everyone else had given up on them, to learn enough arithmetic to measure the length of a board.  He knew that was an important thing to do, but he also knew that it was a far cry from serious vocational education of the sort he had done very well years earlier.

Career academies were developed to motivate students, not to prepare them for real jobs, Tucker writes. Voc ed, now renamed “career technical education,” is no longer a “serious enterprise” in high schools.

By contrast, Japan, Singapore, the Netherlands, Denmark and other leading industrial countries “doubled down to improve both their academic and their vocational programs.”

They built vocational education programs that require high academic skills.  And they designed programs that could deliver those skills.  They did not sever the connections between employers and their high schools; they strengthened them.  They made sure their high school vocational students had first-rate instructors and equipment.  Their reward is a work force that is balanced between managers and workers, scientists and technicians.  No one tells an individual student what he or she will do with their life.  But those students have a range of attractive choices.

Tucker links to descriptions of vocational education in the Netherlands, Australia and Singapore.

In his State of the Union speech, President Obama called for states to require school attendance till age 18 or graduation. If schools offer no options except the college track, that seems cruel.

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.

Students choose lower-cost colleges

Families spent 9 percent less on college last year, according to a new Sallie Mae study. Spending had been going up each year, despite the recession, but more parents say they’re asking their children to choose lower-cost colleges, live at home or attend part-time.

Twenty-two percent of students from high-income families started at community colleges, up from only 12 percent the year before.  Thirty-seven percent live at home.

While 51 percent of parents were “willing to stretch” financially to send a child to college, that’s down from 64 percent in 2010.

The rise in low-income college students may be explained by families falling out of the middle class, writes Daniel Luzer on College, Inc.

The steepest decline in college spending came among upper-income families, those earning six-figure incomes, whose average outlay declined from $31,245 in the 2010 academic year to $25,760 in 2011.

Low-income families (earning $35,000 or less) reported increased college spending, from $17,404 in 2010 to $19,888 in 2011. That is a counter-intuitive finding, given the massive increase in need-based aid of recent years. The report suggests the increase could simply reflect that a broader share of survey respondents have low incomes.

Grants and scholarships cover 33 percent of all college spending, up from 23 percent a year ago. Forty-six percent of families receive grants, up from 30 percent in a single year.  Nearly half of middle-income families received grant aid.

Though Americans are wary of college spending, 90 percent of students say college is an investment in the future.

The share of families who “strongly agreed” with the statement that college is essential for earning (as opposed to learning) rose from 59 percent in 2010 to 70 percent in 2011.

. . . The share of students who said their primary motive for college was to earn more money rose sharply, a one-year jump from 61 percent to 75 percent.

Average percentage of total cost of attendance paid from each source:

Build non-degree paths to the middle class

Can the Middle Class Be Saved? asks Don Peck in an interesting (and depressing) Atlantic story.

College graduates with a four-year degree are doing better than non-graduates, whose prospects are “flat or failing,” he writes. But the only people earning more are those with postgraduate degrees.

The less-educated middle class — people who made a decent living without a bachelor’s degree — is suffering financially and socially, Peck writes.

In a national study of the American family released late last year, the sociologist W. Bradford Wilcox wrote that among “Middle Americans”—people with a high-school diploma but not a college degree—an array of signals of family dysfunction have begun to blink red. “The family lives of today’s moderately educated Americans,” which in the 1970s closely resembled those of college graduates, now “increasingly resemble those of high-school dropouts, too often burdened by financial stress, partner conflict, single parenting, and troubled children.”

. . . Between 2006 and 2008, among moderately educated women, 44 percent of all births occurred outside marriage, not far off the rate (54 percent) among high-school dropouts; among college-educated women, that proportion was just 6 percent.

National policy is to turn everyone into a college graduate.

Grants, loans, and tax credits to undergraduate and graduate students total roughly $160 billion each year; by contrast, in 2004, federal, state, and local spending on employment and training programs (which commonly assist people without a college education) totaled $7 billion—an inflation-adjusted decline of about 75 percent since 1978.

Peck likes the idea of “career academies” within larger high schools and apprenticeships linked to community colleges as ways to help students find “paths into the middle class that do not depend on a four-year college degree.”

Pell Grants for the middle class?

Are Pell Grants aid for the middle class? asks National Journal. Some say budget hawks spared Pell from massive cuts because — unlike welfare, Medicaid or food stamps — the middle class benefits too.

Yet most recipients report a family income under $30,000 a year; the median is $16,300.

Pell Grants are billed falsely as a middle-class benefit so politicians can buy votes, writes Cato‘s Neal McCluskey.

Voters get money they don’t have to repay, even if they graduate and greatly increase their earnings.  As students get more aid, colleges raise tuition.

Pell helps the poor, the rich pay their own way and the middle class goes into debt, writes Greg Richmond of the National Association of Charter School Authorizers.

. . . by thinking of Pell Grants as a benefit for the middle class, members of Congress can pretend that there is a rational system in place for providing and financing higher education in this country. There isn’t.

College graduates from middle-class families “must start their careers with a crippling debt,” he writes.

College pays — but more isn’t always better

A “college degree is key to economic opportunity,” concludes a new report by Georgetown’s Center on Education and the Workforce. Four-year college graduates earn 84 percent more over a lifetime than those with only a high school diploma, a rise from 75 percent in 1999, the study found.

However, earnings depend not just on education but on the occupational field.  The registered nurse with an associate degree is likely to earn more than the social worker with a bachelor’s.

This graphic shows the earnings overlap relative to the median lifetime earnings of $2,868,000 for workers with a bachelor’s degree. It shows 28.2 percent of workers with an associate degree match the earnings of the median four-year graduate.

Women earn about 25 percent less than men at each educational level. As a result, the average man with “some college” earns as much as the average woman with a bachelor’s degree.

Whites earn more than other races with the same educational attainment until the postgraduate level, where Asian-Americans earn the most.

“Postsecondary education has become the new gateway to the middle class and one of the most important economic issues of our time,” the report concludes.

Economists see fewer middle-income jobs

Economists predict a split job market, once employers start hiring again, AP reports. There will be well-paid jobs for well-educated lawyers, scientists and software engineers. There will be low-paying jobs for low-skilled store clerks and home health aides.

And those in between? Their outlook is bleaker. Economists foresee fewer moderately paid factory supervisors, postal workers, and office administrators.

It will take till 2014 or later to regain the 8.4 million jobs lost to the recession, according to projections.

“There will be jobs,” says Lawrence Katz, a Harvard economist. “The big question is what they are going to pay, and what kind of lives they will allow people to lead? This will be a big issue for how broad a middle class we are going to have.”

In some fields, such as manufacturing, real estate, and financial services, employment isn’t expected to rebound. Any occupation that can be automated or outsourced is at risk.

Many community college students hope to qualify for health careers that can’t be outsourced. But there’s going to be a lot of competition for those jobs, which could drive wages lower. A few years ago, demand for nurses was high. Now, colleges could be training too many nurses, warns Minnesota Public Radio.