A new focus on near-completers

Near-completers — people who’ve earned most but not all credits needed for a degree — are a key to meeting President Obama’s college completion goal, said participants in an Institute for Higher Education Policy meeting covered by Inside Higher Ed.

IHEPs Project Win-Win has helped nine institutions award nearly 600 associate degrees in only seven months, said Clifford Adelman, a senior associate.  Colleges look for people missing an associate degree by nine or fewer credits.

The program, focused on associate degrees, began two years ago and has since expanded, encompassing six states and assisting 35 institutions. As of July, 23 of the institutions identified more than 40,000 near-completer students.

. . . “You’re in for a lot of sweat to see who meets the criteria,” Adelman said. “But if you don’t think this stuff has to be done you are living on Planet Zolar and not this one.”

Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education’s Non-traditional No More also helps colleges identify students close to a degree, said Patrick Lane, a project coordinator.

One strategy used is the “concierge” model of building a path for adult learners back to college. Institutions designate one person to work with returning students, rather then recruit students back and then leave them to wade through all the departments necessary to return. It’s a “one-stop shop” for the student, eliminating bureaucratic barriers, Lane said.

The “ready adults, the near-completers, or what I prefer to call the life learners” are the “lowest-hanging fruits” said Lee Fisher, president of CEOs for Cities, in the keynote address.

You may already be a graduate

San José-Evergreen Community College District is trying to track more than 1,000 students who earned a certificate or associate degree, but never claimed their credentials, reports Inside Higher Ed.

Going beyond the Institute for Higher Education Policy’s Project Win-Win, which urges colleges to retroactively award associate degrees, the San Jose district also is targeting certificates. The campaign includes “current students who may have unknowingly earned a certificate on their way to an associate degree.”  About half the missing credentials are certificates.

The district graduates only six credentialed students (counting both degrees and certificates) annually for every 100 full-time equivalent students, research director Oleg Bespalov found.  Statewide, only 27 percent of community college students who transfer to a California State University have an associate degree.

“That struck me as kind of funky,” Bespalov said. “Students are required to complete at least 60 credits before transferring to a CSU, so they cannot all have not earned an associate degree. Clearly, there’s something wrong here.”

Many of those transfer students will ultimately not earn a baccalaureate degree from their four-year institutions, Bespalov noted, meaning that they will then leave the education system without a credential at all. He said a benchmark degree, such as an associate degree, on the way to something greater can make a difference in a person’s income level and job opportunities.

In addition to helping former students, retroactive credentialing could improve the college district’s graduation rate and help meet President Obama’s 2020 graduation goals.

Degree audits are complex, says Cliff Adelman, senior associate at IHEP. Some colleges that piloted Project Win-Win started with software “that purported to do degree audits, gave up, and went to hand-and-eye” readings of transcript records due to complications identifying, among other variables, residency requirements, degree program idiosyncrasies, the age of credits, and the difference between courses accepted for credit and transfer courses that count toward a credential.

You may already have an AA

You may already have an associate degree, according to Project Win-Win, which is trying to find former students whose academic records qualify them for a degree  they never received.  Project Win-Win also hopes to persuade former students who are nine or fewer credits short of a degree to finish up.  The three-year, $1.3-million campaign was organized by the Institute for Higher Education Policy and funded by the Lumina Foundation, reports the Chronicle of Higher Education.

IHEP will work with 35 community colleges and four-year universities that offer associate degrees in Louisiana, Missouri, New York, Ohio, Virginia, and Wisconsin. Institutions will examine student records to find eligible students and those who are only a few credits short.

If all colleges and universities that award associate degrees participated in Project Win-Win, we’d see at least a 12 percent increase in associate degrees, predicts Cliff Adelman, a senior associate at IHEP. 

Last year, a pilot program  in partnership with Education Trust awarded nearly 600 associate degrees at nine institutions in three states. Almost 1,600 students were identified as potential degree recipients.

Many former students are surprised to learn that they’d met the degree requirements or come close. They weren’t keeping track — and neither were the colleges they attended.

New Mexico looks for near-graduates of four-year universities to help them complete their final credits and earn a degree, reports College Puzzle.