New Survey Of College Completion And Value Of College

“One Degree of Separation: How Young Americans Who Don’t Finish College See Their Chances for Success” provides compelling insight into the barriers young adults face when considering higher education. The study compares the perceptions of young people who completed a college degree and those who obtained only a high school diploma. It found that many lack critical information necessary to further their educations, such as how to identify and apply for financial aid. Disturbingly, 72 percent of those have only a high school degree were unable to identify the FAFSA – the Free Application for Federal Student Aid.

The survey examined the views of a random sample of more than 600 young adults aged 26 to 34 years old, both those who completed either a college degree or postsecondary certificate and those whose highest credential is a high school diploma.

The report is available for download at www.publicagenda.org/files/pdf/one-degree-of-separation.pdf. Researchers also found a growing skepticism about whether college is worth it, especially among those students who need to borrow money to pay for it. Only 37 percent of those with only a high school diploma “strongly agree” that, even if you have to take out a loan, going to college is worth it in the long run.

Yet those with only a high school education also have a darker view of their economic future. Only 36 percent of high school graduates say it’s “very likely” they’ll be financially secure in their lifetime, compared to 55 percent of college graduates.

Nationally, fewer than half of students who enter four-year colleges complete a degree in six years. At community colleges, only 20 percent complete with a two-year degree in three years. This report examines in depth the outlook of the non-graduating majority.

“One Degree of Separation” is the third in a series of Public Agenda surveys probing young people’s attitudes on higher education and college completion. Previous reports, also funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, can be found at www.publicagenda.org/theirwholelivesaheadofthem.

States Continue To Cut College Funding

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-Source ECS

ACT Exam For Science And Reading Has No Predictive Power For College Student Outcomes

From Professor Eric Bettinger, Stanford University, ebetting@stanford.edu to obtain the paper.
IMPROVING COLLEGE PERFORMANCE AND RETENTION THE EASY WAY: UNPACKING THE ACT EXAM
Colleges rely on the ACT exam in their admission decisions to increase their ability to differentiate between students likely to succeed and those that have a high risk of under-performing and dropping out. We show that two of the four sub tests of the ACT, English and Mathematics, are highly predictive of positive college outcomes while the other two subtests, Science and Reading, provide little or no additional predictive power. This result is robust across various samples, specifications, and outcome measures. We demonstrate that focusing solely on the English and Mathematics test scores greatly enhances the predictive validity of the ACT exam.

For Profit-Colleges Are Not Always What Media Says They Are

While many of the recent debates about for-profit companies in K-12 and higher education have reflected traditional ideological divisions between Democrats and Republicans, a closer look at federal education policy, congressional politics, and public opinion reveals that these lines in the sand are far from constant, particularly when it comes to the Democratic position.

In “More Than Meets the Eye: The Politics of For-Profits in Education,” the second report of AEI’s Private Enterprise in American Education series, AEI research fellow Andrew P. Kelly, who was recently named one of sixteen next-generation leaders in education policy, illustrates how the typical political divides do not tell the whole story when it comes to the appropriate role of for-profits in education.

Some of his findings include:
1. In K-12 education, Democrats have been amenable to for-profit involvement on policies like Supplemental Education Services and school turnarounds, where the for-profit role is limited to support services or a small subset of troubled schools.
2. In higher education, Democrats are divided on the “for-profit question.” A surprising coalition of fifty-eight Democrats–including some of the most liberal–broke ranks and joined Republicans in their effort to prevent the enforcement of proposed gainful-employment regulations.
3. At the K-12 level, roughly 75 percent of the public is supportive of for-profit contracting for peripheral services like transportation and facilities management, but only 25 to 30 percent are comfortable with for-profit management of entire school sites and instruction.
4. At the higher education level, the majority of Americans approve of for-profit colleges and universities, though they consistently see them as lower quality than public or nonprofit institutions.
Kelly argues that public attitudes toward for-profit involvement reflect a sense of risk: Americans are quite risk averse when it comes to for-profit management of K-12 schools, support private management of peripheral school services, and generally approve of for-profit colleges. Federal policies tend to mirror these preferences, reinforcing the public’s conception of what constitutes the “appropriate” role for for-profits. Going forward, the question for policymakers is whether public opinion on for-profit colleges will come to reflect the recent high-profile criticism of those institutions.

Andrew P. Kelly can be reached at andrew.kelly@aei.org.

Two Major Problems In Community College Developmental Education

In the first of eleven, Policy Analyis For California Education( PACE) Working Papers, W. Norton Grubb et al, frame the issues surrounding basic skills instruction in California Community Colleges.

While increases in remedial education (or basic skills instruction or developmental education) have taken place at several levels of the education and training system, there are reasons for thinking that the issue is particularly acute in community colleges. This introductory working paper divides the problem into two. The first is the high proportion — perhaps 60 percent for the country, and 80 percent in California — of students entering colleges who assess into developmental courses. This can be explained by the pattern of dynamic inequality in American education, where inequalities among students increase as they move through the system.

The second problem arises from the evidence that students entering a remedial trajectory are unlikely to move into college-level work, so remediation has become a serious barrier to success for many students. Unfortunately, like other second-chance efforts, basic skills instructions often works under difficult conditions, and there are many hypotheses about why success rates in basic skill are not higher — most of which will be examined in this series of papers.

Since developmental education is first and foremost an instructional issue, this series of papers rests on a conceptual foundation focusing on the triangle of instruction, considering the instructor, students, and content within a set of institutional influences. The underlying research for these papers involves classroom observation, and interviews with instructors and administrators, to understand both classroom settings and the institutional setting. This framing paper then introduces the subjects for remaining papers in the series.

The direct link to this working paper is: http://www.stanford.edu/group/pace/cgi-bin/wordpress/2517

Community College Transfer Most Efficient Way to Increase College Efficiency

Experts concerned about impact of community college tuition hikes
According to Patrick Callan, Director of the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, “The way we’re going to increase completion of baccalaureate degrees, in the biggest and fastest-growing states, is by improving the number of students who start in community colleges and transfer.” However, this goal will be increasingly hard to attain “if tuition at public two-year institutions continues to rise sharply as it has since 1999, far outpacing the rise in median family income in every state except Maine.”
insidehighered.com

Texas Examines Increasing College Efficiency

Third-parties look to improve efficiency, outcomes at Texas publics
“Conservative” groups, such as the Texas Public Policy Foundation and America’s Next Impact, as well as more “bipartisan” ones, such as the Texas Coalition for Excellence in Higher Education, are becoming increasingly involved in making recommendations to the Texas public univerRsity system regarding its spending and student outcomes. Don Hale, a University of Texas spokesman, responded to these groups, stating that the university is “committed to managing its resources wisely and efficiently.”
nytimes.com

College Board Cost Study Adds To Pressure For More Productivity

The College Board Advocacy & Policy Center has released a new policy brief, Trends in Community College Education: Enrollment, Prices, Student Aid, and Debt Levels, authored by Sandy Baum, independent policy analyst to the College Board; Kathleen Little, senior adviser, student aid policy at the College Board; and Kathleen Payea, policy analyst at the College Board.

Download Trends in Community College Education: Enrollment, Prices, Student Aid, and Debt Levels. Requires Adobe Reader.

Community colleges serve as the access point to higher education for many students. With lower published prices, less stringent admission requirements and geographical proximity to more students than most institutions in other sectors, community colleges provide opportunities for education and training that would otherwise be unavailable to many. As the need increases for workers with some postsecondary education, but not necessarily a four-year degree, the demands on community colleges are growing.

Relying on data from the College Board reports Trends in Student Aid 2010 and Trends in College Pricing 2010, as well as from the Department of Education and other sources, the authors describe the published prices of community colleges and the other expenses students face while enrolled and how these prices vary across states. They also examine institutional revenue sources, the financial aid community college students receive, student debt and degree completion patterns at two-year public colleges.

Increasing College Productivity: A Continuing Puzzle

Are Productivity Gains in Higher Education Possible?

Andrew Kelly, The American

Yes, but not until institutions are provided with incentive to pursue them.Here’s a puzzle: leaders are calling on colleges and universities to produce more degrees, but cash-strapped states are cutting higher education spending. What’s the solution? Be careful how you answer-this question has become the most prominent fissure in contemporary debates about higher education reform.

 For Another View see “The (Un)Productivity of American Higher Education: From “Cost Disease” to Cost-Effectiveness,” a recent working paper by WISCAPE Senior Scholar Sara Goldrick-Rab and WISCAPE Faculty Affiliate Douglas Harris

Universities Outsource Instructors Via Virtual Classrooms

 Here is another view concerning on line education as a follow up to the prior post :

Instructional outsourcing using e-learning platforms is becoming increasingly popular at college and university campuses across the country. Daniel Hurley, Director of State Relations and Policy Analysis for the American Association of State Colleges and Universities, comments, “Given the significant reduction in state support for public education, compounded by the fact institutions need to maintain quality programs, we are going to see additional innovative attempts at partnerships that will address both issues of being able to provide cost-efficient programs that are high quality.”
usatoday.com