College Student Debt Varies Greatly Per Degree Awarded

Debt, Dropouts and Degrees
A new study takes student debt loads and dropout rates into account to determine the amount of debt taken on for each degree issued. The Education Sector report is intended to give a more complete picture of higher education by dividing the total amount of money undergraduates borrow at a college by the number of degrees it awards. Source: ECS

Big Tuition Increases Coming For New College Year

Coming this Fall: Big Tuition Hikes
At least half the states cut funding for higher education in their recently concluded legislative sessions. In most cases, higher tuition will be the inevitable result. Some of the most dramatic increases will come in the biggest states. The most dramatic example of collegiate sticker shock will likely come in Washington where the budget imposes a 24% cut in state funding. Tuition will go up 20% as a result. (Stateline.org, 07/13/11)

Virginia Moves From Courses To Modules For Remedial Education

Va. Community colleges dive headfirst into remedial-math redesign
By Jennifer Gonzalez, The Chronicle of Higher Education
What if a college system could drastically shorten the amount of time it took students to complete remedial courses and finally give them a fighting chance to progress to college-level work and even graduate? The Virginia Community College system is poised to find out.

Overview Of Policies And Programs For College Transition From K-12

In the most recent edition of Higher Education: Handbook of Theory and Research, edited by John C. Smart and Michael B. Paulsen, University of illinois Professor Debra Bragg contributes a chapter on youth and adult transition titled, Examining Pathways to and through the Community College for Youth and Adults. Bragg uses a student-centered P-16 accountability model to analyze policies and programs intended to facilitate youth and adult transition to and through community colleges in preparation for higher education and employment.

College Professors Teach Math In Traditional Ways

  From Gay Clyburn, Carnegie Foundation

THE WORST WAY TO TEACH MATH
David Bressoud writes for the Mathematical Association of America: One of the most personally disturbing pieces of information gleaned from the MAA survey of over 700 calculus instructors was that almost two-thirds agreed with the statement, “Calculus students learn best from lectures, provided they are clear and well-prepared.” Another 20% somewhat disagreed. Only 15% disagreed or strongly disagreed. This belief of most calculus instructors that students learn best from lectures is in direct contradiction to the observation made by Halmos:“A good lecture is usually systematic, complete, precise—and dull; it is a bad teaching instrument.” This common belief is also contradicted by the evidence that we have, the most recent and dramatic of which comes from the Carl Wieman Science Education Initiative (CWSEI) at the University of British Columbia (UBC). The CWSEI study compared lecture format with interactive, clicker-based peer instruction in two large (267 and 271 students, respectively) sections of introductory physics for engineering majors. The results were published in Science. What is most impressive is how well controlled the study was—ensuring that the two classes really were comparable—and how strong the outcome was: The clicker-based peer instruction class performed 2.5 standard deviations above the control group.

Two Useful Reports On Student Financial Aid

Promoting Educational Opportunity: The Pell Grant Program at Community Colleges
This brief examines the historical and programmatic nature of the Pell Grant program and investigates how it has come to form trends over time. Underlying the examination is the use and importance of the program to college students, with a focus on those attending community colleges.

41st Annual Survey Report on State-Sponsored Financial Aid
This report provides data regarding state-funded expenditures for student financial aid and illustrates the extent of efforts made by the states to assist postsecondary students. Information in this report is based on academic year 2009-10 data from the 41st Annual National Association of State Student Grant and Aid Programs (NASSGAP) survey.

Financial Aid Helps High Risk College Students

    Results from an ongoing random assignment study of a private grant program in Wisconsin indicate that low-income students who receive Pell Grants and are unlikely to finish college get a sizeable boost in college persistence from additional financial aid. The findings suggest that directing aid to serve the neediest students may be the most equitable and cost-effective approach.

Researchers with the Wisconsin Scholars Longitudinal Study (WSLS) at the University of Wisconsin–Madison have been examining the impact of the Fund for Wisconsin Scholars (FFWS) need-based grant program on the educational attainment of its recipients since 2008. FFWS provides $3,500 per year to full-time, federal Pell Grant recipients enrolled at University of Wisconsin System institutions. WSLS researchers have collected survey and interview data on 1,500 students, including 600 grant recipients and a random sample of 900 eligible non-recipients who serve as a control group.

“Our findings suggest that making college more affordable for students who were initially unlikely to succeed in college increased their college persistence rates over the first three years of college by about 17 percentage points,” says Sara Goldrick-Rab, WSLS co-director and associate professor of educational policy studies and sociology.  

However, since financial aid programs usually do not explicitly target this particular group of students, prior research has found that the average effects of need-based grants are often modest. “It’s common to focus only on the average effects of financial aid programs, but it’s clear that often policies work better for some people than others,” says Goldrick-Rab.  “In this case, the Wisconsin grant really helped some students, didn’t help others, and may even have had adverse consequences for another group.”

While policy discussions about targeting financial aid often focus on financial need, the WSLS researchers also considered challenges faced by first-generation students and those with inadequate academic preparation. According to the study, students without college-educated parents and those with lower test scores were initially much less likely to persist in college, while students with high test scores and whose parents held bachelor’s degrees began with a high probability of finishing. The effects of the additional financial aid provided by the Wisconsin grant were very different for those two groups.

Initial findings indicate the program has a moderate positive impact, on average, on the educational attainment of grant recipients.  “Enrollment rates didn’t improve much over three years.  But the good news is that some students who were awarded the grant were 28 percent more likely to finish 60 credits over two years, increasing the chances that they will earn a bachelor’s degree on time,” says Doug Harris, WSLS co-director and associate professor of educational policy studies and public affairs.  

Given the WSLS is the first random assignment study of a program with a similar structure to the federal Pell Grant, it may have important implications for that program, one of the nation’s largest in the education sector. According to Michael McPherson, President of the Spencer Foundation and noted scholar of higher education policy, “This study is the result of an extraordinary opportunity to bring high-quality experimental research to a vitally important question: the effect of changes in need-based grant aid on outcomes for students already enrolled in college.”

Goldrick-Rab, Harris, and co-authors James Benson and Robert Kelchen present and discuss additional findings in a working paper issued by the Institute for Research on Poverty entitled “Conditional Cash Transfers and College Persistence: Evidence from a Randomized Need-Based Grant Program.” It can be downloaded, along with an executive summary, at: http://www.finaidstudy.org

More information is available at: http://www.finaidstudy.org/conference.html

80% Of Community College Students Want A 4 Year Degree

As many as four out of five community college students in the United States want to transfer to a four-year institution so they can obtain a bachelor’s degree, according to a College Board report. But many transfer students have taken classes that make the advising process complicated. (New York Times, 07/14/11). Despite the Obama administration interest in AA degrees and certificates, most students are not interested in them. Is this interest in transfer sensible, realistic, and attainable?

Colleges Can Game The College Completion Pressure

By Watson Scott Swail, President & CEO, Educational Policy Institute/EPI International

With the push for 20 million more college graduates in America, there is increasing pressure on institutions to produce more degrees. As one might surmise, this is producing a “gaming” situation, where not all degrees will be alike.

First is the proposal from some to give anyone who has 120 credits, regardless of what credits they are, a bachelor’s degree. Second is the use of dual enrollment courses to give students college credit while in high school, with the goal of getting an associate’s degree very quickly.

While both arguments can be made, and while they would increase the number of “college graduates,” it certainly doesn’t do anything tangible to help the economy.

With regard to the former, a collection of credits for a bachelor’s program can be somewhat meaningless for the development of knowledge and expertise. If those credits have close enough academic links, then fine. But in many cases, perhaps most, they may be nothing more than a collection of “seat time” credits. That doesn’t make us more competitive. It just means we conferred more degrees.

Dual credit or enrollment is a more concerning issue. The issue of joint high school/college courses is puzzling. At the Advanced Placement level, I get that, because if students can take relatively high-end introductory college courses (e.g., Calculus A/B) in place of other high school courses, fine. But dual credit is not the same as AP. Dual credit is typically more common, lower-level courses, which begs this question: if students are able to take these college-level courses in high school, what does that say about the high school curriculum? Why have it at all?

If students can take dual credit courses and high schools can very conveniently show that they have matriculated more college graduates through, arguably, watered down dual credit offerings, what have we accomplished?

This conversation says two things: first, we must be very careful and mindful of public policy that introduces a gaming atmosphere into play. And second, we have to seriously think of what our high school curriculum is if we can just exchange college courses for it without too much thought. Perhaps high school, as we know it, is now completely antiquated? (it is definitely antiquated, but completely?)

Myths Of Remedial Education

5 Myths of Remedial Ed (Commentary)
Developmental education is a K-12 problem, costs colleges dearly and proves that some students shouldn’t go to college. Bruce Vandal from ECS and Jane V. Wellman from the Delta Cost Project challenge these misperceptions. They also offer simple steps that most states can take to reform remedial education and increase college completion rates. (Inside Higher Ed, 07/21/11)