[Senate Hearing 114-695]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 114-695
REAUTHORIZING THE HIGHER EDUCATION ACT: OPPORTUNITIES TO IMPROVE
STUDENT SUCCESS
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HEARING
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON HEALTH, EDUCATION,
LABOR, AND PENSIONS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
ON
EXAMINING REAUTHORIZING THE HIGHER EDUCATION ACT, FOCUSING ON
OPPORTUNITIES TO IMPROVE STUDENT SUCCESS
__________
AUGUST 5, 2015
__________
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Pensions
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COMMITTEE ON HEALTH, EDUCATION, LABOR, AND PENSIONS
LAMAR ALEXANDER, Tennessee, Chairman
MICHAEL B. ENZI, Wyoming PATTY MURRAY, Washington
RICHARD BURR, North Carolina BARBARA A. MIKULSKI, Maryland
JOHNNY ISAKSON, Georgia BERNARD SANDERS (I), Vermont
RAND PAUL, Kentucky ROBERT P. CASEY, JR., Pennsylvania
SUSAN COLLINS, Maine AL FRANKEN, Minnesota
LISA MURKOWSKI, Alaska MICHAEL F. BENNET, Colorado
MARK KIRK, Illinois SHELDON WHITEHOUSE, Rhode Island
TIM SCOTT, South Carolina TAMMY BALDWIN, Wisconsin
ORRIN G. HATCH, Utah CHRISTOPHER S. MURPHY, Connecticut
PAT ROBERTS, Kansas ELIZABETH WARREN, Massachusetts
BILL CASSIDY, M.D., Louisiana
David P. Cleary, Republican Staff Director
Evan Schatz, Minority Staff Director
John Righter, Minority Deputy Staff Director
(ii)
C O N T E N T S
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STATEMENTS
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 5, 2015
Page
Committee Members
Alexander, Hon. Lamar, Chairman, Committee on Health, Education,
Labor, and Pensions, opening statement......................... 1
Prepared statement........................................... 3
Murray, Hon. Patty, a U.S. Senator from the State of Washington,
opening statement.............................................. 5
Isakson, Hon. Johnny, a U.S. Senator from the State of Georgia... 18
Collins, Hon. Susan M., a U.S. Senator from the State of Maine... 39
Murphy, Hon. Christopher, a U.S. Senator from the State of
Connecticut.................................................... 42
Cassidy, Hon. Bill, a U.S. Senator from the State of Louisiana... 43
Baldwin, Hon. Tammy, a U.S. Senator from the State of Wisconsin.. 45
Bennet, Hon. Michael F., a U.S. Senator from the State of
Colorado....................................................... 47
Warren, Hon. Elizabeth, a U.S. Senator from the State of
Massachusetts.................................................. 49
Witnesses
Jones, Stan, President, Complete College America, Indianapolis,
IN............................................................. 8
Prepared statement........................................... 10
Ralls, R. Scott, President, North Carolina Community College
System, Raleigh, NC............................................ 14
Prepared statement........................................... 16
Renick, Timothy, Ph.D., M.A., Vice Provost and Vice President for
Enrollment Management and Student Success, Georgia State
University, Atlanta, GA........................................ 19
Prepared statement........................................... 21
Richburg-Hayes, Lashawn, Ph.D., President, Young Adults and
Postsecondary Education, MDRC, New York, NY.................... 23
Prepared statement........................................... 25
ADDITIONAL MATERIAL
Statements, articles, publications, letters, etc.:
.............................................................
Response by Stan Jones to questions of:
Senator Alexander........................................ 53
Senator Cassidy.......................................... 54
Senator Collins.......................................... 55
Senator Enzi............................................. 55
Senator Murray........................................... 56
Senator Warren........................................... 56
Response by R. Scott Ralls to questions of:
Senator Alexander........................................ 57
Senator Cassidy.......................................... 58
Senator Collins.......................................... 59
Senator Enzi............................................. 59
Senator Murray........................................... 60
Senator Warren........................................... 61
Senator Scott............................................ 62
(III)
Response by Timothy M. Renick to questions of:
Senator Alexander........................................ 62
Senator Cassidy.......................................... 64
Senator Collins.......................................... 65
Senator Enzi............................................. 66
Senator Murray........................................... 67
Senator Warren........................................... 68
Senator Scott............................................ 69
Response by Lashawn Richburg-Hayes to questions of:
Senator Alexander........................................ 75
Senator Cassidy.......................................... 79
Senator Collins.......................................... 80
Senator Enzi............................................. 81
Senator Murray........................................... 81
Senator Warren........................................... 83
REAUTHORIZING THE HIGHER EDUCATION ACT: OPPORTUNITIES TO IMPROVE
STUDENT SUCCESS
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WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 5, 2015
U.S. Senate,
Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions,
Washington, DC.
The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10 a.m., in room
SD-430, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Lamar Alexander,
chairman of the committee, presiding.
Present: Senators Alexander, Isakson, Collins, Cassidy,
Enzi, Murray, Murphy, Baldwin, Bennet, Warren, and Franken.
Opening Statement of Senator Alexander
The Chairman. The Senate Committee on Health, Education,
Labor, and Pensions will please come to order. This is our
eighth hearing during this Congress on the reauthorization of
the Higher Education Act.
Senator Murray and I will each have an opening statement.
Then we'll introduce our panel of witnesses. After our
witnesses' testimony, Senators will have 5 minutes of questions
each.
We expect to have a vote at 10:30. We won't be deterred by
that. We'll take turns with the gavel, so as long as Senators
are here, we'll continue the line of questions so we don't slow
things down.
Today's hearing is really about finding out if there is a
way the Federal Government can help more students finish
college. Few students can afford to be stuck with debt and no
degree, but that is what's happening to far too many college
students. Federal aid programs are designed to help people
working to earn a degree or a certificate in 1-, 2-, or 4-year
programs.
According to the National Student Clearinghouse, only 55
percent of any students complete a degree or certificate within
6 years. The problem is even worse for low-income students: 8.6
million low-income students received Pell Grants from the
Federal Government last year. Department of Education data says
that only 45 percent of these students achieve a degree or
certificate within 6 years.
There are 7 million borrowers in default on their Federal
student loans, and the Department of Education says that
borrowers are three times more likely to be in this situation
if they did not finish any degree or credential.
We know that students who do not finish their program are
less likely to benefit with a better job or salary.
I'd like to briefly address today: Why are so many American
college students leaving before they graduate? What role can
the Federal Government play in, No. 1, encouraging students,
particularly those receiving Pell Grants and other Federal
financial aid, to finish what they've started; and, No. 2,
encouraging colleges and universities to help their students
make progress and graduate?
I'm going to submit my entire statement to the record, but
let me summarize what it says.
Why students aren't graduating seems to focus on these
things:
Part-time enrollment and slow progress. Students with a
full-time course load, meaning 15 credits per semester, who
consistently enroll full-time are most likely to graduate.
However, a 2013 survey of institutions showed the majority of
so-called full-time college students aren't taking the credits
needed to finish a 4-year degree for a bachelor's or in 2 years
for an associate degree.
Inadequate high school education. According to the
Community College Research Center, most remedial students never
get past remediation.
Financial difficulties. Students from low-income
backgrounds face pressures, making them more likely to drop
out.
What can the government do? Senator Bennet and I have
offered a proposal to simplify the student aid application
form, the FAFSA. Testimony before our committee said that it
discourages as many as 2 million students from applying for
Federal financial aid. Many students continue working or have
to get a job while they're in school.
Two years ago, Austin Peay State University in Clarksville
testified at this committee about the success it has had with
remedial education. Half of Austin Peay students need to take
remedial courses once they're enrolled. The university
redesigned its remedial education so that students who lack
some skills in math, reading, or writing enroll in credit-
bearing college courses with additional required workshops to
help them catch up.
Before using this approach, only 10 percent of the remedial
math students ever completed a college-level math class.
Seventy percent do now.
A maximum Pell is often awarded to a student who is really
not attending full-time. That's one reason. Federal aid does
not encourage students to complete their degree as quickly as
they can.
Second--and your testimony reflects this--Federal aid
progress requirements seem to lack teeth.
Third, Federal aid today can be used to subsidize studies
unfocused toward the degree. A student can use the Pell grant
to take 90 credits, as many as 90, for a 60-credit associate's
degree. The longer a student takes, the less likely they are to
finish. Taking classes that get students off course from their
goal could be detrimental to completion.
Federal policy has emphasized access rather than
completion. We are looking to see whether we need to find ways
to encourage over 6,000 higher education institutions to
prioritize and encourage student success without throwing a
big, wet blanket of a Federal mandate that smothers
universities, that might work at Austin Peay but might not work
at the University of Maryland, that might be good at Yeshiva
but might not be good at Harvard.
We look forward to the testimony of the witnesses, and we
thank you for coming.
[The prepared statement of Senator Alexander follows:]
Prepared Statement of Senator Alexander
DRAFT TALKERS FOR HIGHER EDUCATION HEARING ON COMPLETION
The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and
Pensions will please come to order. This is our eighth hearing
during this Congress on the reauthorization of the Higher
Education Act. Ranking Member Murray and I will each have an
opening statement, then we will introduce our panel of
witnesses. After our witnesses' testimony, Senators will each
have 5 minutes of questions.
Today's hearing is really about finding out if there is a
way for the Federal Government to help more students finish
college. Few can afford to be stuck with debt and no degree,
but this is what's happening to far too many college students.
Federal aid programs are designed to help people working to
earn a degree or a certificate in 1-, 2-, or 4-year programs.
According to the National Student Clearinghouse, only 55
percent of these students complete a degree or certificate
within 6 years. The problem is even worse for low-income
students.
8.6 million low-income students received Pell Grants from
the Federal Government last year.\1\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ Department of Education, Pell End of year report, 2013-14.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Department of Education data finds only 45 percent of these
students achieve a degree or certificate within 6 years.\2\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\2\ Brookings Institution: Hamilton Project, October 2013,
Redesigning the Pell Grant Program for the Twenty-First Century, Policy
Brief 2013-14.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
There are 7 million borrowers in default on their Federal
student loans, and the Department of Education says that
borrowers are three times more likely to be in this situation
if they did not finish any degree or credential.
We know that students who do not finish their program are
less likely to benefit with a better job or salary. So, I'd
like to briefly address today:
Why are so many American college students leaving
before they graduate?
What role can the Federal Government play in:
LEncouraging students--particularly those
receiving Pell Grants and other Federal financial aid--
to finish what they've started?
LEncouraging colleges and universities to help
their students make progress and graduate?
1. WHY STUDENTS AREN'T GRADUATING
What seems to make students successful and what indicators
suggest why they are more likely to dropout?
Part-time enrollment and slow progress: Research
shows that students with a full-time course load, meaning 15
credits per semester, who consistently enroll full-time are
most likely to graduate.\3\ However, a 2013 survey of
institutions showed, the majority of so-called full-time
college students are not taking the credits needed to finish in
4 years for a bachelor's degree or in 2 years for an associates
degree.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\3\ Klempin, S. 2014. Redefining Full-Time. Community College
Research Center: Columbia University.
LFor students who are going full- or part-
time, not taking a break from school increases the
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
likelihood of completion by 43 percent.
Inadequate high school education: Students who
need to take remedial courses to catch up to their peers in
college face one of the biggest barriers to timely graduation.
According to the Community College Research Center at Columbia
University Teachers College, most remedial students never even
get past remediation.
Financial difficulties: Students from low-income
backgrounds face financial pressures during college that make
them more likely to drop out.
2. WHAT ROLE CAN THE GOVERNMENT PLAY IN ENCOURAGING GRADUATION?
Senator Bennet and I have a proposal to simplify the
dreaded 108-question FAFSA to a simple postcard of about two
questions. We understand that this will remove an obstacle that
each year discourages about 2 million students from applying
for Federal financial aid. And for some, it discourages
reapplying for aid to continue in their studies.
Many or even most of the students who are eligible but not
applying and enrolling in college are low-income students who
would be the first in their family to attend college.
Some are adults already in the workforce.
Many of the students may continue working or have to get a
job while they attend school.
Some institutions, including some of the ones we have
represented here today, have found ways to provide students
with needed support to progress through their classes and reach
their ultimate goal--a degree or credential.
Two years ago, Austin Peay State University in Clarksville,
TN, testified in front of this committee about success it has
had with remedial education.
Half of Austin Peay students need to take remedial courses
once they are enrolled.
The university redesigned their remedial education so that
students who lack some skills in mathematics, writing, or
reading enroll in credit-bearing college courses, with
additional required workshops to help them catch up.
Before using this approach, only 10 percent of their
remedial math students ever completed a college-level math
class--now 70 percent do. Those students could never get their
degree without passing that college-level math.
Despite the good work of some institutions, today Federal
aid does not encourage students to complete their degree as
quickly as they can, which ideally is on time.
First, maximum Pell is often awarded to a student who's
really not attending full-time: For example, a student gets
their full Pell grant amount if they take 24 credits in a year,
but a student generally must take 30 credits a year to graduate
on-time.
Second, Federal aid progress requirements seem to lack
teeth: Students must meet a ``satisfactory academic progress''
standard to remain eligible. This definition is set by
institutions with broad requirements from Federal regulations,
including a minimum grade point average and passing a minimum
percentage of credits successfully.
These requirements may not require enough focused
progression through a degree or certificate program and the
timing of the evaluation of progress can be too late for
students to change course.
Third, Federal aid today can be used to subsidize studies
unfocused toward the degree: For example, a student can use
their Pell grant to take 90 credits for a 60-credit associates
degree.
The longer a student takes, the less likely they are to
finish, taking classes that get students off-course from their
goal could be detrimental to completion.
Of course, some students may want to take courses that
don't help them meet requirements for graduation--but whether
Federal aid should be allowed to be used for that is a question
before the committee.
Conclusion
Federal policy has emphasized access rather than
completion, and we recognize that college students are adults
who have the autonomy and responsibility for making decisions
for themselves.
I think we need to find a way to encourage our over 6,000
institutions to prioritize and encourage student success
without throwing a big, wet blanket of a Federal mandate--that
smothers universities--that might work at Austin Peay but might
not work at the University of Maryland, that might be good at
Yeshiva but not at Harvard.
I look forward to hearing a variety of successful
strategies that are working or showing promise from our panel
today.
I believe the solutions that we hear will note that there
is no one-size-fits-all solution to improving student success.
I am particularly interested in hearing how Federal
policies may hinder creative solutions or could better promote
student progression toward on-time completion, saving the
student money and allowing them to graduate with less debt.
Senator Murray.
Opening Statement of Senator Murray
Senator Murray. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Higher education
is really critical to ensuring the economic strength of our
middle class, and I believe it is a critical part of building
an economy that works for all of our families, not just the
wealthiest few.
Let's remember that in the years ahead, more and more jobs
will actually require education beyond high school. We have an
economic stake in helping as many students as possible go to
college and complete their degrees. That is how we will remain
competitive in the 21st century global economy.
As we work together on this committee to reauthorize the
Higher Education Act, there are a few principles I'm going to
focus on to make sure that more students can pursue their
degree. I'm going to continue to look for ways to make college
more affordable and reduce the crushing burden of student debt.
As we talked about last week, I will be especially focused on
making sure students have access to a safe learning
environment.
More students from all walks of life should have strong,
clear pathways into and through higher education. Creating
pathways for student success is what we'll be focused on today,
and it's clear there is lots of room for improvement.
Federal data show that just 60 percent of first-time
students who attend full-time complete their 4-year degrees
within 6 years. Even fewer students complete their degrees on
time. Many of the other 40 percent of students likely dropped
out without the advantages of a college degree, while
oftentimes trying to pay off student debt. Many students at
community colleges struggle to make it to graduation or
successfully transfer to a 4-year program.
While college completion rates for students from more
affluent backgrounds have increased over the past 40 years, the
same is not true for students from low-income backgrounds. Just
9 percent of people from the lowest-income bracket graduated
with a college degree by the time they reached age 24. That's
only up from 6 percent in 1970.
Students today face many barriers to completing their
degrees and credentials. There are several policies we can
pursue to improve those completion rates. For one, in high
school, we need to make sure that they graduate college- and
career-ready. I'm glad that earlier this month, the Senate
voted to pass a bipartisan bill from Chairman Alexander and I
that would be a strong step in the right direction to do just
that.
Today, many students drop out because they worry about
mounting student debt or they have family or work
responsibilities that make it impossible for them to continue
earning their degree. We also need to provide adequate
financial aid and lower costs to help improve student success.
We also need better data on student outcomes from colleges and
universities if we're going to help students effectively.
It is hard to believe, but higher education data ignores
part-time students, transfer students, adults who are returning
to school, students in remediation, and Pell grant recipients.
We should know how these students are doing to make sure we're
making effective policy decisions based on solid evidence.
I'm very concerned that some of my colleagues have
suggested penalizing financial aid recipients and students from
low-income backgrounds by tightening eligibility and other
requirements in a misguided effort to try to motivate their
success. Recent research suggests the exact opposite. Students
don't succeed when financial aid policies only serve to punish
rather than reward and support.
For first generation college students, for students from
low-
income backgrounds, and for students who are struggling in
college, we need to incentivize institutions of higher
education to have support systems in place. That includes
structured pathways toward earning a degree so students see a
clear route to graduation. It includes programs for college
mentoring and advising so students stay on track. It includes
individualized counseling for students who need extra help.
When students have access to a support system, evidence
shows that they are much more likely to complete their degrees.
I'm looking forward to hearing from Dr. Richburg-Hayes on how
increasing access to student services can help students,
including the highly regarded CUNY ASAP program.
To me, improving outcomes at colleges and universities is
an important piece of our work to grow our economy from the
middle out. The success of students today will help guarantee
that our Nation will be able to compete and lead the world in
the years to come. I look forward to hearing testimony from all
of you today. I really appreciate you being here.
Mr. Chairman, thank you for holding this hearing.
The Chairman. Thank you, Senator Murray.
The vote was changed to 2 o'clock. So we won't have that
interruption this morning due to the vote on the Senate floor.
Our first witness today is Stan Jones, president and
founder of Complete College America. His organization partners
with States with a goal of substantially increasing the number
of Americans with a postsecondary credential. Prior to founding
Complete College America, he served 16 years in the Indiana
legislature, was a senior advisor to Governor Bayh, and was
Indiana Commissioner for Higher Education for a decade.
Dr. Scott Ralls, president of North Carolina Community
College System, is our next witness. This system serves almost
830,000 people annually. During the last 10 years, over 40
percent of North Carolina's wage earners have been students at
one of the State's 58 community colleges. Next month, Dr. Ralls
will assume the presidency of Northern Virginia Community
College System.
Our next witness is Dr. Timothy Renick, vice provost,
professor, and vice president for Enrollment Management and
Student Success at Georgia State University. Over the past
decade, Georgia State has doubled the number of at-risk
students enrolled, but, more importantly, improved graduation
rates by 22 percentage points and closed achievement gaps based
on race and income.
Both Senator Burr and Senator Isakson had hoped to be here
and may still be here. They're in a Finance Committee meeting
and wanted me to say that to both of you.
Our final witness is Dr. Lashawn Richburg-Hayes, director
for Young Adults and Postsecondary Education at MDRC, a
nonprofit, nonpartisan policy research organization in New York
City. Dr. Richburg-Hayes focuses her work on academic
achievement and persistence for low-income students at
community colleges and less selected 4-year colleges. She has
overseen some of the most rigorous experiments on how financial
aid can be provided to students in ways that cause them to
change their behaviors in order to succeed in school.
I look forward to everyone's testimony. If each of you
would summarize your comments in about 5 minutes, that'll leave
more time for us to have a conversation with you in our
questioning.
Why don't we start with you, Mr. Jones, and go right down
the line.
STATEMENT OF STAN JONES, PRESIDENT, COMPLETE COLLEGE AMERICA,
INDIANAPOLIS, IN
Mr. Jones. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Senator Murray, and
other members of the committee. Many of the remarks that you
both made highlight my testimony.
Complete College America is an alliance of States. We work
with 35 States across the country. We primarily work with
States, Governors, legislators, and key higher education
officials. We're entirely funded by foundations, like the Gates
Foundation, Lumina, Carnegie, and Kellogg.
Just to highlight some of the points you made, I thought it
was interesting that during the peak of the recession, when the
most people were out of work, we had record breaking enrollment
across this country at our colleges. At most colleges, it was
record breaking, especially the community colleges.
It really points out that people are willing to go to
college, are desperate to go to college, in order to better
themselves. I have a handout here that I'm not going to go
through, but I'm just going to refer to it from time to time.
Even given the huge amount of effort that we've made in
access, the bottom quartile, income-wise--only 10 percent of
those students get a 4-year college degree. From the second
income quartile, only 15 percent get a 4-year college degree,
and from the third income quartile, only about 34 percent of
those students get a 4-year college degree.
College really only works for those in the upper quartile,
and that's a combination of factors. For so many students, it's
the structure of our colleges and universities that have failed
them.
As both Senators have pointed out, we don't graduate
students in any sector except the flagships and the private
sector. Community college graduation rates can range from 15
percent to 25 percent. Four-year, non-flagship rates can range
about 40 percent, and virtually nobody graduates on time.
We put out a report about 6 months ago called Four-Year
Myth. Hardly anybody graduates in 4 years. Even at the
flagships, less than half of those students graduate in 4
years. We found in our report that out of 580 public, 4-year
universities, only 50 graduated 50 percent of their students
within 4 years.
Students take longer, obviously, to get a degree than they
used to--3.6 years at a 2-year college and 4.9 years at many 4-
year colleges. Not surprisingly, the fifth year, the sixth
year, costs more money, but it's also lost wages in the
workforce.
Two studies by two different universities, the University
of Texas and Temple University, indicate that student debt
really spikes after the fourth year. Students have run out of
traditional resources. A 70 percent increase in student debt
occurs after that fourth year.
We have focused on what we call our game changers, things
that significantly make a difference. There's only five of them
that we recommend. Senator Alexander has referred to several.
One is transparency of information. Many colleges and many
States are completely unaware of the remediation crisis, for
example, that we have, the lack of completion that we have, how
long it takes students. This is not data that the Federal
Government collects. We don't collect at the Federal level
graduation rates for Pell students, for example.
The billions of dollars we spend on Pell--we don't know
whether those students graduate or not. I know it's been back
and forth, back and forth, about whether we even know whether
the veterans graduate or not. There's some core--not many, but
some core things that the Federal Government could collect in
terms of transparency around these key issues.
It's hard for policymakers at your level, at the State
level, to make these decisions without having graduation rates
for Pell students, graduation rates for veterans, graduation
rates for transfer students, remediation rates. This
information simply doesn't exist.
Senator Alexander mentioned remediation. Sixty percent of
all students at community colleges start in remediation. Very
few finish. As he pointed out, Austin Peay has a great model.
They're taking it statewide. Similar models like that are being
taken statewide in about a half a dozen States. This could be
done--right now, you allow 30 credit hours of Pell. Some of
that money could be used to support students in credit-bearing
classes.
Just a couple of other things in the seconds that I have
remaining. Structure is hugely important. Again, in Tennessee,
you have the Tennessee tech centers, Senator, and their
graduation rate is about 75 percent to 80 percent. The
placement rate is about 80 percent. That's about five times the
rate in terms of graduation as typical community colleges with
similar programs.
It really is all about structure. These programs, where
they've been duplicated, have shown significant success.
The last one I want to mention, which you referenced, is 15
credit hours. The Pell program does not incent students to take
more than 12. De facto, most students in the country full-time
take 12 credit hours or less, so they're already on the 5-year
plan. We would propose thinking about providing incentives for
students to take 15 credit hours.
There are some examples here where States and institutions
that have done that have doubled in 1 year the numbers of
students that are taking 15 credit hours or more. They're more
likely to graduate and, clearly, more likely to graduate on
time.
These things can be done. It's not a problem with the
students. It's not a problem with faculty. It's a problem with
how we've structured these institutions. By providing more
structure, like the Tennessee tech centers, which is very
simple--you mentioned the SAP program in New York City--also
very simple. Students go in the morning, Monday through Friday,
8 to 12. It's a block schedule. Or they go in the afternoon and
it's a block schedule. Tennessee tech centers--the same way.
Tennessee tech centers take attendance, an underappreciated
strategy. That's why they can get 75 percent to 80 percent
completion rates.
A lot of these issues can be addressed----
The Chairman. We need to wind down and go to the next
witness when you're finished.
Mr. Jones. Sure. In conclusion, what we recommend are only
four or five game changers that provide substantial success--
performance funding is another one--and have provided success
as these have been implemented across colleges and States.
Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Jones follows:]
Prepared Statement of Stan Jones
summary
For the last 6 years, Complete College America has worked closely
with 33 States, the District of Columbia, and the Commonwealth of the
Northern Mariana Islands with a single mission in mind: increase the
number of Americans with a college degree or credential of value, and
close persistent attainment gaps for traditionally underrepresented
populations.
This critical work has been driven by the reality that despite
decades of work in the access agenda, America faces a college
completion crisis. A failure to act decisively on these issues would
perpetuate an ongoing skills gap that threatens our economic future and
degrades our intellectual leadership around the world.
The strategies outlined below are instrumental in achieving those
successes. The Game Changers are designed to give States and campuses
the greatest return on investment. These strategies, which we are
working to implement every day, are achieving transformational results
around the country--gains in student success that are 20, 30 or 40
percentage points greater than current practices.
Corequisite Remediation--Default many more unprepared
students into college-level gateway courses with mandatory, just-in-
time instructional support parallel to high structured coursework.
Fifteen to Finish--Inform and incentivize students to
attend full-time and ensure that full-time means 15 credits per
semester or 30 credits per year. Use banded tuition so that 15 credits
per semester cost students no more than 12 credits.
Guided Pathways to Success (GPS)--Enabled by technology,
default students into highly structured degree plans, not individual
courses. Start students in a limited number of meta-majors, which
narrow into majors. Map out every semester of study for the entire
program, and guarantee that milestone courses will be available when
needed. Use built-in early warning systems to alert advisers when
students fall behind.
Structured Schedules--Help working students balance jobs
and school by using structured scheduling of classes to add
predictability to their busy lives--doing so enables many more students
to attend college full-time, shortening their time to completion and
reducing costs of attendance.
Performance Funding--Pay for performance, not just
enrollment. Use the CCA/NGA metrics to tie State funding to student
progression and completion.
There are any number of innovations we can employ to move the
needle on college completion, but the magnitude of these challenges
requires that our reforms be structural and systemic. The Game Changers
are proven strategies that lead to real and lasting results. When it
comes to college completion, our Nation cannot afford to wait any
longer. We must take action now.
______
introduction
Since our founding in 2009, Complete College America has worked
closely with 33 States, the District of Columbia, and the Commonwealth
of the Northern Mariana Islands with a single mission in mind: increase
the number of Americans with a college degree or credential of value,
and close persistent attainment gaps for traditionally underrepresented
populations.
This critical work has been driven by the reality that America
faces a college completion crisis, and a failure to act decisively on
these issues would perpetuate an ongoing skills gap that threatens our
economic future and degrades our intellectual leadership around the
world.
A look at the data shows just how serious this challenge is for our
country: only 4 percent of full-time students complete an associate
degree on time, that is, within 2 academic years. At non-flagship, 4-
year institutions, only 19 percent complete their degree on time. Even
given 3 years for an associate degree and 6 years for a bachelor's
degree, these numbers inch up only slightly to 13 percent and 45
percent respectively. For part-time students, the results are even more
discouraging.
These consistently low completion rates come at a great cost to
students and their families. In our 2014 report, Four-Year Myth, we
outlined that each additional year of college costs 2-year students
over $50,000 in tuition, fees, lost wages, and other expenses and close
to $70,000 for 4-year students. Further, data taken from Temple
University and University of Texas-Austin show that 2 extra years at
their campuses increase debt by nearly 70 percent among students who
borrow. Add it all up, and everyone loses. The public invests in
college studies that--for too many students--often lead nowhere.
Students defer earning income, and they and their families take on
massive amounts of debt to earn degrees that could be much less time
consuming and costly.
Additionally, while we have experienced great success in the
college access agenda, a closer look at graduation day reveals that
those who do eventually earn degrees are not representative of the rich
diversity that defines this Nation. The hopes raised by nearly
equitable enrollments in the freshman class for students of color, low-
income students, and first generation students are crushed by gaps in
achievement and completion.
Taken together, this crisis costs our Nation and the States
billions of dollars, contributes to the more than $1 trillion in
student loan debt, and stifles our economic growth.
There is no doubt that the mission to boost college completion and
success is a difficult one, but this work is critical. Complete College
America's Alliance of States, now at 35 members, is ensuring that both
colleges and higher education policymakers value access and success
equally. We are working together to identify and enact powerful reforms
that help students succeed. New laws are being forged. New policies are
being implemented. And students are beginning to enjoy the rewards of a
reinvented system of American higher education.
The strategies outlined below are instrumental in achieving those
successes. The Game Changers are designed to give States and campuses
the greatest return on investment. These strategies, which we are
working to implement every day, are achieving transformational results
around the country--gains in student success that are 20, 30 or 40
percentage points greater than current practices. The success of these
efforts are the result of tackling systemic problems head on, ensuring
that many more Americans earn a degree or other credentials of value.
Now, our challenge is to see that these powerful ideas are taken to
scale around the country.
corequisite remediation
For far too many students in the United States, college begins--and
often ends--in remediation. Of the 1.7 million students assigned to
this broken system each year, only about 1 in 10 will graduate. Seventy
percent of students placed into remedial math fail to enroll in the
college-level gateway course within 2 academic years.
Efforts around the country have shown that the best way to support
students who are currently placed into remedial education is to put
them directly into college-level courses with additional academic
support. By providing remediation as a corequisite--not as a
prerequisite sequence that sets students back--we eliminate the all to
frequent problem of remedial students never making it to a college-
level course. Institutions that have adopted corequisite approaches
have reduced attrition and seen dramatic increases in student success.
Corequisite remediation is implemented in a number of ways: as an
additional class period alongside the college-level course, a required
lab with mentors, or 5 weeks of remediation followed by 10 weeks of the
regular course. The overarching goal is to free students from long
remedial sequences that do not count toward a degree and that create
more points at which students are likely to drop out.
In States and institutions where corequisite remediation is being
utilized, the results have been astounding. In places like Colorado,
Indiana, Tennessee and West Virginia, data shows that students enrolled
in single-semester, corequisite English typically succeed at twice the
rate of students enrolled in traditional prerequisite English courses.
Students enrolled in corequisite gateway math courses saw results five
to six times the success rates of traditional remedial math sequences.
West Virginia: Under the leadership of Chancellor Jim
Skidmore, the Community and Technical College System of West Virginia
scaled corequisite remediation across its campuses. Under the
corequisite model, 68 percent of students completed gateway English
within one semester, up from 37 percent within 2 years under the
traditional model. In mathematics, success rates increased from 14
percent under the traditional model to 62 percent under corequisite
remediation.
Tennessee: The Tennessee Board of Regents reports that
under corequisite remediation, gateway course success rates increased
from 12 percent to 63 percent in math and from 31 percent to 74 percent
in English. Additionally, Tennessee's data shows that students at every
level of academic preparedness (based on ACT sub-scores) did better
under the new model.
Seven States have committed to scaling corequisite remediation by
2015. Twenty-two States and the District of Columbia have committed to
transforming remediation to dramatically increase the percentage of
students who complete college-level gateway courses in math and English
within 1 academic year.
fifteen to finish
As mentioned above, the vast majority of American college students,
and almost no one at community colleges, graduates on time, costing
families billions.
One frustratingly simple reason for late completion is that most
college students are not taking enough credits (at least 30) each
academic year to finish within 2 or 4 years--an unintended consequence
of flawed Federal policy and misguided conceptions about what is in the
best interest of students.
Research has shown that when students take at least 30 credits in
their first year, they earn better grades, they are more likely to be
retained from 1 year to the next, and they graduate at a higher rate--
regardless of their level of academic preparation.
Fifteen to Finish campaigns--which originated at the University of
Hawaii System, have been launched across the country, both on campuses
and statewide, to encourage more students to take at least 15 credits
per semester or 30 credits per year. Citing information on college
affordability and time to degree, these campaigns--ranging from print
advertisements on campus to creative infomercials--urge students to
take the credits necessary to complete on time.
Additionally, States are implementing policy changes to encourage
greater enrollment intensity, including banded tuition, in which
students are charged the same amount of tuition regardless of whether
they take 15 credits or the customary 12. The incentive for students to
make use of this opportunity is that enrolling in a heavier course load
not only reduces the cost they pay per credit but saves all the other
expenses associated with an extra semester or year on campus. At the
city colleges of Chicago, students are offered two free summer courses
if they enroll in 15 credits for both the fall and spring semesters.
Indiana: At Indiana University-Purdue University,
Indianapolis, more than half of students are now enrolling in enough
credits to graduate on time, up from 28 percent the year before. Purdue
University-Calumet increased the number of students taking 15 credits
from 40 percent in 2013 to 66 percent in 2014.
Ohio: At the University of Akron, Fifteen to Finish
efforts led to a 28 percent increase in the number of full-time
freshmen taking at least 15 credit hours per semester.
Twenty-four States have either statewide or campus-based Fifteen to
Finish initiatives to encourage more students to take at least 15
credits per semester or 30 credits per year.
guided pathways to success (gps)
One of the most important hindrances to timely college completion
is that students often have no clear path to graduation. They are faced
with hundreds of majors, countless course offerings, and far too few
academic advisors. Take together, these things result in students
having to many choices and not nearly enough guidance.
The result: students wander through the curriculum, taking courses
that do not count toward their degrees and exhausting their financial
aid. The courses they do need are often unavailable. At 2-year
institutions, students rack up 81 credits rather than the standard 60
credits and take 3.6 years to complete. At 4-year, non-flagship
institutions, students take 134 credits rather than 120 and take close
to 5 years to complete. College ends up taking too long and costing too
much, and too few complete.
Guided Pathways to Success (GPS) addresses these issues directly.
By building highly structured degree plans as default pathways to on-
time graduation, States can place every college student on a road to
success. Rather than being considered ``unclassified,'' students can
select meta-majors and are given semester-by-semester plans that lay
out a clear path to completion.
Florida: At Florida State University, degree maps combined
with other GPS strategies increased on-time graduation rates from 44
percent to 61 percent. Additionally, attainment gaps have narrowed.
African American, Hispanic and first-generation Pell students graduate
from FSU at significantly higher rates than the national average.
Arizona: The use of GPS strategies in Arizona State
University's eAdvisor system increased on-time graduation rates by
nearly 16 percentage points.
Georgia: The use of GPS, specifically intrusive advising,
at Georgia State University has wiped out attainment gaps entirely:
African American and Hispanic students now graduate at higher rates
than the overall student body.
Four States are working to take GPS to scale, and five States are
implementing GPS in STEM. Seven cities around the country are working
to implement GPS through our Community Partnerships for Attainment.
structured schedules
Seventy-five percent of today's college students are commuters,
often juggling families, jobs and school. But even in the face of this
``new majority,'' much of American higher education has gone unchanged.
Most students begin college with the expectation of attending full-
time and completing within 2 or 4 years. But quickly the cold realities
hit them. Remedial classes block their entrance into programs of study.
The courses necessary to stay on track are not available. Bit by bit,
full-time becomes part time and, all too often, students become 1 of
the 30 million who have some college credit but no degree.
While there will always be those who insist on or need to go to
college part time, we must look for ways to help more students attend
full-time. Structured schedules--for example, going to school every day
from 8 to noon or from 1 to 5--provide daily certainty that allows for
easier scheduling. Students can predict their course requirements and
arrange schedule with employers and childcare providers without the
complications of day-to-day and semester-by-semester alterations.
Under this Game Changer, many more students are able to manage a
full-time load and completion becomes twice as likely. Additionally,
structured schedules for part-time students can help them increase
credit accumulation toward successful completion. States should
redirect the good intentions that led to limitless part-time enrollment
and make the necessary changes to deploy structured schedules across
their campuses.
Tennessee: Structured schedules have regularly produced
graduation rates of 75 percent or higher for career certificates at the
Tennessee Colleges of Applied Technology.
New York: Structured schedules through the CUNY ASAP
program have led to graduation rates double that of peers in
traditional schedules.
Seven States have programs within them that currently utilize
structured schedules.
performance funding
In the past, taxpayers in most States have supported higher
education based on the number of students enrolled on or around the
12th day of the semester. Consequently, colleges and universities have
had few financial incentives to prioritize student success.
Under performance funding, institutions receive State dollars based
on factors such as credit accumulation, remedial student success in
gateway courses, and degree completion. While institutions are still
rewarded for enrollment and access, progress and success are equally
valued.
To date, 26 States have implemented or are in the process of
implementing performance funding. While this strategy cannot guarantee
more college graduates, it can help ensure that campuses are motivated
to adopt successful reforms. Simply put, money focuses minds.
actions congress can take
Address gaps in the integrated Postsecondary Education
Data System (IPEDS). The current data collection system does not fully
capture the needs of today's students. Data is currently unavailable
regarding part-time students, transfer students, students aged 25 or
older, gateway course success for remedial students, credit
accumulation, time to degree, courses completion, and most importantly,
the system does not track Pell students. Ultimately, IPEDS data does a
very poor job of counting all students.
Incentivize students to take 15 credits per semester.
Based on a recent survey commissioned by Complete College America, most
``full-time'' students are not taking the credits needed to graduate on
time. Federal and State policies should encourage students to take at
least 15 credits per semester or 30 credits per year. For example,
reinstate year-round Pell grant funding that enables students to
accumulate the credits necessary to graduate on time, including
allowing students to receive Pell Grant resources through 15 credits,
rather than the current 12 credit limit.
Encourage Pell grants to provide students the opportunity
to complete remediation and a college-level course within their first
academic year.
Consider a Pell bonus for institutions that enroll high
numbers of Pell students to help colleges do more to become high
quality institutions.
For legislation such as America's College Promise, do more
to support and incentivize colleges to implement Game Changer
strategies to create ``high quality institutions'' as referenced in the
original proposal.
There are any number of innovations we can employ to move the
needle on college completion, but the magnitude of these challenges
requires that our reforms be structural and systemic. The Game Changers
are proven strategies that lead to real and lasting results. When it
comes to college completion, our Nation cannot afford to wait any
longer. We must take action now.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Mr. Ralls.
STATEMENT OF R. SCOTT RALLS, PRESIDENT, NORTH CAROLINA
COMMUNITY COLLEGE SYSTEM, RALEIGH, NC
Mr. Ralls. Chairman Alexander, Ranking Member Murray,
members of the committee, thank you for this opportunity.
In October 2009, State and local community college leaders
met in Fayetteville, NC, and declared student success the
strategic focus of North Carolina's community colleges.
Designed to be more a dynamic than a strategic plan, the
effort, billed as SuccessNC, began as a 9-month listening-and-
learning tour across all 58 of our colleges.
It culminated in what some outside observers have referred
to as a culture shift in our system. Almost 6 years later,
SuccessNC resulted in a series of statewide programmatic
reforms and initiatives designed to impact student success at
scale across 58 community colleges.
Some of these programmatic reforms included redesign of
statewide dual enrollment programs, where high school students
enroll free of charge in pathways rather than courses; complete
overhaul of developmental education, or what some refer to as
remedial education, accelerating more students into college-
level math and English courses; restructuring of 89 technical
programs to enable the on-ramps and off-ramps of competency-
based programs that tie in industry certification, and math
redesign to contextualize with workplace requirements; overhaul
of our statewide university articulation agreements with
community colleges, enabling guaranteed course transfers for
all community college students to colleges in the UNC System
and soon most of the private universities in our State, as well
as new reverse transfer opportunities, and new cross-sector
engineering and nursing pathways; and statewide performance
outcome measures and funding tied to key student success
metrics, as well as new data systems, advanced analytics, and
professional development across colleges, all focused on
student success.
The combined implementation of these efforts is still
relatively new, and the outcomes are yet to be evaluated--a few
years down the road, once we get a little further down the road
with the combined implementation. While we've changed many
programs with good intentions, we've certainly not yet reached
educational nirvana or figured everything out.
However, a number of lessons and principles have emerged in
the 6-year journey, ways in which our thinking has been greatly
influenced, and lessons that perhaps may contribute to ideas to
you as you approach the very important work of reauthorizing
the Higher Education Act.
First, we know students are more likely to find success
when they continuously progress along coherent curriculum
pathways. That's a key reason in our State why we're pushing--
and our Governor has endorsed--key legislators for year-round
funding for community colleges. It's also why year-round Pell
grants would be key to impacting student success across our
Nation.
Students are more likely to find success when they start
with the end in mind and have outcome milestones along the way.
That's why your emphasis on outcome milestones is so important
in the Higher Education Act, but it's vital to pay more
attention to the measures that appropriately measure
institutional impact on student success.
Less than one-third of the students enrolling in degree
programs at North Carolina community colleges are in the
current IPEDS cohort. Those many students who leave us without
an academic credential leave with recognized industry
certification that often leads to a job, or they move on to a
university and gain a 4-year degree. They're not counted as
successes according to current metrics.
Third, and relatedly, we know the success goal for many of
our students--the one that they pursue--is a skill and a job.
Their incomes and their family responsibilities require that
they quickly improve their job standing, which is why we have
gone to such great lengths in North Carolina to integrate and
articulate short-term training opportunities leading to valued
industry certifications into the structure of our applied
associate degrees, what some refer to as stackable
certification.
This means that students can gain valuable industry
certification in high-demand areas, like information
technology, welding, health care, and machining, take those
certifications into the workplace, but then bring back and
continue uninterrupted along academic pathways that lead to
academic degrees. Authorizing institutions to include short-
term training programs in their Pell grant eligible portfolio
would be an important step to both closing the skills gap and
recognizing the breadth of student success in higher ed.
Fourth, we know that most of our student pathways to
success run through institutions. They don't begin and end
there, and students' personal pathways, their educational
pathways, aren't typically confined to single institutions. We
have to be willing to embrace the reality that is student swirl
and be diligent in creating more coherent pathways that cut
across institutions.
Community colleges are uniquely positioned in this regard,
as what I often refer to as the seam in seamless education.
Wherever possible, I believe that Federal policy should
incentivize and encourage dual enrollment programs with high
schools that are tightly coordinated with community colleges,
as well as statewide articulation agreements between community
colleges and universities. Creation of a Federal student unit
record system for title IV eligible institutions would move us
forward in accounting for the reality of students moving across
multiple institutions.
And, finally, we know that what is important in the end is
the number of successes we create, not just the percentages
within our institutions. Success must be attained through
widely available opportunity, which is why both simplification
and access are so vital to any focus on student success.
Over two-thirds of community college students come from the
bottom half of the income brackets. We know the harsh realities
of their struggles with both complexity and affordability. That
is why an increased call for simplifying and improving student
financial aid is so important to student success. It is why our
sector also applauds the goals of the America's College Promise
Act, because it importantly makes the bold point that
accessible postsecondary education beyond high school is today
a necessity for family sustaining incomes.
In conclusion, we know that America's community colleges
today have to be more than just a gateway to the American
dream. We have to build clearer, more direct pathways to those
American dreams. Consideration of these points--and I look
forward to discussing them more with you as this hearing
continues. Consideration of these points as you continue this
important pursuit of the Higher Education Act will clear many
obstacles for students in their pathways to opportunity.
Thank you for this opportunity.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Ralls follows:]
Prepared Statement of R. Scott Ralls
summary
In 2009, the North Carolina Community College System, comprising 58
colleges serving more than 830,000 students annually, began a
comprehensive focus on student success that resulted in multiple
programmatic reforms at scale implemented across the State. These
included dual enrollment pathways where students choose structured
pathways in high school and take free college classes, overhaul of
developmental education accelerating more students forward to college
level math and English classes, restructuring of technical education
curriculum to enable opportunities for stackable certification, and
redesign of statewide university articulation agreements to provide
course guarantees for students transferring between community colleges
and universities.
These statewide programmatic efforts provide lessons into
opportunities for enhancing student success on a scaled basis, and
insight into potential areas of attention in the reauthorization of the
Higher Education Act:
Students more likely to find success when they
continuously progress along coherent pathways. This is the key reason
why North Carolina has put emphasis on year-round funding of community
colleges, and why Higher Education Act should allow for year-round Pell
grant opportunities.
Students more likely to find success when they start with
the end in mind, and have outcome mile markers along the way. Outcomes
and accountability are important, but that importance requires metrics
capturing true breadth of student success, and infrastructure that
eases institutional reporting requirements.
Success goal many students pursue is skill leading to a
job. Higher Education Act should support short-term training that leads
students to valued third-party industry credentials, and when that
training is further articulated into academic curriculum.
Student pathways to success run through and across
institutions, and are not typically confined to a single institution.
Federal legislation should encourage and incentivize tight dual
enrollment partnerships with public schools, and strong statewide
articulation agreements between community colleges and universities.
Number of successes produced is what is most important,
not just percentages within institutions. Maintaining strong access,
particularly for low-income students, is key. Financial aid
simplification is badly needed, and increasing the financial support
for students to foster a true K-14 pathway is important.
______
Chairman Alexander, Ranking Member Murray, and members of the
committee, my name is Scott Ralls and I am president of the North
Carolina Community College System, transitioning in 1 month to become
president of Northern Virginia Community College.
In October 2009, State and local community college leaders met in
Fayetteville, NC and declared student success the strategic focus of
the North Carolina Community College System. Designed to be more
dynamic than a strategic plan, the effort, billed as SuccessNC, began
as a 9-month listening-and-learning tour to all 58 community colleges
in the State and led to what some outside observers labeled as a
culture shift in our system. Five years later, SuccessNC resulted in a
series of statewide programmatic reforms and initiatives that impact
student success at scales across 58 community colleges.
These programmatic reforms included:
Redesign of statewide dual enrollment programs where
students enroll in pathways rather than courses;
Adult basic education programs integrated with
developmental education and occupational skills certification;
Overhaul of developmental education accelerating more
students into college-level math and English courses;
Restructuring 89 technical programs to enable the on-ramps
and off-ramps of competency-based, stackable certifications, and math
redesign to contextualize with workplace requirements;
Complete overhaul of our statewide university articulation
agreements enabling guaranteed course transfers for all community
college transfers to the UNC System and most private universities in
our State, reverse transfer opportunities, and new cross-sector
engineering and nursing pathways; and
Statewide performance outcome measures and funding tied to
key student success metrics, and new data systems, advanced analytic
tools, and professional development across community colleges.
The combined implementation of these efforts is still relatively
new and the outcomes yet to be evaluated once we are a few more years
down the road, and while we have changed many programs with good
intentions, we certainly haven't found educational nirvana nor figured
out everything yet.
However, a number of lessons and principles have emerged during
this 6-year journey--ways in which our thinking has been influenced--
and lessons that perhaps may contribute to ideas as you approach the
important reauthorization of the Higher Education Act.
First, we know students are more likely to find success when they
continuously progress along coherent curriculum pathways. This is a key
reason for our current push for year-round State funding in North
Carolina, an effort that has been championed by Governor Pat McCrory
and key legislative leaders, and one where we have already obtained
partial success. Community college students eager to move into or
progress in the workforce, or on to a university, are not looking to
take a summer vacation. Their forward movement often needs to be
accelerated, not slowed, and that is why we believe the provision of
year-round Pell grants is so fundamental to accelerating student
success.
Second, we know students are more likely to find success when they
start with the end in mind, and have outcome milestones along the way.
That is why the emphasis on outcomes and accountability is so important
in the Higher Education Act reauthorization. However, it is vital that
more attention be given to measures that appropriately measure
institutional impact on student success. Less than one-third of the
students enrolling in our North Carolina Community colleges are
included in the current IPEDS graduation cohort. Those many students
who leave us without an academic credential, but with valued industry
credentials leading to a job, or successful transfer to a university
leading to a bachelor's degree, are currently not considered as
successes based on the Federal definition.
Where possible, the Higher Education Act should provide resources,
funding and technical assistance to respond to performance-based
funding systems, create the facilitating infrastructure that
facilitates measuring and tracking of student success, and streamline
other institutional reporting requirements.
Third and relatedly, we know the success goal many of our students
pursue is a skill and a job. Their incomes and family responsibilities
require them to quickly improve their job standing, which is why we
have gone to such great lengths in North Carolina to integrate and
articulate short-term training opportunities leading to valued industry
certifications into the structure of our applied associate degrees--
what is often referred to as stackable certification. This means
students can gain highly valued industry credentials in demand areas
such as information technology, welding, health care and machining and
enter the workplace with a higher paying job, while continuing their
pursuit of a postsecondary credential with credit for their previous
short-term training.
Authorizing institutions to include short-term training programs in
their Pell Grant-eligible portfolio would be an important step to both
closing the skills gap and fully recognizing the breadth of
postsecondary student success.
Fourth, we know that most of our student pathways to success run
through our institutions, they don't begin and end there, and
students''' personal pathways aren't typically confined to single
institutions. We have to be willing to embrace the reality of ``student
swirl'', but be diligent in creating more coherent pathways across
institutions and educational sectors, which is why tight, structured
collaborations across educational partners are so important.
Community colleges are uniquely positioned, in this regard, as what
I like to refer to as the ``seam in seamless education.'' Wherever
possible, I believe, Federal policy and legislation should encourage
and incentivize implementation of dual enrollment pathways tightly
connected with public schools, and strong statewide articulation
agreements between community colleges and universities. Creation of a
Federal unit record system for title IV eligible institutions would
move us forward accounting for the reality of students moving across
multiple institutions.
Finally, we know that what is important in the end is the number of
successes we collectively help produce, not just the percentages within
our individual institutions. Success must be attained through widely
available opportunity, which is why both simplification and access are
so vital to any focus on student success. Over two-thirds of community
college students today come from the bottom half of the income
brackets. We know the harsh realities of their struggles with both
complexity and affordability. That is why the increased call for
simplifying and improving student financial aid is so important, and if
made a reality, will play an important role in furthering student
success.
It is also why our sector applauds the goals of the America's
College Promise Act, which notes not only the unique role of America's
community colleges, but more importantly makes the bold point that
accessible postsecondary education beyond high school is today a
necessity for family sustaining incomes.
In conclusion, we know that America's community colleges today have
to be more than just a gateway to the American dream, we have to build
clearer, more direct pathways to those dreams. Your consideration of
these points in the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act will
help clear some obstacles from those pathways of opportunity.
Thank you.
The Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Ralls.
Senator Isakson, I already introduced Dr. Renick. Would you
like to say some words about him?
Senator Isakson. I want to brag about him, because----
The Chairman. You've done that before.
Statement of Senator Isakson
Senator Isakson. I've done that. Two years ago, I bragged
about Georgia State University and, in particular, the Panther
Grant Program, which was an innovation of the university and
which Dr. Renick uses today to see to it that students almost
on the verge of dropping out because of a minimal financial
problem get a minimal financial need met so they can stay in
school and graduate.
It's interesting to note that other than Panther grants,
they've also developed a student tracking system that tracks
over 30,000 students at the university and measures them
against 800 unique identifiers which indicate pitfalls they
could actually have toward graduation. Georgia State is doing a
remarkable job. Most notably of all, they now grant more
bachelor degrees to African American graduates than any
university in the United States of America.
I'm very proud to have Dr. Renick here today, and I'm very
proud of Georgia State University.
The Chairman. Thank you, Senator Isakson.
Dr. Renick.
STATEMENT OF TIMOTHY RENICK, Ph.D., M.A., VICE PROVOST AND VICE
PRESIDENT FOR ENROLLMENT MANAGEMENT AND STUDENT SUCCESS,
GEORGIA STATE UNIVERSITY, ATLANTA, GA
Mr. Renick. Chairman Alexander, Ranking Member Murray, and
the committee members, thank you for the opportunity to be here
today.
Senator Isakson, a particular thanks for your leadership
and support of higher education in Georgia.
A decade ago, the odds that Georgia State University would
some day be invited to testify at a hearing on student success
seemed very remote. Georgia State's institutional graduation
rate stood at 32 percent, and underserved populations were
foundering. Graduate rates were 22 percent for Hispanics, 29
percent for blacks, and 18 percent for black males.
As Atlanta and Georgia were being hit hard by the
recession, the challenges intensified. Georgia State lost tens
of millions of dollars in State appropriations while
simultaneously doubling the number of at-risk students that it
enrolls.
Today, our 32,000 students are 63 percent non-white and 59
percent Pell eligible. Ours is now one of the most diverse
student bodies in the Nation and one of the most at-risk. These
are hardly the typical ingredients for a turnaround.
Despite these odds, under the leadership of President Mark
Becker, we made a public commitment to develop a model that
would allow students from all backgrounds to succeed at high
rates. Using data proactively, we identified obstacles that
trip up our students and pioneered a dozen innovative and
large-scale programs to help.
For example, as recently as 2011, Georgia State was
dropping more than 1,000 students every semester from their
classes because the students couldn't cover all of the costs of
their tuition and fees. Disproportionately low-income and first
generation, many of these students were seniors, who were only
a semester or two away from graduating. With balances of as
little as $300. Dropping these students was heartbreaking and
made little sense.
In 2011, we created Panther Retention Grants as a response.
The program awards one-time micro grants to cover the balance
between what students can pay and the cost of their tuition and
fees. From modest beginnings, we have now brought 5,300
students back into their classes via this program alone.
Among the senior recipients, more than 60 percent graduate
within two semesters of receiving the grant. Because the
funding goes exclusively to cover tuition and fees, 100 percent
of the grant monies come back to the university, making the
program not only the right thing to do, but financially
sustainable as well.
Our GPS advising system addresses another major problem
that hits at-risk students particularly hard: poor academic
decisionmaking. Using 10 years of Georgia State data and over
2.5 million grades, we have created predictive analytics to
identify when students first get off track for graduation.
We are now tracking 30,000 students every day for 800
different risk factors, ranging from students who register for
classes that don't apply to their degree programs to those who
underperform in prerequisite classes. When a problem is
identified, an alert goes off, and the advisor assigned to that
student reaches out to help, typically within 48 hours.
Last year at Georgia State, we had 43,000 one-on-one
meetings between advisors and students that were prompted by
alerts from our GPS advising system. Because students are
making fewer mistakes, we have reduced the average time to
degree, saving our students and taxpayers millions of dollars.
Such interventions are in many ways just common sense, but
they make a huge difference. Georgia State University now
graduates 1,700 more students annually than it did just 5 years
ago and confers more bachelor's degrees to African Americans
than any nonprofit college or university in the Nation. Our
graduation rate has climbed 22 percentage points overall, with
the biggest gains being enjoyed by student populations that
once struggled the most. As a result, all achievement gaps,
based on race, ethnicity, and economics have been eliminated.
The impact has been so transformational that in this coming
January, we will be consolidated with the largest 2-year
college in the State of Georgia with the goal of leveraging our
new programs and technologies to benefit an additional 22,000
students. Even prior to consolidation, Georgia State was
committed to broadly sharing the approaches that we have
developed. We have hosted visiting teams from 160 campuses over
the past 2 years, and we work closely to share practices with
groups such as Complete College America and the Urban Serving
Universities of the APLU.
We are a founding member of the University Innovation
Alliance, a coalition of 11 large public research universities
enrolling more than 400,000 students and dedicated to improving
student outcomes, especially for low-income students. Such
collaborations we are using to greatly accelerate the pace by
which innovative new approaches to student success are adopted
nationally.
Collaboration across institutions is perhaps the most
promising path to transforming student outcomes at scale. Here
we need your help. Amid the competitive, ranking-conscious
world of higher education, we need to find new ways to
incentivize collaboration. Federal grant programs, for
instance, too often reward the efforts of a campus or two to
implement the tried and true rather than supporting ambitious
proposals to test and scale transformative ideas across broad
groupings of universities.
We need to find more nuanced ways to determine when and how
students are given access to Federal aid. We should empower
campuses to use data intelligently to target Federal aid to the
students who will make the best use of it, and create greater
flexibility and eligibility rules for students demonstrating
strong progress toward completing their degrees.
If we're truly serious about increasing completion rates
for low-income students, we need to curb the predatory
institutions and lenders that target them and promote
meaningful literacy training so that students will use their
Federal aid more wisely.
Georgia State University still has much work to do. Our
story demonstrates that significant improvements in student
success can be achieved through embracing inclusion rather than
exclusion. It shows that, contrary to popular belief, students
from all backgrounds can succeed at high rates and that
dramatic gains can be made even amid the context of constrained
resources.
Georgia State's story is, indeed, improbable. That's the
problem. It is time we made it the norm.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Renick follows:]
Prepared Statement of Timothy Renick, Ph.D., M.A.
summary
Despite demographic shifts that have doubled the number of at-risk
students enrolled and steep cuts to its State appropriations, Georgia
State University in Atlanta has transformed its student success
outcomes over the past decade. Georgia State's graduation rate has
climbed 22 percentage points, with the biggest gains being enjoyed by
the at-risk student populations that once struggled the most. The
university now graduates 1,700 more students annually than it did just
5 years ago and confers more baccalaureate degrees to African Americans
than any non-profit college or university in the Nation. Georgia State
has eliminated all achievement gaps based on race, ethnicity and income
level.
Under the leadership of President Mark Becker, Georgia State made a
public commitment to develop a model that would allow students from all
backgrounds to succeed at high rates. Through the proactive use of data
and a willingness to scale interventions so that they benefit thousands
of students, the university has pioneered a series of innovative and
highly impactful student success programs.
Panther Retention Grants fund small gaps between the costs of
tuition and fees and the resources that students have. For as little as
$300, students are brought back into classes instead of being allowed
to drop or stop out. From modest beginnings in 2011, the program has
now restored 5,300 students to their classes. For the recipients who
are seniors, more than 60 percent have graduated within two semesters
of receiving their grants. Because the funding goes exclusively toward
covering tuition and fees, 100 percent of the grant monies come back to
the university, making the program not only the right thing to do but
sustainable, as well.
GPS Advising is a tracking system that uses predictive analytics to
identify in real time when students go off course for graduation. Using
10 years of historical data and more than 2.5 million Georgia State
grades, the system tracks 30,000 students every day for more than 800
risk factors such as registering for the wrong course or
underperforming in prerequisite classes. Last year, there were 43,000
one-on-one meetings between Georgia State advisors and students that
were prompted by alerts from the GPS Advising system.
Georgia State's student success efforts, both as an individual
institution and as part of collaborations such as the University
Innovation Alliance, would be assisted by: (1) Identifying ways to
incentivize student-success collaboration across institutions through
Federal policies and grants; (2) Rethinking Satisfactory Academic
Progress to empower rather than restrict campuses that are using data
intelligently to allow them to award Federal aid more effectively to
the students who will benefit the most; (3) Curbing predatory
institutions that target low-income students and create devastating
levels of transfer debt; and (4) Supporting universities in their
efforts to require financial literacy training so that more students
who receive Federal financial aid will be equipped to use it
intelligently.
______
A decade ago, the chances that Georgia State University would
someday be invited to provide testimony at a hearing on student success
seemed very remote. Georgia State's institutional graduation rate stood
at 32 percent and underserved populations were foundering. Graduation
rates were 22 percent for Hispanics, 29 percent for blacks, and 18
percent for black males. Pell students were graduating at rates far
below those of non-Pell students.
The demographic and economic changes of the past decade did nothing
to improve the prospects for a turnaround. As Atlanta and Georgia were
being hit hard by the recession, Georgia State lost tens of millions of
dollars in State appropriations while simultaneously doubling the
number of at-risk students that it enrolls. Our student body of 32,000
students is now 63 percent non-white and 59 percent Pell eligible. This
makes Georgia State not only one of the most diverse public research
universities in the country, but also an institution at the leading
edge of demographic trends that are facing our entire nation.
Under the leadership of President Mark Becker, we made a public
commitment to develop a model that would allow students from all
backgrounds to succeed at high rates. Using data proactively, we
identify critical obstacles to our students' progress, pilot innovative
interventions, and scale the approaches that prove most successful.
Scale is the key. As I visit other campuses, I often hear of promising
programs that benefit only a small number of students. Fifty or even a
hundred more graduates will not create the results that we need as a
Nation. At Georgia State, we seek to identify programs that are both
cost-effective and truly transformative--programs that impact thousands
and even tens of thousands of our students every semester.
Two examples will help to illustrate our approach.
Just a few years ago, Georgia State was dropping 1,000 students
every semester from their classes because the students could not cover
all of the costs of their tuition and fees. These were the last
students that we wanted to drop. Disproportionately low-income and
first-generation, many were seniors who were only a semester or two
away from graduating but who had exhausted their eligibility for aid.
With balances as little as $300, dropping these students was
heartbreaking--and made no sense.
In 2011, we created Panther Retention Grants as a response. The
program awards one-time, micro grants to cover the balance between what
students can pay and the costs of their tuition and fees. We use
analytics to ensure that the recipients have unmet financial need and
are applying themselves academically. From modest beginnings in 2011,
we have now brought 5,300 students back into their classes via the
program. Among the senior recipients, more than 60 percent have
graduated within two semesters of receiving the grants. And because the
funding goes exclusively toward tuition and fees, 100 percent of the
grant monies come back to the university, making the program not only
the right thing to do but financially sustainable, as well.
Our Graduation Progression Success (GPS) Advising system addresses
another major problem that hits at-risk students particularly hard: bad
academic decisions and wasted credit hours. Using 10 years of Georgia
State data and over 2.5 million grades, we have created predictive
analytics to identify when our students make decisions that put them
off track for graduation. Similar to high-tech medical screening, the
system is designed to identify individuals who are at risk when a
problem first surfaces, not after it has become debilitating.
We are now tracking more than 30,000 students every day for 800
different risk factors, ranging from students who register for classes
that do not apply to their degree programs to those who underperform in
prerequisite courses. When a problem is identified, an alert goes off
and the advisor assigned to the student reaches out to help--typically
within 48 hours. Last year at Georgia State University, we had 43,000
one-on-one meetings between advisors and students that were prompted by
alerts from our GPS Advising system.
In many ways, such interventions are merely common sense. Through
them, we help students navigate the many complicated academic and
financial decisions that graduating from college requires--decisions
which low-income and first-generation students are often ill-prepared
to make.
While simple in approach, these and other similar interventions
have made a big difference. Georgia State University now graduates
1,700 more students annually than it did just 5 years ago and confers
more bachelor degrees to African Americans than any non-profit college
or university in the Nation. Our graduation rate has climbed 22
percentage points overall, with the biggest gains being enjoyed by the
student populations that once struggled the most. Black and Latino
graduation rates have improved by more than 30 points each. Rates for
black males are up 40 points, and all achievement gaps based on race,
ethnicity and economics have been eliminated.
The impact has been so transformational that, this coming January,
we will be consolidated with the largest 2-year college in the State of
Georgia, Georgia Perimeter College, with the goal of leveraging our new
programs and technologies to benefit an additional 22,000 students.
Even prior to consolidation, Georgia State was committed to sharing
the lessons that we have learned and the approaches we have developed.
Georgia State has worked enthusiastically to exchange insights and
practices as part of groups such as Complete College America and the
Coalition of Urban Serving Universities. We are a founding member of
the University Innovation Alliance, a coalition of 11 large public
research universities dedicated to improving student outcomes,
especially for low-income students. Through such collaborations, we are
working with peer institutions from across the United States to
accelerate the pace by which innovative best practices are adopted from
one campus to the next.
This is an area where we need your help.
First, amid the highly competitive, rankings-conscious
world of higher education, we need to find new ways to incentivize
collaboration. At times, our efforts to work across State lines and
through the sharing of data are limited by the very policies that are
designed to help students. Similarly, Federal grant programs are rarely
set up to accommodate such alliances of universities, and the grants
are too often awarded based on what is tried and true rather than what
has the potential to truly transform.
Second, we need to find new and more nuanced ways to
determine when and how students are given access to Federal aid. The
current rules surrounding satisfactory academic progress are a blunt
instrument that do not reflect today's advances in student analytics.
At Georgia State, we are required at times to award Federal aid to
students we know are poor risks while cutting off funding to students
who may be a semester or two away from graduating. We need to rethink
SAP so as to empower rather than restrict campuses that are using data
intelligently to target aid more effectively. I believe we also should
resist proposals to limit Pell funding to eight semesters--another idea
that is far too blunt and that would have devastating consequences on
working students like those at Georgia State.
Third, we need to continue to crack down on the predatory
institutions and lenders that target low-income students and their
families. Georgia State is the largest transfer recipient school in
Georgia. This fall, among the 2,500 new transfer students that we will
enroll, more than 600 will arrive on campus with debt of $20,000 or
more. Two students will arrive with debt over $100,000. Such students
often have little useable credit and may be still years away from
attaining their bachelor degrees. If we are serious about raising
completion rates for low-income students, we cannot allow such
predatory practices to continue, nor can we create policies that de-
incentivize more responsible universities from taking on such students
and the debt that they bring with them.
And finally, financial counseling and financial literary
training work. At Georgia State, we now require such training of all
freshmen and all Panther Grant recipients, and we have seen significant
declines in the poor financial decisions that students are making.
Unfortunately, right now we must try to induce students to participate
in such programs by coaxing and with little support from Federal
policies, which too often grant students Federal aid without regard to
their readiness to use it intelligently.
Georgia State University's story is improbable, to be sure. That is
precisely why it matters. Georgia State still has much work to do, but
its progress in recent years demonstrates that significant improvements
in student success outcomes can come through embracing inclusion rather
than exclusion, and that such gains can be made even amid a context of
constrained resources. It shows that low-income and underrepresented
students can succeed at the same levels as other students and that,
even at large public universities, we can provide all students with
personalized support at reasonable costs. It shows that we can put
rankings aside and accelerate change through meaningful collaboration
across institutions.
I look forward to a day when such progress is no longer labeled
improbable but becomes the accepted norm for all American universities.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Dr. Richburg-Hayes.
STATEMENT OF LASHAWN RICHBURG-HAYES, Ph.D., PRESIDENT, YOUNG
ADULTS AND POSTSECONDARY EDUCATION, MDRC, NEW YORK, NY
Ms. Richburg-Hayes. Good morning, Chairman Alexander,
Ranking Member Murray, and members of the committee. Thank you
for inviting me to testify here today on what research tells us
about ways to improve academic success among low-income college
students.
My organization, MDRC, is known for conducting large-scale
evaluations and demonstration projects to test the impacts and
cost effectiveness of education and social programs. Many of
our studies use a random assignment research design, which is
the most rigorous method for assessing such programs.
As was mentioned earlier today by a number of the Senators
and others, our challenge really is to develop more
opportunities for low-income students to both attend and
succeed at institutions of higher learning. Fortunately,
research is beginning to point the way toward some solutions in
four primary areas: first, comprehensive and integrated
reforms; second, developmental education reforms; third,
structured pathways; and, fourth, innovations in financial aid.
I'll share some of the main lessons from this existing
research. In terms of comprehensive and integrated programs,
we've learned from the City University of New York's ASAP
program, the Accelerated Study in Associates Program, that such
integrated and comprehensive programs can make a sizable
difference in graduation rates.
ASAP is designed to help students nearly double the rate at
which they graduate within 3 years. It consists primarily of
four components: requirements and messages around attending
college full-time, which, in this program, is defined as 12
credits per semester; student services, which entails having
advising services for students in the program, including career
advisement; course enrollment or structured pathways; and
financial support, including financial incentives through
textbook vouchers and transportation cards.
These components resulted in very large impacts, the
largest impacts among any random assignment study of a
postsecondary intervention. Students in the ASAP program
graduated at a rate of 18.3 percentage points higher than their
control group counterparts. This is almost a doubling of the
graduation rate in 3 years among community college students,
all of whom were Pell eligible and most of whom were students
of color.
It also lowered the cost per degree at the 3-year point,
lower than the control condition, meaning that the program was
also cost-effective.
In terms of other research, research has identified
strategies for improving developmental education outcomes as
well. As was mentioned earlier today, students needing
remediation actually require more services, and it's necessary
to address this issue to improve the graduation rates, because
differences in outcomes vary by socioeconomic status, making
gaps in achievement evident.
Several random assignment interventions have been conducted
thus far that suggest that there are modest impacts and
improvement that are possible through such interventions. At
this point, we have second generation interventions--including
new ways to assess incoming students to provide them with
services before they enroll in college, and to improve and
accelerate developmental education teaching--that are currently
being evaluated, and findings are not yet available.
Structured pathway approaches have been shown to have some
promise. Among the many structured pathway programs out there,
ASAP is one example of a program that has implemented a lot of
elements that are touted in the research as being useful.
Financial aid is also another important lever to help low-
income students succeed. Studies demonstrate that incentive-
based grants and innovation on traditional financial aid result
in a larger proportion of students meeting academic benchmarks,
a greater number of credits earned, and modest effects on GPA.
Building on what we already know, my written testimony
offers a number of recommendations in two broad categories.
First, give colleges and States incentives to replicate proven
programs. For example, the Federal Government could support the
spread of ASAP and other interventions with strong evidence of
effectiveness.
Second, encourage innovation paired with research,
particularly rigorous research, so that we continue to identify
programs that make a real difference. Specifically, additional
research could be conducted into structured pathways, an area
for which little is known currently beyond programs such as
ASAP, year-round financial aid, and innovations in work-study
programs.
Thank you again for the opportunity to testify here today,
and I look forward to questions you may have.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Richburg-Hayes follows:]
Prepared Statement of Lashawn Richburg-Hayes, Ph.D.
summary
Thank you for inviting me to testify today about what the research
evidence tells us about ways to improve the academic success of low-
income college students. MDRC is known for conducting large-scale
evaluations and demonstration projects to test the impacts and cost-
effectiveness of education and social programs. Many of our studies use
a random assignment research design, the most rigorous method for
assessing such programs, which is able to determine the value an
intervention adds to the status quo. Here are the main lessons of the
existing research:
1. Comprehensive and integrated programs can make a sizable
difference in graduation rates. The City University of New York's
Accelerated Study in Associate Programs (ASAP) is a comprehensive and
integrated long-term program designed to help more community college
students graduate more quickly. Both an opportunity and an obligation,
ASAP nearly doubled 3-year graduation rates for students who started
college needing developmental (or remedial) course work--at a lower
cost per graduate than usual college services.
2. Identifying effective strategies for developmental education
students is critical to improving national graduation rates and evening
outcomes by socioeconomic status. Several random assignment
interventions have been conducted that suggest modest positive
improvements in outcomes are possible. Second-generation interventions
are currently being evaluated and findings will be available shortly.
3. A structured pathway approach has shown promise at improving
graduation rates. ASAP is one example of a program that implemented
elements of a structured pathway approach, which is based on the idea
that simple, well-defined programs of study may help more students
complete community college.
4. Financial aid is an important lever to help low-income students
succeed. Work by MDRC in this area has shown that incentive-based
grants can increase first-year enrollment when the intervention targets
graduating high school seniors, and that they can modestly improve
academic outcomes for diverse groups of students.
recommendations
1. Give colleges and States incentives to replicate proven
programs. For example, the Federal Government could support the spread
of ASAP.
2. Encourage innovation paired with research, especially rigorous
evaluation. Specifically, additional research could be conducted into
structured pathways, year-round financial aid, and work-study programs.
______
Good morning, Chairman Alexander, Ranking Member Murray, and
members of the committee. Thank you for inviting me to testify today
about what the research evidence tells us about ways to improve the
academic success of low-income college students.
My name is Lashawn Richburg-Hayes, and I am director of the Young
Adults and Postsecondary Education policy area for MDRC, a nonprofit,
nonpartisan research organization based in New York City. MDRC was
founded more than 40 years ago to build reliable evidence on the
effectiveness of programs for the disadvantaged and to help
policymakers and practitioners use that evidence to improve policies
and programs. MDRC is known for conducting large-scale evaluations and
demonstration projects to test the impacts and cost-effectiveness of
education and social programs. Many of our studies use a random
assignment research design, the most rigorous method for assessing such
programs, which is able to determine the value an intervention adds to
the status quo. This method, analogous to the one used in medical
clinical trials, produces the most reliable evidence that a program
works. As a result, it is the only method to be accepted without
reservations by the Department of Education's What Works Clearinghouse.
Given that resources are limited and problems are very difficult to
solve, proceeding with evidenced-based policy is prudent. Ensuring that
the evidence is there when it is needed is our mission and that of many
other dedicated researchers.
Let me begin by summarizing my main points. These are all lessons
drawn from existing research:
1. Comprehensive and integrated programs can make a sizable
difference. The City University of New York's Accelerated Study in
Associate Programs (ASAP) is a comprehensive and integrated long-term
program designed to help more community college students graduate more
quickly. MDRC's random assignment study of ASAP shows that the program
nearly doubled 3-year graduation rates for students who started college
needing developmental (or remedial) course work--at a lower cost per
graduate than usual college services.
2. Identifying effective strategies for developmental education
students is critical to improving national graduation rates and evening
outcomes by socioeconomic status. Several random assignment
interventions have been conducted that suggest modest positive
improvements in outcomes are possible. Second-generation interventions
are currently being evaluated and findings will be available shortly to
inform policymakers and practitioners about what works in this area.
3. ASAP is one example of a program that implemented elements of a
structured pathway approach, which is based on the idea that simple,
well-defined programs of study may help more students complete
community college. Most community college students are offered a vast
array of courses and options to arrange their schedules and earn
credentials. In theory, these allow them to match their interests with
the right program. In reality, however, they leave many students
confused and overwhelmed.
4. Financial aid is an important lever to help low-income students
succeed. Given both the size of the financial aid system ($226 billion)
and the widespread use of financial aid for various purposes, financial
aid must be thought of as another tool that can be used to improve
academic success and postsecondary completion. A growing body of work
has studied interventions that use financial aid as an incentive to
improve academic success. Nine such studies demonstrate that incentive-
based grants--an innovation on traditional financial aid--result in a
larger proportion of students meeting academic benchmarks, a greater
number of credits earned, and modest effects on grade point average in
the first year. Work by MDRC in this area has shown that incentive-
based grants can increase first-year enrollment when the intervention
targets graduating high school seniors.
recommendations
1. Give colleges and States incentives to replicate proven
programs. For example, the Federal Government could support the spread
of ASAP. This could be through funding mechanisms such as First in the
World. This year's First in the World competition did encourage
applicants to propose replicating interventions that had strong
evidence, but additional support could be fostered through future
competitions and also through other funding mechanisms.
2. Encourage innovation paired with research, especially rigorous
evaluation. Specifically, additional research could be conducted into
structured pathways, year-round financial aid, and work-study programs.
The Department of Education (or other parts of the Federal
Government) can encourage tests of structured pathways. Components of
structured pathways have been studied in different fields but evidence
is lacking on the effectiveness of an entire model. A center focused on
structured pathways or a grant competition with long-term support can
foster more research in this area.
The Department of Education can test Pell Grant
funding to cover the summer term of the academic year. Offering
Pell Grant aid to students during the summer would offer an
opportunity to test whether aid during short terms (that is,
those less than 12 weeks in duration) helps students make
stronger progress toward degree completion. Tying the
reintroduction of summer Pell awards to some of the other
strategies discussed in this testimony (for example,
incremental aid disbursements) could help control program costs
and make the program more sustainable.
States and institutions could be encouraged to use
internal or external grant funding to test whether summer
funding improves outcomes. States and institutions with
flexible grant aid dollars could allocate some of those funds
to grants for summer or winter college enrollment, or both.
Additionally, States and institutions could seek out
partnerships with local and national donor organizations
committed to helping low-income students graduate from college.
The Federal Government could encourage a test that
compares the current work-study model with a modified version
designed to help low-income students make career advances while
in college. Given the amount of money expended on this aid
program ($972 million in academic year 2011-12), it would be a
worthy endeavor to clarify how that aid can help students most
effectively.
the challenge
Access to college has increased substantially over the last 50
years, but student success--defined as the combination of academic
success and degree or certificate completion--has not improved.\1\
What's more, success is unevenly distributed by socioeconomic status,
with students from high-income families attending and completing
college at higher rates than low-income students are completing. While
low-income students are now more likely to attend college, they are not
more likely to complete college.\2\
Part of the reason is that students arrive at college
underprepared. Many students from low-income families are unlikely to
engage in a curriculum that prepares them for college. A large
proportion of such students therefore arrive at college, are assessed
to see if they are ready for college course work, and are placed into
developmental education courses, where they linger.
The gap in completion rates is exacerbated by the fact that low-
income students are more likely to attend open- or broad-access
institutions that typically do not have the resources to provide the
level of support that underprepared and unprepared students need in
order to succeed.\3\ To cite just one statistic, the Nation's 1,200
community colleges enroll over 10 million students each year--nearly
half of the Nation's undergraduates. Yet fewer than 40 percent of
entrants complete an undergraduate degree within 6 years.\4\ The
outcomes are not much better at public 4-year, open-access
institutions, where the 6-year graduation rate is only slightly higher.
In short, while there have been marked successes in college access
since the passage of the Higher Education Act of 1965--which extended
need-based financial assistance to the general population for the first
time--more work remains to be done to improve college persistence and
completion rates.
The challenge is to develop more opportunities for low-income
students to both attend and succeed at institutions of higher learning.
Fortunately, research is beginning to point the way toward some
possible solutions in four areas: comprehensive and integrated reforms,
developmental education reforms, structured pathways, and innovations
in financial aid.
comprehensive and integrated interventions
Many reforms have been found to help students in the short term,
but few have substantially boosted college completion.\5\ The City
University of New York's (CUNY's) Accelerated Study in Associate
Programs (ASAP), launched in 2007 with funding from the New York City
Center for Economic Opportunity, is an uncommonly comprehensive and
long-term program designed to help more community college students
graduate and help them graduate more quickly. Earlier this year, MDRC
released new results from our random assignment study of ASAP showing
that the program nearly doubled 3-year graduation rates for students
who started college needing developmental (or remedial) course work--at
a lower cost per graduate than usual college services.\6\
ASAP represents both an opportunity and an obligation for students.
It was designed to address multiple potential barriers to student
success and to address them for up to 3 years. The key components of
ASAP are:
Requirements and messages: Students are required to attend
college full-time (defined as 12 credit hours per term) and are
encouraged to take developmental courses early and to graduate within 3
years.
Student services: Students receive comprehensive advising
from an ASAP-dedicated adviser with a caseload of 60 to 80 students (as
compared with 600-plus for other CUNY advisers), career information
from an ASAP-dedicated career and employment services staff member, and
ASAP-dedicated tutoring services.
Course enrollment: Students may enroll in blocked or
linked courses (two or more courses grouped together with seats
reserved for ASAP students) in their first year. Students also enroll
in an ASAP seminar during their first few semesters covering topics
such as goal setting and study skills. Students can also register for
courses early.
Financial support: Students receive a tuition waiver that
covers any gap between financial aid and college tuition and fees.
Students also receive free use of textbooks and free MetroCards for use
on public transportation, contingent on participation in key program
services.
Many of the components of ASAP (enhanced student services,
financial aid as an incentive, linked courses, student support courses)
have been studied rigorously in other settings and found to increase
student success only modestly at best. Would combining them together
create a whole that was more effective than the sum of its parts? For
the MDRC study, ASAP targeted Pell-eligible low-income students who
needed one or two developmental courses to build their reading,
writing, or math skills and compared ASAP with regular services and
classes at the colleges. MDRC's report, which provides results for 3
years, found that ASAP:
Boosted enrollment and credits earned. ASAP increased
enrollment in college, especially during the shorter winter and summer
intersessions. ASAP increased the average number of credits earned over
3 years by 8.7 credits (47.7 for ASAP students vs. 39.0 for students in
the control group).
Greatly increased graduation rates. ASAP nearly doubled
the percentage of students who earned an associate's degree in 3 years
(40.1 percent for ASAP students vs. 21.8 percent for students in the
control group, for an 18.3 percentage point difference). It is
important to note that these students had to fulfill developmental
education requirements before earning at least 60 college-level credits
to graduate.
Increased transfers to 4-year colleges. ASAP increased the
percentage of students who transferred to a 4-year college by 7.8
percentage points (25.1 for ASAP students vs. 17.3 for the students in
the control group).
Lowered the cost per degree. At the 3-year point, the cost
per degree was lower in ASAP than in the control condition. Because the
program generated so many more graduates than the usual college
services, the cost per degree was less, despite the substantial
investment required to operate the program.
While ASAP offers many services to students (and expects their
substantial commitment in return), it is important to emphasize that it
achieves its effects without making changes in curricula or in
pedagogy. A few other points are worth noting. A substantial portion of
the effect on credit accumulation for ASAP students came during the
winter and summer terms, which ASAP strongly encouraged students to
attend. (In fact, students could fulfill their full-time status for a
main spring or fall term by taking summer or winter courses). The value
of providing support to students year-round is a subject I will return
to later. While our research design cannot definitively determine which
components of ASAP made the most difference, three aspects of the
program stand out: (1) combining participation requirements for
students with extensive support services, (2) tying the distribution of
the MetroCard (worth more than $100 per month) to student engagement in
program services like advising and careful monitoring of student
participation by CUNY, and (3) encouraging students to take
developmental courses early and to enroll in summer and winter
sessions. The success of ASAP does not come easy. Other similarly
ambitious programs have confronted a variety of implementation and
institutional challenges.
What is next for ASAP? ASAP's success has prompted New York City to
invest up to $42 million by 2019 to bring the program to as many as
25,000 students. As CUNY has expanded ASAP, it has been able to bring
down its per-student cost. In addition, CUNY and MDRC, with anchor
funding from the Great Lakes Higher Education Guaranty Corporation, are
replicating ASAP at three Ohio community colleges to test whether it
can be successfully adapted in new contexts serving different student
populations. In the future, MDRC may work with other colleges
interested in implementing their own versions of ASAP to evaluate the
effectiveness of these adaptations.
developmental education reforms
Research suggests that about one-half of all entering college
students and 68 percent of entering community college students take at
least one remedial course within 6 years. Many enroll in more than one
remedial course, either in one subject or in multiple subjects.\7\
Fewer than half of students successfully make it through the sequence
of courses to which they are referred and only one-third of students
who take a remedial course ever earn any postsecondary credential.\8\
Low-income, minority, and first-generation college students are all
overrepresented in these negative outcomes associated with
developmental education.\9\
Several interventions have shown modest short-term effects for
students with developmental education needs. For example, MDRC studied
eight summer bridge programs in Texas that aimed to reduce the need for
remediation by offering students accelerated, focused learning
opportunities between the senior year of high school and college. That
study found positive impacts on introductory college-level course
completion in math and writing, though those impacts faded by the end
of 2 years. MDRC also evaluated learning communities, a strategy to
address developmental education by bringing together small groups of
students who take two or more linked courses that have mutually
reinforcing themes and assignments. That evaluation also found modest,
positive impacts for students while the learning communities were in
place.
More research will emerge on strategies effective at addressing
developmental education. The Center for the Analysis of Postsecondary
Readiness (CAPR)--a joint center funded by the Institute for Education
Sciences and run by MDRC and the Community College Research Center at
Teacher's College, Columbia University--is conducting research to
document current practices in developmental English and math education
across the United States and to rigorously evaluate innovative
assessment and instructional practices. The purpose of CAPR's research
is to help advance a second generation of developmental education
innovation in which colleges and State agencies design, implement, and
expand stronger and more comprehensive reforms that improve student
outcomes. CAPR is conducting three major studies that together will
help provide a foundation for this undertaking: (1) a national survey
of developmental education practices at 2- and 4-year colleges, (2) an
evaluation of alternate systems of remedial assessment and placement,
and (3) an evaluation of an innovative developmental math pathways
program.
In addition to CAPR, rigorous random assignment evaluations are
currently under way of several promising interventions including CUNY
Start, a multifaceted prematriculation program that provides intensive
instruction in reading, writing, and math through a carefully
prescribed curriculum and instructional delivery system. CUNY Start
condenses the time students spend preparing for college-level English
and math into a single semester. In addition, it delivers enhanced
academic and nonacademic support through advisers, tutors, and a weekly
seminar that builds college success skills, at a cost to students of
only $75 per semester.
MDRC's Developmental Education Acceleration Project is also testing
the effectiveness of an ``accelerated'' developmental education
curriculum, using a random assignment design. The ModMath program at
Tarrant County College in Fort Worth, TX, divides three semesters of
developmental math into nine discrete modules, allowing students to
enter the sequence at a point appropriate to their skills and to leave
and return without losing as much ground as they would in semester-
length courses.
structured pathways
ASAP is one example of a program that implemented elements of a
structured pathway approach, which is based on the idea that simple,
well-defined programs of study may help more students to complete
community college. Most community college students are offered a vast
array of courses and options to arrange their schedules and earn
credentials. In theory these allow them to match their interests with
the right program. In reality, however, they leave many students
confused and overwhelmed, unsure about what classes they need to
complete their degrees and which credits can transfer to a 4-year
institution. Moreover, little guidance is provided on how to sift
through the chaos and make the right decisions based on their goals and
long-term plans. Students end up taking courses and accumulating
credits, but never finishing their degrees or getting their
certificates.
More choice is not always better. For example, studies in
behavioral economics have shown that when people are faced with a
plethora of choices, seemingly irrelevant contextual factors tend to
influence their decisions. In addition, when they are confronted with
complicated decisions with long-term implications, they struggle to
identify which factors are the most important, how to gather all the
necessary relevant information, and how to weigh the costs and benefits
of these factors.\10\ Basically, people who are uninformed or
overwhelmed with too much complicated information may make decisions
that are not in their best interests.
A promising approach is to provide more structure and guidance and
a limited selection of pathways in community colleges. In principle,
the structured pathways model applies to all aspects of a student's
experience in college. It includes robust services to help students
choose career goals and majors. It integrates developmental education
courses with college-level courses and organizes the curriculum around
a limited number of broad subject areas that encourage defined programs
of study. It also emphasizes ongoing collaboration among faculty,
advisers, and staff members.
Beside the robust and structured advising and guidance offered by
ASAP, other schools that have implemented the structured pathway
approach include Guttman Community College in New York City. Students
there were required to enroll full-time their first year and to take a
common first-year curriculum. They were also placed in ``houses,''
which were similar to learning communities and which included faculty
members who taught the students throughout their first year at school.
After the first year, students could choose their preferred program of
study from a limited selection. The first-year students had promising
outcomes, although no rigorous evaluation has been conducted.\11\
financial aid innovations
Financial aid has long been the tool of choice to increase access.
In fact, one of the original purposes of student financial aid was to
ensure more equitable access to postsecondary education for those
traditionally underrepresented and those least able to afford it.\12\
However, the current financial aid system serves far more students than
originally envisioned by the legislation that created it, and for
purposes beyond the inability to pay. Almost two-thirds of all
undergraduates receive some form of financial aid and many institutions
are using financial aid for other reasons, such as ``enrollment
management'' to attract competitive students to attend their
institutions rather than others.\13\
Given both the size of the financial aid system ($226 billion) and
the widespread use of financial aid for various purposes, financial aid
must be thought of as another tool that can be used to improve academic
success and postsecondary completion.\14\ Yet little is known about
whether financial aid increases access and improves academic success.
Previous research suggests that financial aid is positively associated
with increased enrollment in postsecondary education,\15\ and also
positively associated with increased persistence.\16\ Generally, the
relationship between financial aid and student outcomes has been
difficult to answer because of problems with endogeneity.\17\ That is,
factors that are associated with financial need, such as low family
income, are also associated with a lack of academic success, making it
difficult to isolate the effect of additional financial aid on student
achievement. This issue of selection bias is best addressed through the
employment of a random assignment experimental design.\18\
A growing body of work has studied interventions that use financial
aid as an incentive to improve academic success. Fortunately, several
of the incentive-based grant programs--where incentive-based grants are
defined as additional financial aid to students that is contingent on
academic performance--have been evaluated using random assignment.\19\
Since it is not ethical to eliminate need-based aid and experiment with
randomly providing aid to students, the studies have focused on
randomly providing additional aid.\20\ Nine such studies demonstrate
that incentive-based grants--an innovation on traditional financial
aid--result in a larger proportion of students meeting academic
benchmarks, a greater number of credits earned, and modest effects on
grade point average (GPA) in the first year.\21\ Work by MDRC in this
area has shown that incentive-based grants (known as performance-based
scholarships in MDRC's studies) can increase first-year enrollment when
the intervention targets graduating high school seniors.
There are several promising innovations for financial aid that
could improve success and allow students to complete their degrees
faster: (1) distributing aid in a way that encourages students to
devote effort to their studies, (2) providing year-round financial aid
so students can accelerate their studies, and (3) restructuring the
notification of satisfactory academic progress (SAP) requirements so
that students are aware of the requirements and have an incentive to
meet them. It is important, however, that these reforms be rigorously
evaluated before they are implemented on a large scale.
Innovative Distribution of Aid: In order to support students'
ongoing expenses, encourage students to stay enrolled, and reduce the
inefficiencies and risks of disbursing financial aid at the start of
the semester in a lump sum, States and institutions could consider
disbursing aid on various timetables. Typically, any amount left over
of a student's financial aid after tuition, fees, books, and supplies
is refunded to the student in a lump sum at the beginning of the
semester. While these financial aid refunds may support and enable
student success, when students withdraw prior to the 60 percent point
in the term, the college may be required to pay back part of the
refunded aid (Return to title IV), and may need to recoup those funds
from students. Students who are unable to settle their debts with the
college may not be allowed to re-enroll until they do. MDRC does not
know of any national data about the scale of these returns or the
number of students affected, but anecdotally it seems common for large
colleges to report that they lose over $1 million a year due to returns
to title IV.
One innovation to consider is to have institutions reallocate lump
sum aid into small increments. When refunds (both grants and loans) are
disbursed to students in small biweekly or monthly increments, those
students could potentially better budget and manage the financial aid
that they receive. These more frequent incremental disbursements may
also better align with the timing of when aid is earned, which could
result in fewer or smaller returns to title IV (which would benefit
colleges as well as students). MDRC's Aid Like A Paycheck evaluation is
currently evaluating the impact of this intervention.\22\
Another innovation to consider is a restructuring of Federal work-
study. Students who are employed full-time while enrolled in college
are at a greater risk of dropping out or at least prolonging their time
to degree completion. Work-study could be expanded to more low-income
students to reduce their need to work full-time jobs disconnected from
their educational pursuits. While this idea has not been studied, the
Federal Government could alter the funding formula for work-study.
Current allocation formulas send more work-study funds to institutions
with small numbers of low-income students (according to Pell Grant
eligibility).\23\ In addition, many work-study jobs bear little
relation to students' career objectives.\24\ Modifications to job
development processes for work-study-eligible jobs could improve the
program's ability to advance students' careers.
Year-Round Financial Aid: Faster is better for college completion.
Faster completion can be achieved if students are encouraged to attend
college full-time when possible and supported in doing so. While it is
clear that many community college students work and need to attend
school part time, it may be helpful and feasible to encourage them to
increase their ``attendance intensity.'' There are two ways to get
there. One way would be to try to increase the number of credits
students earn per semester. The other would be to make greater use of
the winter intersession and summer sessions. Focusing on year-round
attendance would change the mental accounting period for students to a
full year, possibly making it easier for them to accumulate 24 or 30
credits and keeping them on track for timely degree completion. Year-
round attendance could help students catch up or move ahead in their
studies, which may be especially important for students who need to
combine work and school. In addition, summer enrollment keeps students
connected to college without a large break, which may boost re-
enrollment the following academic year. Evidence from three studies
suggests that year-round aid can increase enrollment during the summer
and winter, and that summer and winter enrollment can help students
earn more credits.
One of these studies--the Performance-Based Scholarship
Demonstration evaluation at two community colleges in New York City--
evaluated the effect of adding a summer scholarship offer to
scholarships otherwise offered only during the fall and spring.
Students in the program group could receive up to $1,300 per semester
if they enrolled for a certain number of credits and kept their grades
above a ``C.'' Half of the program group could receive the scholarship
for two semesters, the other half for two semesters plus a summer term.
The summer-scholarship group was 6.8 percentage points more likely to
enroll in summer than the group who received scholarships only in the
fall and spring, an increase of about 35 percent over the fall- and
spring-group's summer enrollment rate of 19.4 percent.\25\
Recent research also suggests that undergraduates who attend summer
school have better retention rates thereafter and are significantly
more likely to complete a degree.\26\ Two MDRC studies (CUNY ASAP and
the Opening Doors Learning Communities) encouraged students to enroll
in summer and winter and included financial support for them to do so.
Those two studies also suggest that increased enrollment during
intersessions may be linked to greater credit accumulation over time.
Students in both studies could use financial aid during the summer and
winter, meaning that the usual financial barriers to year-round
enrollment were largely absent.
ASAP: As mentioned above, much of ASAP's large impact on
student outcomes could be traced to ASAP's outsized effect on students'
performance during summer and winter intersessions--where ASAP pushed
hard for students to enroll. During the main sessions of the second
through sixth semesters after students joined the study, ASAP boosted
enrollment by between 4.6 percentage points and 9.6 percentage points.
Yet ASAP's effects on intersession enrollment were far more dramatic,
peaking at 25.2 percentage points during the second semester. That rise
in intersession enrollment is responsible for the program group earning
on average 2.4 more cumulative total credits over six semesters (the
equivalent of taking nearly an additional extra course), about a
quarter of the program's total impact on credits earned.\27\
Opening Doors Learning Communities: The Opening Doors
demonstration at Kingsborough Community College found that on average,
program group students enrolled in more intersessions than control
group students and earned more credits on average during intersessions:
0.5 credits more in the first year (than the 3.7 credits earned in the
control group) and 1.0 credits more after 6 years (than the 9.2 credits
earned in the control group). This gain accounted for about a quarter
of the program's total impact on credits earned. The demonstration put
freshmen into groups of up to 25 who took three classes together their
first semester, and provided enhanced counseling and tutoring as well
as textbook vouchers. Students were encouraged to enroll in the
intersession following the program session, and received an additional
textbook voucher of $75 if they did.\28\
Taken together, these three studies suggest that a year-round Pell
Grant program may be beneficial. If it is reintroduced, however, it
should be with a plan for rigorous evaluation to inform the policy
moving forward.
Restructure the Notification of SAP Requirements: Students must
make satisfactory academic progress (SAP) to maintain any title IV
Federal aid (including Pell Grants). SAP has three components: (1)
passing 60 percent of courses attempted (to demonstrate academic
progress); (2) earning a GPA of at least 2.0 in these courses (to
demonstrate academic performance); and (3) if these first two
components are violated, increasing performance during an academic
probation semester to be returned to good standing. While these
criteria appear straightforward, in practice students may fail for
several terms before their eligibility is restricted, as 2-year
institutions are only required to check SAP annually for students in 2-
year programs (though they can check more frequently). In addition,
students may continue to be in violation of SAP, lose their title IV
eligibility, yet remain enrolled if the cost of tuition and fees are
very low.\29\ As a result, the current system may provide only a weak
incentive to induce students to alter their behavior.\30\
Many students are not aware of an institution's SAP requirements
and institutions typically evaluate SAP progress at the end of each
academic year, so students do not know if they are at risk of failing
to meet the standards. One innovation in financial aid could have
institutions implement an early notification system, so that students
have the opportunity to change their behavior if they are at risk of
failing to meet SAP standards. While such systems are often labeled as
student success strategies, they can have sizable implications for
financial aid as well. Georgia State University's predictive analytics
intervention is a well-known example of this type of intervention.
recommendations
1. Give colleges and States an incentive to replicate proven
programs. For example, the Federal Government could support the spread
of ASAP. This could be through funding mechanisms such as First in the
World. This year's First in the World competition did encourage
applicants to propose replicating interventions that had strong
evidence, but additional support could be fostered through future
competitions and also through other funding mechanisms.
2. Encourage innovation paired with research, especially rigorous
evaluation. Specifically, additional research could be conducted into
structured pathways, year-round financial aid, and work-study programs.
a. The Department of Education (or other parts of the Federal
Government) can encourage tests of structured pathways. Components of
structured pathways have been studied in different fields but evidence
is lacking on the effectiveness of an entire model. A center focused on
structured pathways or a grant competition with long-term support can
foster more research in this area.
b. The Department of Education could clarify areas for innovation.
In our experience, institutions are very conscious of complying with
title IV regulations and are reluctant to innovate if such innovation
is not clearly protected. To remedy this, the Department of Education
could put out a fact sheet about what colleges can do right now to
disburse aid differently without approval from the Department or a
legislative change. Waivers could also be granted more readily for
experimentation.
c. The Department of Education can test Pell Grant funding to cover
the summer term of the academic year. Offering Pell Grant aid to
students during the summer would offer an opportunity to test whether
aid during short terms (that is, those less than 12 weeks in duration)
helps students make stronger progress toward degree completion. Tying
the reintroduction of summer Pell awards to some of the other
strategies discussed in this testimony (for example, incremental aid
disbursements) could help control program costs and make the program
more sustainable. While summer Pell turned out to be prohibitively
expensive for the government, it might not be more expensive if
analyzed in terms of costs per graduate. In addition, costs may be
mitigated by targeting the availability of summer aid in various ways.
d. The Department of Education (or other parts of the Federal
Government) could also encourage a test of Supplemental Educational
Opportunity Grant (SEOG) funding to cover the summer or winter terms of
the academic year, or both. Federal Student Aid could collaborate with
selected 2-year and 4-year institutions to test offering additional
SEOG funds to students during summer and winter terms.\31\
e. States and institutions could be encouraged to use internal or
external grant funding to test whether summer funding improves
outcomes. States and institutions with flexible grant aid dollars could
allocate some of those funds toward grants for summer or winter college
enrollment, or both. Additionally, States and institutions could seek
out partnerships with local and national donor organizations committed
to helping low-income students graduate from college. The effect of
summer grant aid on students' academic success could be tested by
randomly assigning students to one of three groups: aid during the
summer and winter, more aid during all academic terms, or no additional
aid. Designing a test with these three variable conditions would help
to inform the field about how much summer aid helped students, and
about whether summer aid alone was enough to see a meaningful impact on
student success.
f. The Federal Government could encourage a test that compares the
current work-study model with a modified version designed to help low-
income students make career advances while in college. To date, little
research has been conducted to test the effectiveness of the Federal
Work-Study program. The few studies that have been conducted of such
aid have been quasi-experimental and have yielded heterogeneous
findings.\32\ Given the amount of money expended on this aid program
($972 million in academic year 2011-12), it would be a worthy endeavor
to clarify how that aid can help students most effectively.
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1. Turner, Sarah T. 2004. Going to College and Finishing College:
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2. Kelly, Andrew J. 2014. Big Payoff, Low Probability: Post-
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3. Jenkins, Davis, and Olga Rodriguez. 2013. Access and Success
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4. Bailey, Thomas R., Shanna Smith Jaggars, and Davis Jenkins.
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5. MDRC. 2013. Developmental Education: A Barrier to a
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6. Scrivener, Susan, Michael J. Weiss, Alyssa Ratledge, Timothy
Rudd, Colleen Sommo, and Hannah Fresques. 2015. Doubling Graduation
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evidence on college remediation. Journal of Higher Education, 77(5),
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8. Adelman, C. (2004). Principal indicators of student academic
histories in postsecondary education, 1972-2000. Washington, DC: U.S.
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Jeong, D. W., & Cho, S. W. (2010). Referral, enrollment, and completion
in developmental education sequences in community colleges. Economics
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9. Perry, M., Bahr, P. R., Rosin, M., & Woodward, K. M. (2010).
Course-taking patterns, policies, and practices in developmental
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iss_research_communitycollege.html.
10. Scott-Clayton, Judith. 2011. The Shapeless River: Does a Lack
of Structure Inhibit Students' Progress at Community Colleges? New
York: Community College Research Center.
11. Bailey, Thomas R., Shanna Smith Jaggars, and Davis Jenkins.
2015. Redesigning America's Community Colleges: A Clearer Path to
Student Success. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
12. Title IV of the Higher Education Act of 1965 references the
purpose of financial aid in this way.
13. Enrollment management refers to the consolidation of
recruitment, admission, and retention under a single leader or office.
Among other things, many enrollment managers systematically test
financial incentives to maximize enrollment yield with targeted groups
of students or to increase net tuition revenue. Harrison Keller and
Nate Johnson, ``Completion Management: Using Aid and Price to Improve
Results,'' Working Paper: Report of the Institutional Working Group
(Indianapolis, Indiana: Lumina Foundation, 2013).
14. The size of Federal, State, and institutional aid for both
undergraduate and graduate students as cited in HCM Strategists, The
American Dream 2.0: How Financial Aid Can Help Improve College Access,
Affordability, and Completion (Washington, District of Columbia: HCM
Strategists, 2013).
15. Edward St. John, et al., Meeting the Access Challenge:
Indiana's Twenty-first Century Program (Indianapolis, IN: Lumina
Foundation for Education, 2002); Thomas Kane, ``Evaluating the impact
of the DC Tuition Assistance Grant Program,'' National Bureau of
Economic Research Working Paper No. 10658 (2004); Susan Dynarski,
``Hope for Whom? Financial Aid for the Middle Class and Its Impact on
College Attendance,'' National Bureau of Economic Research Working
Paper No. 7756 (2000); Susan Dynarski, ``Does Aid Matter? Measuring the
Effect of Student Aid on College Attendance and Completion,'' American
Economic Review 93, no. 1 (March 2003); Christopher Cornwell, David B.
Mustard, and Deepa J. Sridhar, ``The Enrollment Effects of Merit-Based
Financial Aid: Evidence from Georgia's Hope Program,'' Journal of Labor
Economics 24, no. 4 (October 2006).
16. Edward St. John, Shouping Hu, and Jeff Weber, ``State Policy
and the Affordability of Public Higher Education: The Influence of
State Grants on Persistence in Indiana,'' Research in Higher Education
42 (2001); Susan Choy, Access and Persistence: Findings from Ten Years
of Longitudinal Research on Students (Washington, District of Columbia:
Center for Policy Analysis, American Council on Education, 2002);
Stephen L. DesJardins, Dennis A. Ahlburg, and Brian P. McCall,
``Simulating the Longitudinal Effects of Changes in Financial Aid on
Student Departure from College,'' Journal of Human Resources 37, no. 3
(2002); Eric Bettinger, ``How Financial Aid Affects Persistence,'' in
College Choices: The Economics of Where to Go, When to Go, and How to
Pay for It, ed. Caroline M. Hoxby (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 2007); Larry Singell and Mark Stater, ``Going, Going, Gone: The
Effects of Aid Policies on Graduation at Three Large Public
Institutions,'' Policy Sciences 39, no. 4 (2006).
17. (Dynarski, 2002)
18. (Shadish, Cook, and Campbell, 2002)
19. See Joshua Angrist, Daniel Lang, and Philip Oreopoulos,
``Incentives and Services for College Achievement: Evidence from a
Randomized Trial,'' American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 1, no.
1 (2009). Joshua Angrist, Philip Oreopoulos, and Tyler Williams, ``When
Opportunity Knocks, Who Answers? New Evidence on College Achievement
Awards,'' National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper No. 16643
(2010). Edwin Leuven, Hessel Oosterbeek, and Bas van der Klaauw, ``The
Effect of Financial Rewards on Students' Achievement: Evidence from a
Randomized Experiment,'' Journal of the European Economic Association
8, no. 6 (2010). MacDonald, et al., Final Impacts Report: Foundations
for Success (Ottawa, Canada: R.A. Malatest & Associates LTD., 2009).
Lashawn Richburg-Hayes, et al., Rewarding Persistence: Effects of a
Performance-Based Scholarship Program for Low-Income Parents (New York:
MDRC, 2009) and Lisa Barrow, et al., ``Paying for Performance: The
Education Impacts of a Community College Scholarship Program for Low-
Income Adults'' Journal of Labor Economics, Volt. 32, No. 3 for Opening
Doors Louisiana; Lashawn Richburg-Hayes, et al., Providing More Cash
for College: Interim Findings from the Performance-Based Scholarship
Demonstration in California (New York: MDRC, forthcoming) for
California; Cynthia Miller, et al., Staying on Track: Early Findings
from a Performance-Based Scholarship Program at the University of New
Mexico (New York: MDRC, 2011) for New Mexico; Reshma Patel and Timothy
Rudd, Can Scholarships Alone Help Students Succeed? Lessons from Two
New York City Community Colleges (New York: MDRC, 2012) for New York;
Paulette Cha and Reshma Patel, Rewarding Progress, Reducing Debt: Early
Results from Ohio's Performance-Based Scholarship Demonstration for
Low-Income Parents (New York: MDRC, 2010) and Reshma Patel, et al.,
Using Financial Aid to Promote Student Progress: Interim Findings from
the Performance-Based Scholarship Demonstration (New York: MDRC, 2013)
for Ohio.
20. Therefore, the results of these studies are likely to reflect
marginal returns to financial aid since the aid is on top of any other
aid for which students are eligible.
21. See Richburg-Hayes, Lashawn. (2014). ``Incentivizing Success:
Lessons from Experimenting with Incentive-Based Grants,'' in Andrew
Kelly and Sara Goldrick-Rab (Eds.), Reinventing Financial Aid (PP. 101-
26) Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press.
22. Ware, Michelle, Evan Weissman, and Drew McDermott. 2013. Aid
Like A Paycheck: Incremental Aid to Promote Student Success. New York,
NY: MDRC.
23. The top 10 institutions that were awarded the most work-study
allocations in 2012-13 are (in order of greatest to least): City
University of New York, New York University, Columbia University,
University of Southern California, Pennsylvania State University, DeVry
University, ITT Technical Institute, University of Michigan (Ann
Arbor), International American University of Puerto Rico, and Cornell
University. See http://www.nationaljournal.com/next-america/education/
the-ten-colleges-that-get-the-most-work-study-aid-20141001.
24. O'Sullivan, Rory, and Reid Setzer. 2014. A Federal Work Study
Reform Agenda to Better Serve Low-Income Students. Washington, DC:
Young Invincibles; Scott-Clayton and Minaya, 2014. ``Should Student
Employment Be Subsidized? Conditional Counterfactuals and the Outcomes
of Work-Study Participation.'' NBER Working Paper 20329. Cambridge:
National Bureau of Economic Research.
25. Patel, Reshma, and Timothy Rudd. 2012. Can Scholarships Alone
Help Students Succeed? Lessons from Two New York City Community
Colleges. New York: MDRC.
26. Paul Attewell and Sou Hyun Jang, ``Summer Coursework and
Completing College,'' Research in Higher Education 20 (2013): 117-41.
27. Scrivener, Susan, Michael J. Weiss, Alyssa Ratledge, Timothy
Rudd, Colleen Sommo, and Hannah Fresques. 2015. Doubling Graduation
Rates: Three-Year Effects of CUNY's Accelerated Study in Associate
Programs (ASAP) for Developmental Education Students. New York: MDRC.
28. Sommo, Colleen, Alexander Mayer, Timothy Rudd, and Dan
Cullinan. 2012. Commencement Day: Six-Year Effects of a Freshman
Learning Community Program at Kingsborough Community College. New York:
MDRC.
29. See Sue Scrivener, Colleen Sommo, and Herbert Collado, Getting
Back on Track: Effects of a Community College Program for Probationary
Students (New York: MDRC, 2009) for evidence of this in California.
30. See U.S. Department of Education, Federal Student Aid Handbook
2012-13 (Washington, District of Columbia: U.S. Department of
Education, 2012): Chapter 1 for specific details.
31. Institutions have discretion over the schedule of SEOG
disbursements, so this innovation would need to be a partnership
between Federal Student Aid and selected institutions.
32. Scott-Clayton (2011) and Scott-Clayton and Minaya, 2014.
The Chairman. Thank you. We'll begin those questions now
with a round of 5-minute questions for Senators.
One of the tempting things to do when you hear great
stories of success like this is to say, ``OK. That sounds good.
Let's just make everybody do it.'' That usually isn't the right
thing to do, even as impressive as Georgia State's progress has
been.
One question might be: Should we require, should we
encourage, should we change something about the Federal
requirement that you've got to take 12 hours to qualify for a
student grant or a student loan when there's so much evidence
that if you take--if that puts you on a track to taking more
time than 4 years or 2 years or 1 year to get your certificate,
is there something wrong with requiring Federal student aid to
be based upon 15 credits instead of 12?
Or if there's something wrong with that, is there some way
we could encourage colleges to do that? Why aren't more
colleges and institutions doing that? I know in Tennessee, once
they focused on student success, they were wise enough to let
different campuses do it different ways. Austin Peay focused on
remediation, as you talked about. UT Knoxville told its
students that you may take 12 hours if you want to, but you're
going to pay for 15, and they began to see an immediate
increase in the number of students who took 15 hours.
What should we do about that, and what should we not do
about it?
Mr. Jones.
Mr. Jones. I'm glad you mentioned that, because the Pell
grant not only has an effect by itself, but it has the effect
of changing every university's financial aid program, every
State's financial aid program to be de facto at 12 credit
hours. You'd have a huge ripple effect if you would incent
students to take 15 credit hours.
Those colleges that have done this--this started in
Hawaii--have had their incoming freshmen essentially double the
number of students taking 15 credit hours just in 1 year. How I
would do it at the Federal level would not be to necessarily
raise to 15, but students get so many semesters. I would incent
them, to say, ``If you take 15, we'll just take it off the back
end of what you might have been eligible for 6 years later.''
That would benefit the student and benefit the taxpayer as
well.
The Chairman. You're right. We spend $130 billion a year in
grants and loans. If we make a single change like that, it
affects millions of students and 6,000 institutions. What's the
down side of that?
Mr. Jones. I guess I wouldn't want to penalize students----
The Chairman. Let me ask Mr. Ralls.
Mr. Ralls. I don't think it takes much research to say that
students who are going full-time are more likely to complete.
The thing I would worry about, though, is that so many students
work. When students are working, if the choice for many of them
is the choice between working and going to college, they're
going to choose to work, not because they want to, but because
they have to. That's so much the circumstances for lower income
students, community college students.
My greatest fear is how you would structure incentives that
would challenge students who must work to further their college
education and move forward.
The Chairman. So you'd leave that to the State system, for
example, to make judgments about that?
Mr. Ralls. It's important to encourage continuous movement
forward. That's why I think the push toward year-round Pell
grants is so important to make sure that movement is
continuous. I would be very cautious about anything that would
discourage students who are working from being able to pursue
college attainment.
The Chairman. Let me ask about remediation. There's been a
shift in that over the last 30 years, at least, that I've seen.
In our State, we thought we'd made great progress to say, ``You
may come to the community college, but if you're not prepared
for it, you don't get credit for the courses you take.''
Based upon your testimony, Mr. Jones, that's sort of a
bridge to nowhere. Only 1 in 10 remedial students will ever
graduate.
The Austin Peay experience took a different approach, as I
understand it, and said, ``Come on in if you need remedial
help, and we'll just find other ways to help you succeed,'' and
they had a great success story from that.
Dr. Renick, what's your advice about how we deal with
remediation? Are there any changes in Federal policy or
incentives that we should include in the Higher Education Act?
Mr. Renick. It's clear that one-size-does-not-fit-all, and
it's always a risk if we try to mandate one path forward. We
have been able to collect, with the help of Complete College
America and other organizations, increasingly convincing
evidence that remediation works best when it's an add-on to
students who are already engaged in college-level credits.
If that's the case, then some of these questions about
whether remediation should be funded or not become far less
central. Students are in college-level courses, and at the same
time, they're getting the support system that they need to be
able to increase their reading or writing ability or whatever
deficiencies they currently have.
This discipline-based support has been much more effective
at institutions like Georgia State and at institutions like
Georgia Perimeter, the university we're consolidating with. As
a result, we will absolutely require it for all remedial
programs for our students over the next 12 months.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Senator Murray.
Senator Murray. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Just
following on your first question, sometimes our higher
education policy is driven by our own memories of what we did
in our college experience rather than what's actually happening
today, when more and more students are worrying about a lot
more than college classes. They might be parents. They are
working two or three jobs to pay for college today.
I want to make sure that we don't disenfranchise those
students who are struggling the most by setting a bar that
makes it impossible for them to meet. We have to be very
careful with that.
Mr. Ralls, I appreciate your comments on that.
Dr. Richburg-Hayes, I wanted to ask you--I'm very
interested in the results of the CUNY ASAP program that you
talked about that doubled the graduation rates for community
college students that needed remediation. Can you talk just a
little bit about the support services that were provided to the
students and getting the impressive results from that program?
Ms. Richburg-Hayes. The support services were basically in
four broad categories. The first was requirements and
messaging. Students were invited to the program and told that
they needed to enroll full-time, full-time being 12 credits.
They were allowed to make up this full-time enrollment
through the regular normal academic terms of fall and spring,
as well as intersessions and summer enrollment. In totality,
their intensity of enrollment was based on their accumulation
of credits across an academic year and not just two semesters.
In terms of student services, students received a
comprehensive advisement from advisors. The advising ratio for
the study that we performed was one advisor per 80 students.
Students also were able to talk to career advisement.
They also received automatic course enrollment with block
scheduling available to some students, and students in limited
majors were available for this program. For example, some
majors, such as nursing--it's not possible to graduate in a
very short period of time, given practicals and other
requirements of the major.
Finally, students were given financial support, including
tuition gap coverage. All students were required to fill out
the FAFSA and to apply for all aid for which they were
eligible. If there should be unmet need for tuition and fees
after that amount, the program covered that gap, in addition to
incentivizing students through having a transportation voucher
and providing use of free textbooks.
Senator Murray. Dr. Renick, what support services did you
provide?
Mr. Renick. We've worked to try to recognize what is
tripping up students overall, and what we found is those kinds
of interventions had a disproportionate positive impact upon
the students who were most at risk. I don't think we appreciate
enough how much institutional know-how it takes to navigate a
modern postsecondary institution. These are big bureaucracies.
You hand students and their families these FAFSA forms.
Then you put them through a process of registering for classes.
At places like Georgia State, we have over 90 majors and 3,000
courses. And then we're surprised when some students who don't
have family support systems and knowledge about college go off
path.
What we're doing is trying to recognize that it takes a
combination of technology and high touch, personal contact.
We've increased the number of advisors--more than doubled
them--over the last 4 years, and we've put technology in their
hands so that they can reach out to students in the most
personal and most timely way imaginable. That's where we're
beginning to see huge results.
Senator Murray. It makes sense when you say it. Absolutely.
Mr. Jones and Dr. Ralls, I wanted to ask you--I said in my
opening statement that it's really critical that we have the
right data on student outcomes if we want to make sure we're
targeting our intervention to really make sure we're
successful.
Dr. Ralls, you noted in your testimony that less than a
third of the students in North Carolina community colleges are
included in the current Federal completion data. Can both of
you talk a little bit about how this data might help us better
inform what policy we should be pursuing in terms of low-income
and non-traditional students?
Mr. Ralls. That's because until recently, it's only been
first-time, full-time students that are counted. less than a
third of the students who go for degrees in our system are
counted in that regard.
Mr. Jones pointed out that if you look at the Federal IPEDS
data, the national average for community college completion
within 150 percent is 21 percent. If you look at the recent
National Student Clearinghouse data, after 6 years, 57 percent
of community college students have earned a bachelor's degree
or a community college degree.
Fifty-seven percent is not the reason for a victory dance.
Don't get me wrong. It's a lot more than 21 percent, and it
illustrates the gaps in terms of defining, in terms of what is
success. Many students that come to us are part-time, and so it
takes 300 percent, that period of time for many to succeed.
Another factor for us is so many of our students leave with
alternative credentials that are recognized in the workplace
but are not counted. When we did our student success tour, I
remember going to a college in the mountains, Tri County
Community College, and the welding instructor said,
``I need to give you some supplemental data, because
if you've looked at our completion rate for the welding
program, you know it's 8 percent.''
He put a stack of pay stubs on the desk and noted that all
of those students had AWS welding certifications that led to
very lucrative opportunities for them.
We don't count those. We don't count students who transfer
from community colleges and ultimately get a 4-year degree.
Those are the factors that--we have to look at the totality of
student success, and that's not what's done now with current
metrics.
Senator Murray. I'm out of time.
Mr. Jones, if you can just be concise.
Mr. Jones. The obvious one is called grant graduation
rates. Why the Federal Government wouldn't collect data on
whether Pell students graduate is beyond my comprehension. But
they don't. They don't--also, there's been this back and forth
about whether we graduate veterans or not. That's pretty
obvious. We should know that, too.
They don't collect data on remediation, which both of you
have remarked. That's pretty obvious, too. The metrics we use
have been adopted by the National Governors Association back
when Senator Manchin was Governor Manchin and started that
initiative.
There's a key set of small, disaggregated metrics that are
important to college. As Senator Alexander pointed to, these
things send signals across the whole U.S. colleges and
universities.
Senator Murray. Thank you.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Senator Collins.
Statement of Senator Collins
Senator Collins. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
My concern is focused on those students who end up in debt
and with no degree. That's the worst possible combination. Yet
when I hear about the low completion rates, we have a whole
category of people in that situation. We also know that if
students don't graduate that they are three times more likely
to default on their student loan debt.
I want to describe a program that is going on at a college
in Maine and get your reaction to it, but also run by you a
suggestion that has been made to me by the director of that
program.
Eastern Maine Community College has a student success
center, and it has two main components. First, for incoming
students, it has an intensive 2-week remedial course in
mathematics and writing. That has helped improve their
retention rate, just that 2-week intensive course right at the
start.
Second, for ongoing purposes, there is a student success
center where students can come for peer mentoring, for
tutoring, for counseling, for small grants that may help them
out if they're having childcare problems or transportation
problems. It looks at the whole person and what the barriers to
completion are, and that, too, combined with the academic
advising, has increased retention rates.
The director of the center has suggested to me--given the
high default rate of students who don't complete college and
given the fact that we know that if they do complete college,
they are going to have lifetime earnings that are a million
dollars higher than someone with just a high school diploma--
that if we had some sort of incentive in the form of very small
loan forgiveness, that it would help provide the incentive that
students need to complete college.
I'd like to get your reaction to that idea. Why don't we
just start and go across the panel with Mr. Jones?
Mr. Jones. I want to pick up on your point about the short
remediation right before classes start and Senator Alexander's
example of Austin Peay, where they connect a class with
remediation support. Tennessee is now going to do that
statewide starting in the fall.
Georgia has a different model that they're doing statewide
starting this fall, as is West Virginia. They're doubling the
success rates in English. They're quadrupling the success rates
in math.
You provide in the Pell program money that is used for
remediation. You could strengthen that by encouraging that
money to be used in programs like you suggested in Maine, in
that fashion, or programs they're doing in Georgia or they're
doing in Tennessee, and you'll get more bang for your buck,
more success, than traditional remedial programs that are
unconnected.
Senator Collins. Dr. Ralls.
Mr. Ralls. I believe your comments illustrate there's no
one magic bullet, and we have to do all of these things, so
things such as how we look at remediation or developmental in
that regard. We all know that for many students, we were over-
medicating them. We can accelerate them through.
There's a number of students who come to us who haven't
learned the material the first time through. They've only been
exposed to us. We haven't found the secrets to those. We know
that mentorship and having students in cohorts makes a
difference. They need that type of support. We have to create
that.
We also have to create structures, though, that are not so
complex and complicated and that sometimes don't give them as
many options, because often they don't do optional as well.
And finally, Your comments are right on about--many of our
students--I'll go back to the working students--they live on
the edge, and sometimes--one of the most heartbreaking things I
used to see as a college president is a student who would drop
out 2 weeks away from completing because their transmission
died.
Those are the realities that they face. We have to have
ways of helping them get to that finish line, which is often
not just motivating them, but giving them some resource to get
to that finish line.
Senator Collins. Dr. Renick.
Mr. Renick. The ideas that you are suggesting, are
wonderful. Our approach to getting students off to a great
start is slightly different. We have a summer academy for the
most at-risk students, and they attend 7 weeks. They're taking
bachelor's level courses, but they're getting the kind of
remedial support on the perimeter. For those students, we've
turned the retention rates from about 50 percent to now very
close to 90 percent, and we've done that in a 3-year period.
Getting students off to a head start is great. As you heard
with our retention grant program, it's a wonderful idea to have
these micro loans, micro grants available to meet the students
where they are. The reality is that $200 or $300 can make the
difference between a student staying enrolled or not. It's
sometimes hard for us to recognize.
When you have an annual household income of $20,000 a year
or less, and you're short $300, and you're not getting that
money from a bank, and you're not getting it from a relative,
if institutions can plug it in, it actually can be a cost saver
for the taxpayer, because these students can cross the finish
line rather than swirling and having less promising futures.
Senator Collins. Dr. Richburg-Hayes.
Ms. Richburg-Hayes. I'm trained by nature to be skeptical.
With that said, the program sounds very interesting. A lot of
the components seem to be based on research. There's some
support for individual components.
Yet I would be concerned that this program is not
necessarily one that could fit all. As we said here, there's
targeting that needs to be involved and some reflection of what
student supports are needed for different types of students.
In addition, it seems that the engagement nature of this
program would be something that would need to be shored up in
order to make sure that the students who needed it most were
the ones who were actually participating in the student success
centers. We've actually done random assignment evaluations of
student success centers, and they work when students attend.
I would also say that in terms of the solution of providing
loan forgiveness, there has been some rigorous research that
suggests that when you have a loan forgiveness program, you can
generate the desirable outcomes that you'd want. The structure
of such programs really matter. Pulling in behavioral concepts
and being very privy to the incentive structures in place is
very important.
I would just say that these are the types of ideas that
really warrant themselves to be studied in order to determine
unintended consequences before they're scaled up and required
and mandated as a policy.
Senator Collins. Thank you.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Senator Murphy.
Statement of Senator Murphy
Senator Murphy. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Almost without exception schools are making decisions about
programs based on what's best for students. I guess I don't
think that schools can completely ignore, at least at a
subconscious level, the financial incentives that dictate what
you invest in and what you don't invest in.
Right now, when it comes to Federal support for colleges,
the only thing that gets you in trouble is a massive default
rate that puts you on the far edge of your cohort. There's
nothing that provides a financial incentive for schools, for
instance, to graduate more kids on time or to invest in these
kinds of supports for remedial course work. In fact, you can
argue that there's actually a financial incentive not to invest
in those things. I don't think that prevents schools from doing
it.
Mr. Jones, I'll ask the question to you. Don't you think it
would make sense for us to try to rework the way in which we
send billions of dollars to schools through the Pell grant
program and the Stafford program such that we provide at least
a small financial incentive for schools to invest in all these
programs? It might actually be a way of addressing this
legitimate concern that many have about being overly
prescriptive.
If we just simply used all of the money we send to schools
to expect them to do a little bit better and left it up to them
to follow the evidence where it led them, wouldn't that get us
a little bit faster to where we want to go?
Mr. Jones. I think that's exactly right. When we started 6
years ago, there were only three States in the country--
Washington was one of them, Indiana was one of them, Ohio--that
had performance funding. There are 15 States. We're quickly
going to 30 States. My projection in 10 years is we'll be at 40
to 45 States that will have their own performance funding.
What you also can do in providing incentives is provide
incentives to graduate more low-income students, like Pell
students, or incentives to get students through remediation in
a more timely way, or incentives to graduate students on time.
Between, as you pointed out, all the other Federal grant
programs that you have as well as the Pell program, it would be
very powerful.
It doesn't take much money to put on the table--no
disrespect to the former president of the University of
Tennessee--to get presidents interested in changing their ways.
Put a little money on the table in the right direction.
Senator Murphy. Dr. Renick, I was so impressed with the
focus you've had on bringing in low-income students. Do you
think there's a way to do this, to build an accountability
system that doesn't discourage schools from reaching out and
taking in at-risk students? That's often the critique of these
accountability systems, that you're going to make it less
likely that you have low-income, at-risk students coming
through the door, as if you get punished for, for instance,
longer graduation times.
Is there a way to do this that risk adjusts for schools
that are reaching out to these student populations?
Mr. Renick. Absolutely. I do believe that we should
incentivize universities to do what's right and what works,
and, currently, we're not doing enough of that. The idea, for
instance, that we would put great emphasis upon rating schools
based on income levels after graduation is inherently
problematic, given that the best predictor of a student's
income after graduation is their family income before they
enroll in the first place.
What we need to do is find ways to reward institutions and
reward students who are making a difference against the odds.
Currently, we don't do that, and as you point out, there is a
great incentive with regard to national rankings like U.S. News
and World Report to actually turn your back on low-income and
at-risk students.
One of the ironies of this whole progress that Georgia
State has made over the last decade with our graduation rates
up 22 percentage points is we've actually gone down in the U.S.
News and World Report rankings over this time period, because
we're educating more students at lower cost. Our SAT scores
have actually declined some because we are opening our doors to
students who previously were not succeeding at Georgia State
and other institutions, and those things are things that count
against you in those kinds of national rankings.
Senator Murphy. I just think there's a way to take the
billions of dollars that we're using and incentivize the kinds
of programs we're talking about today in a way that's not
prescriptive and also in a way that's not overly punitive,
suggesting, for instance, that the outlier schools, the schools
that really have the worst retention rates, may for a period of
time have a portion of their Federal aid compromised.
We've had separate hearings on this topic. I hope it's
something that we entertain as we move forward with the
consideration of the reauthorization.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank you, Senator Murphy.
Senator Cassidy.
Statement of Senator Cassidy
Senator Cassidy. I've really found this very enlightening.
Mr. Renick, your 800 variable model, is that open source?
Could any university access that online? Is it proprietary? How
does it work?
Mr. Renick. It is proprietary, but there are some caveats
to that. We collaborated with the Education Advisory Board here
in DC to develop it. Those kinds of public-private partnerships
are an important part of accelerating change. It enabled us to
do things more quickly than we would if we developed it on our
own.
The caveat is as follows: that there are ways to transfer
these kinds of innovations more quickly. The first year project
of the University Innovation Alliance, which includes huge
public universities like not only Georgia State, but Arizona
State, Texas, Ohio State, Michigan State, is to take this model
for advising and tracking using predictive analytics and
transfer it to all those universities.
Because of the work that was done already, the costs have
already been reduced greatly, and in a 1-year period, all 11 of
those universities, representing 400,000 students, now have
predictive analytics based on tracking systems that are very
similar to the one at Georgia State.
Senator Cassidy. If a community college system in
Louisiana--they may already be doing it--or elsewhere, New York
or you name it, wanted to take your open source thing, how much
would it cost them to do it? Or does it cost them anything to
say, ``Oh, now we have it.'' Is it like Linux, where, my gosh,
I get it just by logging in and by downloading it? Or do they
have to buy it from you? I'm sure there are costs to put in
that kind of data. How does it work?
Mr. Renick. There are costs involved, and some institutions
are developing systems on their own. Some are using outside
vendors. The cost is really quite modest comparatively.
Senator Cassidy. Give me a dollar figure.
Mr. Renick. For an institution like Georgia State to have a
tracking system like this would cost about $150,000 a year.
That's difficult at a time of constrained budgets, but the
reality is----
Senator Cassidy. You've got 30,000 students and it's
$150,000. How much is required in terms of data entry?
Mr. Renick. It's a good amount of work. You have to have
clean and accurate data that you put into the system. That,
too, is not a major undertaking. At Georgia State, it took us
about 6 months once we launched the project before we were
tracking all 30,000 students.
Senator Cassidy. You mentioned, or somebody mentioned,
``Well, my gosh, this is particularly for Georgia State, but
maybe not for elsewhere,'' and I'm thinking you've got 800
variables. You've got a pretty robust data set. You also stated
that other institutions are taking it on pretty quickly. It
makes me think that it does have general applicability.
Mr. Renick. I believe so, that many of the markers that
we're tracking are indices that would transfer to other
institutions. For instance, we look at----
Senator Cassidy. Let me stop you, because I've only got a
minute or two left.
Mr. Jones, you mentioned, and by the way, you were talking
about why doesn't DOE publish Pell grant graduation rates. It
turns out that they were required to by some consolidated bill
of last year, and I've spoken to staff, and they're actually
not going to publish the rates until 2019 because once they're
instructed to do so, they begin collecting the data.
I guess my question is--you have each spoken of
institutions knowing their Pell grant graduation rate, which
makes me think that there's proxy data.
Ma'am, let me compliment you. I've never had testimony with
so many references. You're clearly an academic in every sense
of the word.
It makes me think that there must be some sort of way to
get at this data, as opposed to, ``Well, we were instructed to
do it. Let's start. Six years later, we're going to give you a
report.''
Ma'am, I'll start with you again. Is there a way that we
could know the graduation rates now as opposed to waiting for a
6-year longitudinal study?
Ms. Richburg-Hayes. Many institutions calculate those rates
on their own using their internal institutional research
departments to do so, because they need it for institutional
decisionmaking. Whether you as a committee could demand that
those studies come up--I don't think that there is a way in
terms of a short timeframe from a research perspective.
Senator Cassidy. Mr. Jones.
Mr. Jones. We collect data from 30 States, including
Tennessee. They all collect data on Pell student graduation
rates. Most every institution does collect it.
Senator Cassidy. What about the for-profits?
Mr. Jones. I don't know. It's not available to the general
public, to researchers. More importantly, the policymakers--I
honestly think a letter from this committee to the secretary of
education would be the fastest----
Senator Cassidy. We've already requested that. We actually
instructed it in a bill. They just started once we instructed
them. Six years from now, they're going to tell us, which I
find incredible that we are blinded to that which you generally
know.
Mr. Jones. Most institutions have that information. They
don't publish it.
Senator Cassidy. I'm almost out of time. I yield back.
Thank you.
The Chairman. Thank you, Senator Cassidy.
Senator Baldwin.
Statement of Senator Baldwin
Senator Baldwin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'm pleased to be
a part of the discussion today. It's very enlightening. One of
the things that we still use as terminology is the phrase,
nontraditional students, and yet we find that the majority of
students today are what we used to call nontraditional
students. We've got to ultimately probably change that
nomenclature.
It provides us with some real challenges in terms of making
sure that we have the policies that increase the chance of
these students completing their degrees or certificates on time
with little or, certainly, a lot less debt, but also avoid
implementing punitive measures that would serve to impede their
success.
In July of this year, I was proud to introduce, along with
13 of my colleagues in the Senate and Congressman Bobby Scott
in the House, a bill called the America's College Promise Act.
The bill creates a new Federal-State partnership that would
waive tuition and fees at community colleges, with States
contributing $1 for every $3 of the Federal investment.
It's a first dollar program, meaning students can use their
Pell grants and other financial aid to cover the many financial
demands of obtaining a higher education outside of tuition and
fees. I've been very interested in the questions that have been
posed and the discussion that we've been having today, because
when you start debate on a new idea, we don't need to repeat
the mistakes of the past. We can incorporate what seems to be
working.
America's College Promise doesn't just require States to
invest financially. It asks them to make reforms, reforms like
we've been talking about--expanding student supportive
services, improving remediation, stressing career pathways--and
these reforms, we hope, will help the students complete their
course work and be prepared.
What I want to ask is for you to perhaps weigh in a little
further on this. We have a choice of making this prescriptive
and mandatory or providing a menu and requiring these reforms
be adopted as appropriate so it's not a one-size-fits-all. If
we're going to get it right from the beginning, as we initiate
this debate on covering the first 2 years of community or
technical college, I want to hear where you see that balance.
I want to start with Mr. Ralls, but I certainly would
welcome all of your comments on this.
Mr. Ralls. Thank you, Senator. I grew up in a state--and
will reside for another month in this State--where the State
constitution says that higher education should be free as
practicable. While we do not have free tuition, we've always
had among the lowest tuition in the Nation, and I think that's
made a difference for our State. It's made a difference for
middle income kids like me.
That's why the emphasis on making higher ed accessible--
tuition is not the only cost, and in States like ours, it's
really not the most challenging cost. That's why one-size-fits-
all may not work everywhere. The notion of making it accessible
for low-income and working class students is so important.
However, that being said, we also have to make sure that
it--you have to hold us accountable, but we have to hold
ourselves accountable to create the structures, that it's not
just access, because then access becomes--you know, the open
door becomes a revolving door. We have to create structures.
I would emphasize, too, that it's important to look at
structures that go across institutions. We still talk very much
about within single institutions. That's why I'm so proud of
the work we've been doing in North Carolina around articulation
agreements between all 58 colleges, all 16 universities, and
most of the private colleges, because that's often where
students fall through the cracks. Their credits fall through
the cracks. They start and stop.
The Federal Government can do more to incentivize, at
least, encourage those kinds of statewide agreements, those
kinds of articulation agreements recognizing, as I said,
embracing the swirl that is the reality of students going
across multiple institutions.
Senator Baldwin. Thank you.
Mr. Jones.
Mr. Jones. I've spent most of my life pushing
affordability. I would couple that with what you said--reform.
We have a lot of people going to college--the highest ever in
the recession, but we don't have the reform necessary.
I would make it a menu. Whether it's the Austin Peay model
for remediation, or some of the models that Tim has done at
Georgia State, or a model like the Tennessee Tech Center that
has a 75 percent completion rate and an 80 percent placement
rate, I would make it models or menus where there's evidence
that they actually succeed in delivering, not just simply a
menu--you could do this or you could do this--but menus where
there's evidence of success. There is plenty of evidence out
there where colleges like Georgia State and Austin Peay have
done this very successfully.
Senator Baldwin. Any other comments?
Dr. Renick?
Mr. Renick. The one caution I would add is that we've run
lots of data in analytics at Georgia State. We've found that
there is actually a sweet spot, where if students have their
costs covered completely, their completion rates are actually
lower than those who have a little skin in the game.
The proposal overall is a good one. We found that somewhere
between 7 percent and 15 percent to 20 percent of the total
cost--that if that is what the student has to pay, they have
more motivation, and they have more persistence.
Senator Baldwin. Dr. Richburg-Hayes.
Ms. Richburg-Hayes. I would just add that programs really
need to be targeted so that a menu is very important. It's
unlikely that any one of the programs that we talked about
today that are evidence-based strategies will be applicable to
all institutions and to all students. It will be really
important to give institutions the time and resources in order
to develop programs that will work.
Georgia State University is a great example. It took them a
decade to get where they are, and it's important for us to
remember that. These changes do not happen immediately and
overnight.
Senator Baldwin. Thank you.
The Chairman. Senator Bennet.
Statement of Senator Bennet
Senator Bennet. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for
holding this hearing and for reminding us to be cautious about
one-size-fits-all. As I listened to the testimony today, I'm
reminded again that policy is one thing and implementation is
something else. You can have the best policy in the world and
terrible implementation, and you don't get the results that you
need.
We compound that problem by also measuring the wrong
things. We're asking the wrong questions. Dr. Renick pointed
out that this gainful employment stuff has really made it
difficult for a number of our institutions, because the
correlation on income is actually what your family's income
looked like, not what the institution you went to looked like,
but we decided that would be a good way to measure outcomes.
There's a lot of work for us to do, a lot of thoughtful work
for us to pay attention to.
I wanted to spend my time with you, Dr. Renick, today.
Georgia State has done some incredible things--amazing
accomplishments. I wonder if you could describe what the GPS
program looks like from the student's perspective. How do I
know, if I'm a student at Georgia State, that I'm at Georgia
State instead of someplace else, that my experience would be
different?
Mr. Renick. It's become significantly different----
Senator Bennet. It's not--you're measuring, you say, in the
top 30,000 students, 800 factors. From the student's
perspective, what does that look like?
Mr. Renick. Right. From the student's perspective, we do
have, as Complete College America recommends and others on this
panel have supported, program maps for all students. Students
have a pathway, a set of courses they're supposed to be taking
each semester.
The challenge is we weren't enforcing it before. Students
who are following their maps and doing everything right will
hear very little from us, because no alerts are going off.
Students who are making mistakes will hear from us almost
immediately.
We're concentrating the kind of precious resources we have
in personnel and advisors and so forth upon the students who
need it the most. They're getting to know their advisors more
personally and more quickly. We've made a move to bring the
advisors to the classroom the first weeks of the fall semester
so that the students get to know their advisors on a one-to-one
basis.
The interactions that the advisors are having with the
students and staff, in general, are much more personalized now.
It's not just, ``Come in and see me, and we'll shoot the
breeze.'' It's,
``Oh, I saw you just registered for your spring
classes. You're a bio major, and you're in the wrong
lab sequence. Let's come in and talk about it.''
As a result, the students are much more responsive, and
they get to know their advisors and support staff on a much
more personal level.
If a student is really struggling, the system can be a
little annoying, to be frank about it, because they're going to
have lots and lots of interventions. We've been polling our
students ever since we went live, and not a single student has
complained.
Senator Bennet. Tell me what those kinds of mistakes would
be, away from the map, that you could detect, and how you reach
out to the student.
Mr. Renick. One very simple example of the kind of
predictive analytics is that we found that the first grade that
a student gets in what becomes his or her major is very
predictive of their graduation rates. If a political science
major gets an A or a B, they're graduating from Georgia State
at a 75 percent clip. If they get a C in their first political
science course, they're graduating at a 25 percent clip.
In the past, we would do nothing with that C student other
than pass them along to upper level work that was more
demanding, and whatever weaknesses were being revealed by that
C grade becomes exacerbated and they begin to get Ds and Fs and
run into problems. What we do across the whole curriculum is
trace those kinds of markers, and we have an immediate
intervention as soon as the student gets a C grade.
We bring them in. They may go to tutoring, reading,
writing, whatever we diagnosed as the problem. The idea is to
correct the issue before they waste money and time and put
themselves at risk by taking courses they're unprepared to
succeed in.
Senator Bennet. I was also struck by something you talked
about in terms of how we measure success for institutions and
for students. We've just, with the Chairman's leadership,
managed to pass a reauthorization of what used to be called No
Child Left Behind, which for a long, long time measured the
wrong thing. It said, ``These are successful schools because
the kids are at a high status, and these are failing schools.''
Even though these kids might not be growing, and these kids
were actually growing while they're there, we were telling the
world that these schools where the teachers were actually
driving success and growth were failures. One of the things you
said was that we ought to reward students and institutions who
are making a difference against the odds. That is the right way
to think about it. How do we do that?
Mr. Renick. We need to incentivize in lots of ways. This
goes from Federal grant programs, which often are bestowed upon
institutions that are meeting those kinds of quality markers in
the most traditional sense, have the highest graduation rates,
but maybe not have the greatest struggles--we need to be much
more flexible with the way we assign Federal financial aid.
Right now, it is in many cases a one-size-fits-all model,
where students who are not meeting certain progress markers are
denied aid. Others are granted aid. That shouldn't be the case
if what we can show by more reliable data is that students are
doing what they need to do within the context of their ability
and their resources and making significant progress toward
their degrees.
Senator Bennet. I'm out of time. If you don't mind, I'll
followup with you after the panel to get your list.
Mr. Renick. Absolutely.
Senator Bennet. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank you, Senator Bennet.
Senator Warren.
Statement of Senator Warren
Senator Warren. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you all
for being here today.
We all know that helping students should be a high
priority, and I know that you all see this. I've read your
testimony, and you've provided a lot of good information about
programs that colleges can adopt to improve student outcomes.
Only a few colleges are showing any real leadership in this
area. I want to focus on Federal policies that can push schools
harder in that direction.
Mr. Jones, could I start with you? Your organization works
with schools and States to help improve outcomes for students.
In your opinion, do colleges have enough incentives to improve
student success?
Mr. Jones. They don't. Typically, the old incentive was
what we call the 10-day or the 14-day count. You got your money
based on whether you were there on the 10th day. If you weren't
there on the 11th day, it didn't make any difference. States
have moved rather rapidly to change that.
The Federal Government is very powerful in the money that
you provide, both in the Pell money, but other grant programs
that you provide. Providing incentives to graduate more
students, graduate them in a more timely way, because they'll
incur less debt, get them through remediation into the credit-
bearing classes--those are all incentives that you could easily
do and put in programs.
Senator Warren. Good. I just want to underline what I'm
hearing you say about this is putting financial incentives in
place so that schools have a reason to invest not just in
getting students in through the door, but in having them
succeed.
When we talk about improving student success, we aren't
just talking about getting students through a graduation
ceremony--getting them in the row and walking them across the
stage. We're talking about making sure that students leave
college with an education that helps them succeed.
I wanted to turn to you on this, Mr. Renick. Which colleges
are doing a better or worse job at making sure that students
are prepared for good jobs after they graduate?
Mr. Renick. That's an increasingly important topic in my
world. Where I think the scalable growth is, again, in using
data and analytics to help us advise and promote good career
and postgradua-
tion knowledge for our students. We now, as part of our
platform, have an alliance with a vendor called Burning Glass
that is tracking data for job listings across the country every
day.
As students come in at Georgia State and pick majors, they
actually can see for any major that we offer the 25 to 40
careers that are most likely to result in an empirical basis
for majoring in that area. Then they can see job data about
what job demands are like, what starting salaries are like,
what qualifications----
Senator Warren. Let me just stop you there, though, Mr.
Renick. I very much hear your point about helping students find
out what career paths may be most informative for them.
I particularly want to focus on--I heard you say, earlier
or know that you referred to predatory institutions, that we're
not just talking about how we get more students to study things
that are going to be useful. It's about whole institutions and
where institutions are focused. Do you want to say just a word
about that?
Mr. Renick. Yes, absolutely. We see at Georgia State the
kind of back end of some of these predatory practices. Because
our student population is largely at-risk, they're often the
students who are targeted. We have two students arriving at
Georgia State this fall as transfer students who already have
$100,000 of debt.
We hear these stories and ask, what happened once they get
to campus? It's usually a trail of broken promises and
misleading claims. Oftentimes, these students have very little
usable credits. We've had students who have been approached by
lenders who actually tell them not to fill out the FAFSA
because it's so complicated, but fill out this one sheet of
paper and they can get the same money, never fully explaining
the difference in the terms.
Senator Warren. So $100,000 in debt and very little credit
that will actually transfer. For-profit colleges seem more
interested in shareholder success than in student success.
About one in five students who borrow to attend a for-profit
college default on their loans within 3 years of leaving
school. That means, on average, that for-profit colleges are
failing at least one in five of their students. Let me just see
if I can wrap this up really quickly with a note here.
Mr. Jones, what kinds of policies would give for-profit
colleges an incentive to improve outcomes for their students?
Mr. Jones. You should look at the creditors. You authorize
the creditors. Right now, it's all about resources for
colleges, but it ought to be about outcomes, both in terms of
completion rates and on-time completion rates. Do they get
jobs? What kind of debt ratios do they serve?
The creditors, have been very lax at looking at any of
those factors in terms of re-accrediting schools. I can't
imagine the ones they've accredited just can't meet those--
having met those standards. I'd look to the creditors and how
they do this and rewrite that.
Senator Warren. Good. I'll just put this in----
Mr. Jones. For both private and public.
Senator Warren. Thank you. I'll put this in as a question
for the record for everyone here.
We just have to go back to the fact that the Federal
Government is shelling out $150 billion every year to help
students attend college. Some schools are doing their part to
make sure that those dollars are well-spent. Some are not. As
we work on the Higher Education Act, it is critical to focus on
whether all colleges that dip into that $150 billion have the
right incentives to invest in the success of their students.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank you, Senator Warren.
Senator Murray, do you have any further thoughts?
Senator Murray. I do not. I just want to thank our
panelists today for a really important discussion.
As we move forward to work to reauthorize the Higher
Education Act, you've given us a lot to ponder and think about.
At the end of the day, we want to make sure that all young
people today and adults from all walks of life have access, and
this has been an important part of that discussion. Thank you.
The Chairman. This has been a very helpful hearing and a
reminder about how big and complex and diverse our system of
higher education is. It makes me think, with all these really
good ideas, 75 percent, 76 percent of our students go to public
2-year schools, 4-year schools, and they have legislators and
Governors and Higher Education Commission members and
university presidents and board of trustees all rushing around
to meet with one another to find out what North Carolina is
doing.
I know I used to--when I was Governor, I'd go see Bill
Friday, and I'd try to learn everything I could about North
Carolina's higher education system. I'm sure that Dr. Renick
has seen a great many of our other institutions work to adopt
his progress.
Senator Warren is right. We spend a lot of money here, and
we have a chance here in the next few months to make sure we
spend it wisely to create an environment in which you can do
more of what you're doing without imposing on you what might be
a very good idea that works here but doesn't necessarily work
there and not to tar you with predatory practices that might
exist in other places.
As you followup this hearing, if you have thoughts that
you'd like to suggest to us about ways to adjust our system of
financial aid so that we can encourage the kind of student
success that so many States have been adopting over the last
few years really on their own, if there's an appropriate way
for us to do that, we certainly ought to consider it. If there
are things that you think we should definitely not do that
would get in the way of letting that happen, I'd like to hear
that as well.
The hearing record will remain open for 10 days to submit
additional comments and any questions for the record that
Senators may have. We plan to hold the next HELP hearing in
September.
Thank you for being here today. The committee will stand
adjourned.
[Additional Material follows.]
ADDITIONAL MATERIAL
Response by Stan Jones to Questions of Senator Alexander, Senator
Cassidy, Senator Collins, Senator Enzi, Senator Murray, and Senator
Warren
senator alexander
Question 1. Does Federal aid allow for so many remedial classes
that it unintentionally puts students on a ``bridge to nowhere'' as
your organization's report on remediation puts it?
Answer 1. Yes, under the Federal Pell grant program, students can
use their Pell grant to cover up to 30 credits of remediation. This is
problematic for three reasons:
a. Current regulations limit a student's eligibility for Pell to 12
semesters. If a student uses their full allotment of remedial credits,
they will likely run out of Pell funding prior to completing their
bachelor's degree, making it less likely that they will complete the
degree.
b. Traditional remediation does not work. Only 1 in every 10
remedial students graduate with an associate's degree in 3 years and a
little more than one-third graduate with a bachelors degree from non-
research institutions.
c. Pell students have a higher rate of remediation than non-Pell
students (55 percent compared to 30 percent), meaning Pell students are
more likely to fall into this group of students who take multiple
levels and semesters of remediation without completing.
Complete College America recommends rethinking the remedial
allotment of Pell by encouraging States and institutions to adopt
corequisite remediation, which allows students to complete college-
level English and math much more quickly, while receiving just-in-time
remedial supports. States and institutions that have adopted this model
at scale are seeing tremendous results. For example, Tennessee went
from 12 percent student completion of traditional math remediation to
63 percent completion for both the remedial and college-level math
course by using a corequisite strategy. In English, Tennessee went from
31 percent completion of traditional remediation to 74 percent
completion for both the remedial and college-level English course
through the corequisite strategy.
One possible solution would be distinguish remedial credits between
those that are taken as a pre-requisite vs. those that are taken as a
corequisite--with the college-level course. For example, the Pell
program could maintain the current 30-credit allotment, but make clear
that no more than 15 credits be used for standalone prerequisite
remediation and that all other remedial credits must be taken as a
corequisite course, while students are enrolled in the gateway course
for which they require remediation.
Question 2. Why is it important that students complete their degree
or certificate?
Answer 1. Degree and certificate completion matters for both
individual and societal reasons. Individuals with a college degree on
average earn over $1 million more during their lifetime than
individuals with a high school diploma. While students may accrue
skills during their postsecondary experience that aids them in future
roles regardless of whether they complete the degree or certificate,
without a degree or certificate, students are less likely to qualify
for jobs, less likely to increase their earning power, and more likely
to have student debt without the increased ability to pay back such
debt. At the societal level, having more individuals with credentials
and degrees is good for the economy, as the individuals will be better
prepared to fill critical roles and contribute to the overall economy.
Question 3. You mentioned that Federal policies set de facto
policies in States and at institutions, such as considering 12 credits
as full-time student status. Based on that observation, what drawbacks
or promise does the de facto standards setting effect of Federal policy
have for policymakers as they consider potential changes to Federal
student aid or Federal higher education policies?
Answer 3. Federal policies have significant implications for State
and institutional policy and action, particularly given the size of the
Federal investment in higher education and the signal that Federal
policies send to the field. Future potential drawbacks or promise can
be gauged by the outcomes of current Federal policy.
For example, IPEDs is the primary database that the bulk of higher
education researchers rely on for their research. Regrettably, because
it does not include part-time students, Pell students, and other key
metrics, there are huge gaps in the research. The lack of these metrics
sends a message about the importance of knowing the outcomes of part-
time students, Pell students and other key components. States and
institutions also rely on the standards set by IPEDs, such as 3-year
and 6-year graduation rates, instead of maintaining a strong focus of
on-time completion rates. This standard reduces accountability for
States and institutions to graduate more students on-time.
Another example is the definition of full-time status for Pell
students. All institutions accessing title IV funds must adhere to this
definition. Beyond that, this definition of 12 credits per term has
become the standard for many State-level and institutional-level aid
programs. It signals that 12 credits per term is appropriate for full-
time enrollment, even though 12 credits per term automatically put
students seeking a bachelor's degree on the 5-year plan. Research from
Temple University and The University of Texas found that the cost of a
bachelor's degree dramatically rises for students in their fifth year
and beyond. One reason for the dramatic increase is that many State,
institutional or private grant programs are capped at four academic
years. Consequently, Pell students may actually see a dramatic increase
in their cost of attendance if they gear their educational program to
the 12-credit requirement. Ultimately, this approach will lead to
dramatic increases in student debt or even worse students abandoning or
delaying their completion of a degree altogether. By encouraging and
incentivizing students to enroll in 15 credits per term or 30 credits
year round, the Federal Government would be sending a strong signal to
States and institutions that they also should take action to encourage
and incentivize their students to complete on-time.
Question 4. Is there a downside of incentivizing institutions and
States to adopt policies that consider full-time as 15 credits, rather
than 12 credits?
Answer 4. No, there is not a downside to incentivizing States and
institutions to adopt policies that support students attending at 15
credits per term. Such policies will help students complete their
degree programs on time, preventing them from spending extra time and
money to earn the degree and allowing them to more quickly enter the
workforce. Having students complete a degree on time is good for
Federal and State governments, as it reduces additional expenditures in
student aid beyond the 2 or 4 years. At the institutional level, it
allows colleges and universities to more efficiently tailor their
resources to helping students complete.
Certainly, not all students are able to enroll full-time, as many
students have work and family obligations that make full-time
enrollment impossible. However, such students may be able to complete
30 credits through year-round attendance. At the Federal level, re-
installing the summer Pell offering would help make year-round
attendance possible. Within institutions, highly structured programs,
schedules and pathways would facilitate students' ability to more
easily and successfully move through their degree programs for on-time
completion.
senator cassidy
Question 1. I am a father of a child who is dyslexic. As any proud
father, I want the best for her and to see her succeed academically and
in life. As such, research from the National Center for Learning
Disabilities shows that students with learning disabilities--such as
dyslexia--value a college education and most want to attend either a 2-
year or 4-year postsecondary education program.\1\
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\1\ http://www.ncld.org/reports-and-studies/2014-state-of-ld/.
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While 68 percent of students with learning disabilities are
graduating high school with a regular diploma--a statistic that is too
low but has risen over time\2\--these students continue to lag behind
their peers in entering and completing college. Just 34 percent of such
students completed a 4-year degree compared to 51 percent of students
without disabilities.\3\
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\2\ http://www.ncld.org/reports-and-studies/diplomas-at-risk-a-
critical-look-at-the-high-school-graduation-rate/.
\3\ http://www.nlts2.org.
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As your organizations reviewed reasons for students not
succeeding in college and as part of your development of initiatives to
help such students succeed, what considerations were given to students
who had learning differences?
If we really want students with learning disabilities to
have access to postsecondary education, what are colleges and
universities doing to educate their faculty about the needs of these
college students? What are colleges and universities doing in general
to accommodate these students?
Answer 1. One key challenge for students with disabilities is that
Individual Education Plans at the K-12 level are not shared with
postsecondary education institutions because of FERPA regulations.
While we do not have recommendations related to these regulations, we
do think it is important to encourage postsecondary education
institutions to develop more effective intake processes to better
understand their new entering students. Complete College America
strongly encourages institutions to abandon the process of assessment
and placement of new entering students based on highly ineffective
placement exams, such as the Accuplacer, to determine the starting
point for students in higher education.
Instead, we recommend a process where students are provided the
opportunity to identify the academic goals, career goals and other
important information that will enable a more comprehensive strategy
for ensuring that all students, including those with learning
disabilities, can identify and follow a clear path to completion.
Question 2. The U.S. Department of Education's College Navigator,
an online tool to provide parents and prospective students with
information about colleges falls short in collecting information about
services available to students with learning disabilities. A random
review of the profiles of 400 institutions of higher education in the
College Navigator revealed that only six provided any information to
students and the public about services available for students with
learning disabilities at that college.\4\ When information is not
provided to parents and students, it's difficult to make informed
decisions about which college to attend.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\4\ NCLD conducted review in January 2014.
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How do colleges communicate with prospective and enrolled
students about the types of services and supports offered for students
with learning disabilities, such as students with dyslexia?
Overall, how do colleges work with the K-12 educational
system to support a seamless transition from high school to
postsecondary education for students with learning differences, such as
students with dyslexia? If colleges and universities to not work with
K-12 educational systems for such students, is this something Congress
should consider as we reauthorize the Higher Education Act?
Answer 2. A mechanism for ensuring the success of all students is
to support funding models based on student success, rather than
enrollment. By creating specific financial incentives to colleges to
meet the needs of specific demographic groups or other subgroup of
students, colleges are incented to provide services that will support
students--to include students with disabilities.
senator collins
Question 1. The various forms of Federal financial aid have helped
increase college access. I am concerned, however, that there is little
Federal effort to increase awareness among students about college
costs, debt, and repayment, and that students can become discouraged
from completing their degrees if they feel overwhelmed by cost.
Answer 1. Husson University in Bangor, ME, where I worked prior to
my election to the Senate, requires all freshmen students to enroll in
a one-credit student success seminar, which includes financial literacy
and other essential skills development. In your view, what forms of
financial counseling are most effective? Are there Federal impediments
to increasing student financial awareness?
Complete College America fully supports helping students complete
their degree programs on-time in order to reduce the level of college
cost and debt, as well as to increase their ability to repay such debt.
College costs and student debt are at all-time highs. These are
important issues for Congress, States, and institutions to address.
While Complete College America does not offer specific strategies
around financial counseling or financial literacy, we agree that
supports are essential to prepare students to make informed choices
before, during, and after their college experience.
senator enzi
Question 1. Can you tell us about the effort that States are taking
to help students in dual-enrollment programs receive full credit at
and/or from their in-State Institutions of Higher Education? What
strategies would you recommend we focus on within the context of this
reauthorization process to ensure that States are not prohibited from
establishing such programs?
Answer 1. At this time, Complete College America works primarily at
the postsecondary level and does not directly engage the secondary
education sector. We believe dual enrollment is an important on-ramp to
college access for many students and can help reduce both time and cost
to degree. States differ in their approach to dual enrollment. Some
States use it as a strategy to help more students become college-ready
and begin accruing college credits early. Other States offer it as a
benefit and tool only for students that meet GPA and other college
readiness criteria. For more information on best practices for dual
enrollment, please contact the National Alliance of Concurrent
Enrollment Partnerships, Jobs for the Future and the American Youth
Policy Forum.
Question 2. Could you please tell us about the efforts that
Institutions of Higher Education are making to accommodate retraining
for adults to change careers by attending school part-time, especially
in an economy as changing as ours?
Answer 2. Complete College America works with States and
institutions to implement five key strategies, known as the Game
Changers, to help all students complete certificate and degree
programs. These strategies apply to and benefit all student
populations. For example, we strongly encourage colleges to develop
structured scheduling options to enable returning adults to more
effectively balance the competing obligations of work, family and
college. By creating program offerings that are scheduled as blocks
which might be, Monday through Friday in the mornings, afternoons or
evenings, will allow students to reliably schedule school, work and
family obligations. Too often, students must choose between work and a
college class because of time conflicts each semester. Even if they are
able to find balance one semester, they have to go through the process
again the following semester. Creating consistent blocked schedules for
an entire program enables more students to enroll in and complete
college programs.
senator murray
Question 1. Poverty and financial need can have a profound impact
on students' ability to succeed. Research shows that high achieving
students from low-income backgrounds are less likely to complete than
high achieving students from families with higher incomes, even when
controlling for their academic preparation at the time of enrollment.
Answer 1. Are there opportunities for postsecondary institutions,
including community colleges and traditional 4-year colleges, to
develop counseling and support services specifically geared toward
meeting the unique needs of high achieving, first-generation students
from economically disadvantaged backgrounds and ensuring that they are
successful? Please describe how such initiatives might work and the
benefits they could bring to this demographic of students.
Complete College America works with States and institutions to
promote completion strategies for all students. We believe our
strategies, known as the Game Changers, will support all students in
moving through to graduation, including high achieving, lower income
students. These game changers include providing highly structured
programs, pathways and schedules to give students a straight line to
graduation with all of the supports built in to help them succeed.
Changing policies to incentivize students to take 15 credits per term
or 30 credits year round for part-time students will facilitate greater
completion and on-time completion. Such policies or initiatives could
include banded tuition, advising students on the benefits of on-time
completion, marketing efforts to students, other incentive programs to
support this level of enrollment. Being aware of the completion rates
of lower income students is also a recommended step, specifically the
graduation rate for students receiving Pell grants. There is currently
no mandated Federal reporting of this metric, only a disclosure
requirement, to which many institutions do not adhere. With the Federal
Government spending billions of dollars each year on the Pell grant
program, understanding how these students are succeeding is an
important component.
senator warren
Question 1. Do colleges have enough incentives to improve student
success?
Answer 1. Institutions are certainly more attentive then ever
before to helping their students succeed and many institutions are
engaged in a range of national, State, and institutional initiatives to
improve their student outcomes. There are some key actions that can be
taken to help better align institutions' focus on student success. At
the State level, performance-based funding is an effective tool to help
institutions prioritize student success and orient their programs and
initiatives around efforts that will support student success. Policies
and legislation that better enable institutions to implement strategies
around highly structured programs, remedial transformation, and on-time
completion can serve as incentives. The Federal Government can help
colleges to better focus on student success by including additional
progress and completion metrics into IPEDs that will highlight how
colleges are serving their students and better position them to
understand what changes can be made to improve their student outcomes.
Complete College America recommends the Federal Government adopt its
data metrics into IPEDS. This is a set of 12 metrics, which have been
endorsed by the National Governors Association and the State Higher
Education Executive Officers Association and for which more than 30
States annually submit State-level data to Complete College America.
Six of these metrics (completion ratio, progress on remediation,
success in 1st year English and math, credit accumulation, course
completion, and credit and time to degree) are not included in IPEDs.
Another important data metric that the Federal Government should
collect is Pell student graduation rate. There is currently no mandated
reporting of this metric, only a disclosure requirement, to which many
institutions do not adhere. With the Federal Government spending
billions of dollars each year on the Pell grant program, understanding
how these students are succeeding is an important component.
Question 2. What policies would give for-profit colleges an
incentive to improve outcomes for their students?
Answer 2. Inclusion of the Complete College America data metrics
into IPEDs, as noted above, and mandated reporting of Pell student
graduation rates are a good first step to incentivize all institutions
to improve outcomes for their students.
Thank you again for including Complete College America in the
August 5th hearing. If we can provide any additional information,
please let us know.
Response by R. Scott Ralls to Questions of Senator Alexander, Senator
Cassidy, Senator Collins, Senator Enzi, Senator Murray, Senator Warren
and Senator Scott
senator alexander
Question 1. Why is it important that students complete their degree
or certificate?
First, community college students who transfer to a 4-year college
are significantly more likely to complete their bachelor's degree if
they transfer after completing their associate's degree, compared to
similar students who transfer without completion. A study by the Center
for Community College Research (CCRC) at Teachers College, Columbia
University of first time-college students enrolled at North Carolina
Community Colleges between 2002 and 2005 were 49 percent more likely to
complete a bachelor's degree within 4 years, and 22 percent more likely
to complete the degree within 6 years, than similar students who
transferred without completing. These results are similar to a national
descriptive study from the National Student Clearinghouse that found
students who transferred with a certificate or associate's degree were
16 percentage points more likely to complete a bachelor's degree.
Answer 1. Second, research by CCRC of North Carolina Community
College students has indicated that degree completers fare better
financially. A study of our students over a 9-year period after first
enrollment, demonstrated the internal rate of return (labor market
gains net of tuition costs and forgone income) to an associate degree,
compared with no award, is approximately 16 percent for women and 5
percent for men.
Question 2. How could the availability of a year-round Pell grant
increase completion among your student body?
Answer 2. In North Carolina, much of our student success efforts
have been built on a theoretical framework of loss and momentum points.
In other words, examining points along students' educational
progression where we lose students and they drop out, and opportunities
for acceleration toward degree completion. A natural loss point is
created by the slow-down in course taking behavior for community
college students during the summer. Given that our students are older,
with an average age of 28, this slowdown is not created by their desire
to take time off during the summer, but rather by the lack of
availability of course offerings and financial aid. Recognizing this,
our State has pushed a legislative agenda for ``year-round'' community
college funding, with STEM courses, healthcare, technical education,
and developmental education courses now funded in the summer. In
addition, Governor McCrory championing an effort this year for year-
round funding for all courses. Of course even with this support for
State funding of courses, many students will still be limited by the
lack of year-round Pell grant opportunities.
Previous research by Benjamin Castleman has demonstrated the
significant numbers of students impacted by what is referred to as
``summer melt,'' and the proclivity of that loss among low-income
students. As approximately two-thirds of community college students are
from the lower half of the income bracket, efforts to prevent their
loss during the summer through the availability of year-round Pell
funding are likely to increase community college degree completion.
senator cassidy
Question 1a. I am a father of a child who is dyslexic. As any proud
father, I want the best for her and to see her succeed academically and
in life. As such, research from the National Center for Learning
Disabilities shows that students with learning disabilities--such as
dyslexia--value a college education and most want to attend either a 2-
year or 4-year postsecondary education program.\1\
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\1\ http://www.ncld.org/reports-and-studies/2014-state-of-ld/.
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While 68 percent of students with learning disabilities are
graduating high school with a regular diploma--a statistic that is too
low but has risen over time\2\--these students continue to lag behind
their peers in entering and completing college. Just 34 percent of such
students completed a 4-year degree compared to 51 percent of students
without disabilities.\3\
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\2\ http://www.ncld.org/reports-and-studies/diplomas-at-risk-a-
critical-look-at-the-high-school-graduation-rate/.
\3\ http://www.nlts2.org .
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As your organizations reviewed reasons for students not succeeding
in college and as part of your development of initiatives to help such
students succeed, what considerations were given to students who had
learning differences?
Answer 1a. To provide better access to students with disabilities,
in 2013 the North Carolina Community College System initiated a 5-year
plan for web and e-learning accessibility. Colleges were asked to form
an accessibility compliance committee to review all aspects of
electronic information, including Web sites, e-Learning, and purchasing
of electronic or digital assets or resources. As part of its Success NC
initiative (student success strategic plan), colleges were asked to
focus on strategies to increase student success, access and program
excellence. As a result of Success NC, colleges are developing
approaches to enhance access for all students through increased
tutoring, improved advising, centrally located information and
resources, and leveraging the use of technology.
Question 1b. If we really want students with learning disabilities
to have access to postsecondary education, what are colleges and
universities doing to educate their faculty about the needs of these
college students? What are colleges and universities doing in general
to accommodate these students?
Answer 1b. During staff development days, many colleges include
sessions on working with students with disabilities as part of the
program. The North Carolina Community College System Office (SO) has
provided and arranged for sessions on students with disabilities,
including LD, at various conferences, meetings and training sessions.
In addition, the System Office had also provided training for faculty
and staff at individual colleges upon request.
Disability counselors at all colleges assist students and provide
reasonable accommodations to students who self-disclose/register with
the disability services office and are confirmed to have a disability.
Learning disabilities are unique to each student and accommodations are
tailored to the needs of the individual student (case-by-case, class-
by-class basis). Accommodations may include note-takers, smart pens,
electronic tablets, distraction minimized environment for testing,
frequent breaks, copies of instructor notes/presentations, extended
time for assignments and exams, as well as other accommodations that
fit the student's academic needs.
Question 2a. The U.S. Department of Education's College Navigator,
an online tool to provide parents and prospective students with
information about colleges falls short in collecting information about
services available to students with learning disabilities. A random
review of the profiles of 400 institutions of higher education in the
College Navigator revealed that only six provided any information to
students and the public about services available for students with
learning disabilities at that college.\4\ When information is not
provided to parents and students, it's difficult to make informed
decisions about which college to attend.
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\4\ NCLD conducted review in January 2014.
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How do colleges communicate with prospective and enrolled students
about the types of services and supports offered for students with
learning disabilities, such as students with dyslexia?
Answer 2a. Most college disability services offices work with the
local high school counselors to provide transition information for
students with disabilities. Many colleges will schedule transition
events for students with disabilities and their parents. For students
already enrolled in a college, information is communicated during the
admissions process and included in orientation programs and classes.
Instructors are encouraged, and in some cases required, to include a
statement on their syllabus which provides the location and contact
information for the campus disability services office and encourages
students with special needs to register with the disability services
office.
Question 2b. Overall, how do colleges work with the K-12
educational system to support a seamless transition from high school to
postsecondary education for students with learning differences, such as
students with dyslexia? If colleges and universities to not work with
K-12 educational systems for such students, is this something Congress
should consider as we reauthorize the Higher Education Act?
Answer 2b. Most colleges work with their local high schools to
provide information to students with disabilities and to their parents.
Partnerships with area colleges and high schools vary across the State
with some working closely together, while others may have a less
cooperative relationship.
Congress has an opportunity to encourage stronger transition
partnerships between secondary and postsecondary institutions to better
inform students and parents of the differences, resources and
expectations for students with all disabilities who wish to enroll in a
college or university. With the reauthorization, universal design which
helps all students, but especially students with disabilities, could
also be encouraged.
senator collins
Question. The various forms of Federal financial aid have helped
increase college access. I am concerned, however, that there is little
Federal effort to increase awareness among students about college
costs, debt, and repayment, and that students can become discouraged
from completing their degrees if they feel overwhelmed by cost.
Husson University in Bangor, ME, where I worked prior to my
election to the Senate, requires all freshmen students to enroll in a
one-credit student success seminar, which includes financial literacy
and other essential skills development. In your view, what forms of
financial counseling are most effective? Are there Federal impediments
to increasing student financial awareness?
Answer. While not a requirement, as in Maine, financial literacy is
often included in our college success courses that are required for
degree completion. In addition, since 1972, North Carolina has provided
free employability skills training through our 58 community colleges to
individuals who have been dislocated from their jobs and/or make less
than 200 percent of the Federal poverty level. Included in the
available training is financial literacy education.
More recently, our North Carolina State Treasurer, Janet Cowell,
and our State Education Assistance Authority, joined forces to create
an initiative called Advanced Money Management for Community College
Students. They did so after I requested their help in developing
financial literacy tools that our community colleges in North Carolina
may use in counseling student prior to taking out loans and assuming
debt to pay for college. Colleges today face restrictions on
requirements they may place on students for financial literacy
instruction, prior to assuming Federal loans. In our State, many
community colleges have dropped out of the Federal Loan program because
they face significant consequences for accounting for loan defaults but
have little control over student requirements prior to assuming a loan,
such as taking a financial literacy course. A Federal impediment to
increasing student financial awareness is the restrictions placed on
colleges who may wish to require some type of financial literacy
courses prior to providing a Federal loan.
senator enzi
Question 1. I would like to start off by saying that I am very
proud that students in my home State of Wyoming, along with students in
North Dakota and Nebraska, have the lowest student loan default rate of
5 percent in the Nation.
I was proud to work on and support the Every Child Achieves Act
these past few months which highlighted State-funded dual enrollment
programs in our K-12 education system. We know it is important for K-12
and higher education to communicate about expectations for college-
level work. K-12 students who pursue dual enrollment learn about
college expectations early and have a leg up gaining college credit so
they can graduate from college faster and potentially with less debt.
Dr. Ralls, you mentioned that Federal legislation should encourage
and incentivize State-funded dual enrollment partnerships between our
K-12 public schools and community colleges and universities. Can you
provide us with some recommendations on how we can improve
communication between our K-12 education system and our Institutions of
Higher Education and vocational training centers to expand dual
enrollment programs and ensure that the credits and credentials being
earned by students are transferable to their postsecondary education?
Answer 1. I would pay close attention to articulation agreements
between community colleges and universities, and next dual enrollment
agreements between community colleges and public schools, and look for
opportunities to incentivize States and regions with strong agreements
through Federal funding opportunities. In my opinion, articulation
agreements between higher education institutions are best when they
cover multiple institutions and provide clear, strong degree and course
guarantees for students. Statewide agreements between systems of higher
education greatly assist students in having consistent pathways that
are similar across multiple institutions. Articulation agreements that
provide guarantees that courses will transfer as general education
credit (i.e., not just counted for elective credit), are best for
students who are more likely to ultimately graduate, and taxpayers who
do not have to pay for students to retake courses that do not transfer.
With respect to dual enrollment, the best agreements I believe are
those that allow high school students to enroll free of charge, and
where they enroll in pathways that have limited course choice directly
to a degree, rather than random course taking. You can find several
States, like North Carolina, or regions where these types of agreements
are in place. The Federal Government could play a more active role in
encouraging these types of agreements by making them a requirement for
eligibility for various grant programs.
Question 2. Could you please tell us about the efforts that
Institutions of Higher Education are making to accommodate retraining
for adults to change careers by attending school part-time, especially
in an economy as changing as ours?
Answer 2. Most community college students are working students
attending part-time. There have been many efforts to accommodate
working students in our sector including the rapid growth of distance
education which adds to the convenience of when working students can
take classes, as well as scheduling seated classes late in the evening
and early in the morning outside of normal working hours.
One recent effort that I believe has great validity, is the effort
by colleges in States such as ours to develop programs that lead to
third-party certification, and then awarding credit on a competency
basis toward completion of degrees. Many lower income working adults
need the expediency of gaining an immediate skill, and the competency
recognition of certification credential, to solidify or increase their
earning potential. After doing so, if they can receive academic credit
for such short-term, competency-based training, they can move further
down the road toward the attainment of a degree which can further
enhance their earning potential. This is why I believe consideration
should be strongly given to opening Pell eligibility for students in
short-term training programs, when those programs lead to rigorous
third-party credentials, and those credentials have been articulated
into degree programs through ``stackable certification'' models.
Also because part-time students typically choose to go part-time
not because of personal preference, but rather job and financial
necessity, I believe great caution should be taken in requiring full-
time attendance for Pell eligibility. If lower income and working-class
adults are forced to choose between working and going to college, most
will be forced to give up their higher education pursuits so they can
earn a living. However, this is also why I believe Pell grants should
be eligible year-round, so that students who are working and going to
school part-time can stay on a continuous forward trajectory and gain
greater momentum toward completion of their degrees.
senator murray
Question. Poverty and financial need can have a profound impact on
students' ability to succeed. Research shows that high-achieving
students from low-income backgrounds are less likely to complete than
high-achieving students from families with higher incomes, even when
controlling for their academic preparation at the time of enrollment.
Are there opportunities for postsecondary institutions, including
community colleges and traditional 4-year colleges, to develop
counseling and support services specifically geared toward meeting the
unique needs of high-achieving, first-generation students from
economically disadvantaged backgrounds and ensuring that they are
successful?
Please describe how such initiatives might work and the benefits
they could bring to this demographic of students.
Answer. Many community colleges, such as the one where I will be
the new president (Northern Virginia Community College), are developing
honors programs to support high achievers. I believe one of the most
important policy levers for supporting high achievers, and other lower
income students, is very strong community college to university
articulation agreements. Approximately two-thirds of community college
students are from the bottom 50 percent of the income bracket, compared
to only 14 percent of the students at the ``elite 200'' universities
and 5 percent at the ``elite top 50.'' Increasingly, research has
documented an increasing socioeconomic segregation in higher education
with poorer students, even those with higher academic achievement,
going to open-enrollment institutions, and fewer going to elite
institutions. Therefore, as opposed to addressing ``undermatching''
from just a 4-year college enrollment issue, the greatest overall
impact can be from policies that promote first very strong community
college to articulation agreements with general education course
guarantees (like we have in North Carolina), and strong direct
guarantee admissions programs between community colleges and
universities (like the DirectConnect program between Valencia College
and University of Central Florida, and the Pathway to the baccalaureate
program between Northern Virginia Community College and George Mason
University). Research indicates that community college students who can
transfer all or most of their credits are 2.5 times more likely to
complete a bachelor's degree, than students transferring half or less
of their credits. As the Federal Government creates grant programs and
other Federal fundings opportunities supportive of higher education,
they can help low-income students by incentivizing strong community
college to university articulation guarantees.
senator warren
Question 1. Do colleges have enough incentives to improve student
success?
Answer 1. No. Enrollment-based funding models, upon which most
higher education funding is provided, put all of the incentives on
getting students enrolled, not in graduation. In other words, rewarding
inputs rather than outputs. I believe that a mix of funding is
important. Enrollment funding helps cover the fixed costs that higher
education institutions face with each student enrollment. (For example,
community colleges put the vast majority of their funding in direct
instructional costs, and if a class starts with 30 students but ends
with 20, the teaching costs are the same). However, we have found that
even a relatively smaller percentage of funding tied to student success
outcomes play an important role in focusing greater attention to
program completion and graduation.
One way the Federal Government could help in this process is
providing greater incentives to States that maintain tuition to their
public institutions at rates significantly below the national average.
In fact, some current policies have been a disincentive to maintaining
lower tuition. For example, Federal job training policy through the
Workforce Investment Act (now WIOA) allows for eligible job training
participants to receive training funds through ITAs that pay for the
cost of community college attendance (i.e., tuition and fees). For
States like North Carolina that maintain very low State-subsidized
tuition, sometimes it is seen as ``leaving money on the table'' because
the Federal funding can only pay for the highly State-
subsidized tuition rate, not the actual cost of the training. This
creates from some that tuition rates should be increased. Policies that
would allow States that maintain tuition rates significantly below the
national average, to flexibly use some of those funds to support
instructional infrastructure costs such as technology, would help
remove the disincentives to maintaining low tuition through high State
subsidies.
Question 2. What policies would give for-profit colleges an
incentive to improve outcomes for their students?
Answer 2. I've never worked with a for-profit college so I am not
in a great position to answer this question. However, I do know very
little higher education Federal funding is directly tied to outcomes
other than enrollment, so it should be little surprise that if your
underlying philosophy is based on a for-profit motive, less attention
will likely to be given to program completion outcomes. Recently, based
on work in North Carolina and other community college systems, the
Center for Community College Research at Columbia University has
documented the high cost of adopting significant student success
efforts in funding environments that primarily reward enrollment. For
example, if we were built on a for-profit motive for our North Carolina
community colleges, we would have very little incentive to have
significantly changed our developmental education programs which
``churned'' students and as such generated funding, but were
insufficient in producing student success. We knew this going into our
statewide reform efforts, but did it anyway because student success was
prioritized more than the financial impact.
senator scott
Question. In my home State, universities have made strides toward
allowing students to utilize the full calendar year to work toward an
undergraduate degree. The University of South Carolina, in particular,
offers ``on your time'' and accelerated degrees that offer an increased
variety of classes to students during the summers to encourage
motivated students to complete a degree in their own time. In 2014, the
South Carolina State legislature decided to allow students to use
State-funded scholarships year round, rather than just during the
traditional school year. S. 108, introduced by our Chairman, Senator
Alexander, and my colleague Senator Bennett, will expand students'
ability to use Pell grants year-round. Do you believe full-year Pell
grants have the potential to help students graduate on time or early,
and could they reduce the cost of higher education for qualified
students?
Answer. In my opinion, providing year-round Pell opportunities
could be one of the most important policies in a new Higher Education
Act that to significantly impact student success rates.
As in South Carolina, we in North Carolina have been aggressively
pursuing State policies to enable year-round attendance. Starting 2
years ago, our State began providing year-round funding to community
colleges for students taking STEM, health care, technical education and
developmental courses. This year, Governor McCrory is helping to
champion year-round funding at community colleges for all courses. The
reason for doing so is that the average age of our students is 28 and
they come to us with a primary goal of moving quickly into and upward
in the workforce, or to transfer to a university. They are not looking
to take a break in the summer, and if we do not provide them with year-
round opportunity, some lose their momentum and ``melt away.''
Last year presidents of our 58 community colleges in North Carolina
declared year-round Pell funding as their No. 1 desired Federal policy
change, because they believe it is so fundamental to helping students
achieve their goals.
Response by Timothy M. Renick to Questions of Senator Alexander,
Senator Cassidy, Senator Collins, Senator Enzi, Senator Murray, Senator
Warren and Senator Scott
senator alexander
Question 1. What is problematic about the academic progress
benchmarks or indicators for students built into Federal student aid
programs today? What would a better way to encourage progress look like
in Federal student aid?
Answer 2. Our use of analytics to track all students at Georgia
State University has revealed a subset of students who have high
probabilities of graduation and yet who are out of compliance with SAP.
Because we are the largest transfer recipient school in the State of
Georgia and serve significant numbers of at-risk students, Georgia
State enrolls a subset of students who arrive having largely exhausted
their aid eligibility. In a significant number of cases, these students
may have been misled by previous institutions, including schools that
did not provide basic supports that promote student success. When they
arrive at the more positive academic environment of Georgia State,
these students progress nicely--but they often lack sufficient aid
eligibility to get to graduation. We would like to be able to approve
SAP appeals of students scheduled to graduate but who do not have
extenuating circumstances as currently defined. Students who have been
ill-served by previous institutions often exceed the maximum time for
Federal aid and need one or two additional terms to graduate.
Especially with the increase in non-traditional and working
students, SAP standards should be based on total financial aid payouts
instead of a maximum timeframe. Some students are flagged for SAP but
have not yet attempted anything close to 180 hours. This causes
confusion and undermines the ability of some of the most at-risk
students to graduate.
There should be more flexibility as it relates to SAP for students
who change their majors. The new predictive analytics being used by
universities such as Georgia State and Austin Peay can help struggling
students to get back on track for graduation by having them switch to
majors that better fit their abilities and make better use of their
successfully competed courses. Change in major is not currently a valid
basis for a SAP appeal.
There also should be more flexibility in calculating SAP for first-
year students. These students are often adjusting to their first year
in college, but such arguments do not count as extenuating
circumstances for SAP purposes. We are required to deny these appeals,
which impacts retention, progression and graduation rates, especially
for at-risk students who often have the greatest challenge adjusting to
college.
SAP requirements should only be required for undergraduates
students. The academic progress of graduate and professional students
should be monitored by academic departments. All graduate programs have
measures in place to suspend or expel students who are not meeting
department's academic standards. A least intrusive approach also makes
sense for graduate and professional students since the vast majority of
such students are only eligible for Unsubsidized and Grad Plus Loans.
Question 2. In order to improve student success, why is it
important for the Federal Government to provide institutions the
ability to require that students receive counseling and take training
classes about their finances?
Answer 2. There are currently too many cultural barriers to college
completion for at-risk student populations. Students who are the first
in their families to attend college or who come from low-income
backgrounds often lack experience making high-stakes financial
decisions and have no natural support systems to guide them. Just one
or two financial mistakes can mean the difference between a student
dropping out and staying enrolled. We need to begin to equip students
to navigate the financial decisions necessary to progress through
college starting before matriculation and extending through graduation.
Unfortunately, few students participate in such financial literacy
training voluntarily. Georgia State University has created an internal
system to induce students to go through financial literacy training: we
require all recipients of institutional aid to sign a contract agreeing
to go through training modules. This approach has proven helpful but is
less than comprehensive. While I do not support one-size-fits-all,
mandatory Federal training for financial literacy, I do believe we
could use Federal requirements to induce students to participate in
online and in-person literacy modules that would be customized to their
circumstances: entering students learning the difference between types
of educational loans and the impact of borrowing; seniors learning the
rules and options surrounding paying back loans.
Question 3. The advising models developed by Georgia State
University and Austin Peay State University have shown great success in
keeping their students on track to graduation. What are the barriers to
other institutions adopting similar models? Are there any drawbacks to
a data-driven approach on student advising?
Answer 3. The largest barrier to the widespread implementation of
analytics-based advising interventions nationally is cultural. We do
not incentivize college leadership to embrace what is new and
different, especially when it might create pushback from faculty, staff
or other stakeholders. Presidents are too often rewarded for what they
do not do--upset the status quo, anger constituencies--than what they
do. We need to change the incentive structure.
On the issues of advising tracking systems, there are some more
particular barriers:
(a) Tracking systems are only as effective as the data that are the
basis for the alerts and predictive analytics. Institutions such as
Georgia State and Austin Peay have invested in collecting and scrubbing
data so that it is sound.\1\ Too many institutions lack the
infrastructure, history and culture to easily populate such systems.
Still, we need to support national projects to identify data trends
across institutions so that the benefits of such early alerts can be
enjoyed by students at all institutions. For instance, there is much
reason to believe that academic indicators from lower-level courses in
pre-calculus math are accurate predictors of performance in upper-level
chemistry courses across all institutions.\2\ We could greatly
accelerate the propagation of advising tracking systems by pursuing
projects of a cross-institutional and even national level to collect
such data.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ ``GPS Advising at Georgia State University,'' Georgia State
University Office of Institutional Effectiveness, http://oie.gsu.edu/
files/2014/04/Advisement-GPS.pdf (accessed September 3, 2015).
\2\ N/A.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
(b) Many campuses are not currently set up effectively to respond
to the alerts that come from these systems. Georgia State has supported
43,000 one-on-one proactive interventions between staff and students
over the past 12 months because we were able to make substantial
changes in the way we organize and deploy academic advisors on campus.
At too many universities, academic advisors report to and are assessed
by multiple stakeholders, making coordination of responses difficult.
Question 4. Why is it important that students complete their degree
or certificate?
Answer 4. The national data are compelling. According to a 2014
study of the Pew Research Center, even at the depths of the Recession,
college graduates were only one-third as likely to be unemployed as
Americans who possessed only a high school diploma.\3\ The gap is even
wider between college graduates and high school dropouts. The Pew study
replicates the often-cited claim that, over a Lifetime, college
graduates will earn more than $1 million more than the high school
graduates.\4\ With the emergence of an American economy increasingly
dependent on information, technology and service, there is strong
reason to believe that these types of gaps will grow in the future.
While there are exceptions--we all hear the stories of the college
graduates with high depth who are unemployed or underemployed--by every
objective indicator, such individuals are the exception and not the
rule. Quality of life indices--life expectancy, access to good health
care, education level of offspring, lower rates of incarceration--also
increase with a college education.\5\ This is an important instance in
which what is right for the individual is also what is best for the
Nation.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\3\ ``The Rising Cost of Not Going to College,'' Pew Research
Center, February 11, 2014, http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2014/02/11/
the-rising-cost-of-not-going-to-college/ (accessed Septem-
ber 3, 2015).
\4\ Anthony P. Carnevale, Stephen J. Rose, & Ban Cheah, ``The
College Payoff: Education, Occupations, Lifetime Earnings,'' Georgetown
University Center on Education and the Workforce. https://www2.ed.gov/
policy/highered/reg/hearulemaking/2011/collegepayoff.pdf (accessed
September 3, 2015).
\5\ Sandy Baum, Jennifer Ma, & Kathleen Payea, ``Education Pays
2013: The Benefits of Higher Education for Individuals and Society,''
The College Board, http://trends.collegeboard.org/education-pays
(accessed September 3, 2015).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
senator cassidy
Question 1. I am a father of a child who is dyslexic. As any proud
father, I want the best for her and to see her succeed academically and
in life. As such, research from the National Center for Learning
Disabilities shows that students with learning disabilities--such as
dyslexia--value a college education and most want to attend either a 2-
year or 4-year postsecondary education program.\6\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\6\ Candace Cortiella, ``2014 State of LD,'' National Center for
Learning Disabilities, November 24, 2014, http://www.ncld.org/reports-
and-studies/2014-state-of-ld/ (accessed September 3, 2015).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
While 68 percent of students with learning disabilities are
graduating high school with a regular diploma--a statistic that is too
low but has risen over time\7\--these students continue to lag behind
their peers in entering and completing college. Just 34 percent of such
students completed a 4-year degree compared to 51 percent of students
without disabilities.\8\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\7\ Candace Cortiella, ``Diplomas at Risk: A Critical Look at the
High School Graduation Rate,'' National Center for Learning
Disabilities, November 24, 2014, http://www.ncld.org/reports-and-
studies/diplomas-at-risk-a-critical-look-at-the-high-school-graduation-
rate/ (accessed September 3, 2015).
\8\ National Longitudinal Transition Study 2. http://www.nlts2.org
(accessed September 3, 2015).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
As your organizations reviewed reasons for students not succeeding
in college and as part of your development of initiatives to help such
students succeed, what considerations were given to students who had
learning differences?
If we really want students with learning disabilities to have
access to postsecondary education, what are colleges and universities
doing to educate their faculty about the needs of these college
students? What are colleges and universities doing in general to
accommodate these students?
Answer 1. I share your concern for supporting students with
learning disabilities. There is clearly a need to respect the personal
privacy of the students. As such, we do not volunteer the information
about students with disabilities to faculty members who may have such
students enroll in their courses. We also do not want to require that
students disclose their personal circumstances to all faculty and staff
with whom they work on an individual basis. With these principles in
mind, Georgia State staffs an Office of Disability Services.\9\
Students with disabilities are encouraged to visit the office where
appropriate accommodations can be discussed with highly trained
professionals. Subsequently, students merely tell their instructors
that they have an approved accommodation through the Office of
Disability Services, and the Office then advocates on behalf of the
students. If students, for instance, need more time to complete an
exam, the Office of Disability Services will proctor the exam so the
student will not be put in a position of requesting accommodation
directly from the instructor. Students do not have to disclose the
nature of their disabilities to their instructors (unless they chose to
do so) in order to be appropriately accommodated.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\9\ Georgia State University Disability Services. http://
disability.gsu.edu/ (accessed September 3, 2015).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
A challenge is reducing barriers that sometime hinder students from
seeking this help, and I agree that requiring institutions to outline
their support system in a standard place of the website would help to
ensure that impacted students know what resources are available from
day one.
Question 2. The U.S. Department of Education's College
Navigator,\10\ an online tool to provide parents and prospective
students with information about colleges, falls short in collecting
information about services available to students with learning
disabilities. A random review of the profiles of 400 institutions of
higher education in the College Navigator revealed that only six
provided any information to students and the public about services
available for students with learning disabilities at that college.\11\
When information is not provided to parents and students, it's
difficult to make informed decisions about which college to attend.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\10\ College Navigator. https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/
(accessed September 3, 2015).
\11\ NCLD conducted review in January 2014.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
How do colleges communicate with prospective and enrolled students
about the types of services and supports offered for students with
learning disabilities, such as students with dyslexia?
Overall, how do colleges work with the K-12 educational system to
support a seamless transition from high school to postsecondary
education for students with learning differences, such as students with
dyslexia? If colleges and universities were not to work with K-12
educational systems for such students, is this something Congress
should consider as we reauthorize the Higher Education Act?
Answer 2. At Georgia State, we outline the resources available to
students with disabilities through our orientation process and provide
a referral service to the Office of Disability Services for faculty
members who may identify unreported cases in the classroom. At present,
there is not a seamless process from high school to postsecondary
institutions. A challenge that we have not resolved is respecting the
privacy of our students who understandably may resist (and whose
parents may resist) their being tracked as students with disabilities
across institutions or as students transition from secondary to
postsecondary education. There is currently no means that I know of by
which a student's circumstances with regard to special needs is relayed
from K-12 to the college in which the student matriculates unless the
student takes the initiative to do so. Because of this dynamic, we rely
heavily of the students's self disclosure of his or her situation,
which likely leaves some students unserved.
senator collins
Question 1. The various forms of Federal financial aid have helped
increase college access. I am concerned, however, that there is little
Federal effort to increase awareness among students about college
costs, debt, and repayment, and that students can become discouraged
from completing their degrees if they feel overwhelmed by cost.
Husson University in Bangor, ME, where I worked prior to my
election to the Senate, requires all freshmen students to enroll in a
one-credit student success seminar, which includes financial literacy
and other essential skills development. In your view, what forms of
financial counseling are most effective? Are there Federal impediments
to increasing student financial awareness?
Answer 1. Like Husson University, Georgia State has a mandatory 1-
hour course that includes a financial literacy component.\12\ We have
found it effective to have students who receive institutional aid sign
a contract when that requires them to attend financial literacy
training. We use in-person meetings as well as online modules, both of
which we customize to serve the specific needs of the students.\13\
Graduating seniors, for instance, might be assigned modules focusing on
paying back their loans after graduation and managing credit card debt.
All participation is tracked.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\12\ ``GSU 1010: New Student Orientation Curriculum,'' Office of
Undergraduate Studies, http://success.students.gsu.edu/files/2013/01/
GSU-1010-curriculum.pdf (accessed September 3, 2015).
\13\ ``Financial Literacy,'' Georgia State University Student
Financial Services, http://sfs.gsu.edu/the-financial-aid-process/
financial-resources/financial-literacy/ (accessed September 3, 2015).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The link that we create at Georgia State between institutional aid
and financial literacy training could be strengthened by building
parallel requirements for the recipients of Federal aid. My caution is
that we recognize that, as with all learning, it needs to be
incremental. A model that requires 17-year-olds to be fully literate
about all types of loans, interest rates and so on before they can
receive Federal aid will only hinder the educational progress of large
numbers of the very students that such a policy would aim to protect.
The biggest help that the Federal Government could offer to the
financial literacy of college students is to simplify the application
and award processes and the numbers and types of programs offered by
the Federal Government. Currently, even trained professionals have
difficulties grasping the nuances. How can we expect first-generation,
17-year-olds to do so?
I also support certain steps proposed by the National Association
of Financial Aid Administrators:\14\ (1) First, we should allow
students to use tax returns (their own or their parents, as
appropriate) from the previous filing year. Our efforts to engage
students in a personalized fashion about their financial aid, loans,
and packaging is severely limited by the fact that tax returns are not
due until April 15 and classes for the academic year end in May. In the
vast majority of cases, changes in financial circumstances are
insignificant. The only way to make true financial counseling tenable
is to speed up the process by which students can be awarded aid. (2)
Second, students whose income level (or that of their families, as
appropriate) fall below a certain level (such as $50,000) can and
should have a vastly simplified FAFSA form to complete. The current
complexities of the FAFSA add a disproportionate burden to low-income
families or often lack the know-how and resources to complete the
current form.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\14\ See, for instance: http://chronicle.com/article/Everyone-s-
Talking-About/232899/?cid=at&
utm_source=at&utm_medium=en.
Question 2. Increasing college completion means preparing students
for college success. I have been a longtime supporter of the Federal
TRIO programs, which are among the Nation's most important educational
support programs, particularly for first-generation and low-income
students. TRIO supports a variety of services, including academic and
career advising, and financial aid planning and assisting. Dr. Renick,
Georgia State University has many of the TRIO programs on campus. Has
the success of TRIO at George State influenced the retention and
support services on the campus as a whole?
Answer 2. We value our TRIO programs as an important resource for
at-risk students.\15\ Georgia State's TRIO programs have consistently
outperformed targets. For example, 90 percent of participants served by
our Student Success Services (SSS) Project persist from one academic
year to the beginning of the next academic year or graduate and or
transfer from a 2-year to a 4-year institution during the academic
year. Ninety-one percent of participants served by our SSS STEM Project
persist from one academic year to the beginning of the next academic
year or graduate and or transfer from a 2-year to a 4-year institution
during the academic year. Seventy-six percent of Upward Bound
participants who enroll in a program of postsecondary education by the
fall term immediately following high school graduation attain either an
associate's or bachelor's degree within 6 years following graduation
from high school. Eighty-seven percent of participants who complete
their prescribed Veterans Upward Bound educational program enroll in
programs of postsecondary education by the end of the next project
year.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\15\ Georgia State University TRIO Programs, http://oeo.gsu.edu/
(accessed September 3, 2015).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
My advice here is that TRIO programs--at least those focused on the
success of postsecondary students enrolled in college--be situated in
the academic wing of colleges and universities, not in student affairs.
The program's focus crosses many areas, from course content to social
support, but placement of TRIO programs under the guidance of academic
deans, provosts, and faculty members (rather than deans of students)
legitimizes the effort of these offices and raises TRIO's visibility
while creating linkages to a range of academic resources that are
critical to the success of students.
senator enzi
Question 1. Could you please tell us about the efforts that
Institutions of Higher Education are making to accommodate retraining
for adults to change careers by attending school part-time, especially
in an economy as changing as ours?
Answer 1. While the State of Georgia has millions of adults in the
workforce who have earned some college credit but no college degree and
tens of thousands of unfilled jobs in high-paying fields such as
healthcare and technology, we continue to struggle as a State to induce
adults to come back to our colleges and universities. At Georgia State
University, we have used workforce projections in order to create new
academic programs to address these needs. In the past 2 years, for
instance, we have added new programs in Analytics and Big Data, Health
Informatics, Health Management, and Film Production to respond to the
needs of employers in the State. The challenges here, though, are also
cultural and economic. We have established an Office for Adult Learners
with trained admissions counselors to help adult learners navigate the
application and registration processes.\16\ The program recognizes that
these students have different needs, expectations and capabilities than
the average high-school graduate and works to ease the transition for
these learners back to the university setting. Georgia State also has
teamed with the University System of Georgia in support of Governor
Nathan Deal's ``Go Back, Move Ahead'' program to facilitate the return
of adult learners to college. We also employ graduate students in our
Early Childhood Education program to help staff one of the best pre-
school centers in Atlanta to help parents who are returning to school
to overcome one of their largest obstacles: childcare issues.
Unfortunately, we have a student body of greater than 32,000 students,
and the scale and cost of the challenge means that we cannot
accommodate the vast majority of our students who wish to place
children in our center. Inducing adults to return to college and
providing these learners with the financial support and resources that
they need once they are re-enrolled require a coordinated effort of
universities and their local communities, as well as State and Federal
Governments.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\16\ http://admissions.gsu.edu/how-do-i-apply/other-enrollment-
types/non-traditional-students/ and http://admissions.gsu.edu/how-do-i-
apply/other-enrollment-types/gsu-62-students/.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
senator murray
Question 1. Poverty and financial need can have a profound impact
on students' ability to succeed. Research shows that high-achieving
students from low-income backgrounds are less likely to complete than
high-achieving students from families with higher incomes, even when
controlling for their academic preparation at the time of enrollment.
Are there opportunities for postsecondary institutions, including
community colleges and traditional 4-year colleges, to develop
counseling and support services specifically geared toward meeting the
unique needs of high-achieving, first-generation students from
economically disadvantaged backgrounds and ensuring that they are
successful?
Please describe how such initiatives might work and the benefits
they could bring to this demographic of students.
Answer 1. ``Summer melt'' is a far too innocuous term used to refer
to a profound problem. Summer melt refers to the group of students who
apply to college, are admitted as fully qualified, confirm their plans
to attend, but who never show up for classes. This group is growing at
an alarming rate. In 2008, such students constituted approximately 8
percent of the incoming class at Georgia State. This fall, the number
tops 20 percent.
Why should we be concerned about this group of students? First,
they skew disproportionately first generation, low-income and non-
white. In other words, they are precisely the type of students who we,
in higher education, struggle to ensure are college-ready and apply to
college. Second, large numbers of these students end up attending no
college at all. Last fall at Georgia State, we had more than 100
students who were accepted and who confirmed their plans to attend
Georgia State who never showed up for classes and who, 1 year later,
had attended no college at all (according to National Student
Clearinghouse data). When we looked at the profile of these students,
they were largely first-generation and low-income. They had an average
high-school GPA of 3.3 and averaged 9 hours of dual enrollment credit.
These are students who are doing everything right academically and who
are still sitting on the sidelines when it come to the opportunity that
a college education affords. This is a tragedy.
We need to concentrate more efforts and resources on helping
students figure the pathways to college, including the financial ones,
while they are still in high school. We also need to make these
pathways less complex and convoluted so we do not disadvantage those
students who lack an independent support system to help them navigate
the terrain. What can be done?
Georgia State requires that recipients of our
institutional scholarships sign contracts pledging to give something
back. Many are assigned to mentor local middle and high school students
with a focus on college preparedness. Our largest scholarship program
for Latino students, for instance, requires recipients to spend time
each week mentoring students in Cobb County public schools, the school
district with the fastest growing Latino population in metro Atlanta.
Such peer and near-peer mentoring programs are often more effective
than placing trained staff in the same settings. Peer mentors not only
can tell students about how to succeed; they also can show them what
success looks like. This is why the College Advising Corps is a great
idea (though a program that is too limited in its focus and reach).
A new program at Georgia State will use National Student
Clearinghouse data to identify ``melt'' students and re-engage them in
colleges. In cases in which the greatest obstacles are financial, we
will help students complete FAFSAs and apply for scholarships and other
forms of aid that might make college a reality for them, and in cases
where adequate funding cannot be located to allow them to attend
Georgia State, we will create pathways for these students into lower-
costs Associate's degree programs.
In the 2015-16 academic year, Georgia State will open a
Financial Counseling Center with a trained staff charged to identify
and to reach out proactively to students who might be tripped up by the
financial complexities of attending college. We have run analytics and
found that there are early warning signs--some as simple as missing
deadlines for turning in financial forms--that can help identify such
students.
There are many challenges in preparing low-income students to be
college-ready academically and getting them to want to go to college.
The growing phenomenon of ``summer melt'' shows that, in a significant
number of cases, we need to worry less about which students are
college-ready and more about which colleges are study-ready.
The need for higher education rather than students to change
typifies the approach that Georgia State University has implemented
over the past 7 years. We have endeavored to change the way students
experience college from the time they matriculate, including the way
they choose courses and majors, their experiences in the classroom, and
the support they receive outside of class. A summary of some of these
programs and interventions and their impacts can be found in Georgia
State's 2015 completion plan at www.enrollment.gsu.edu/files/2015/08/
Georgia-State-University-CCG-Report-2015.pdf.
senator warren
Question 1. Do colleges have enough incentives to improve student
success?
Answer 1. In 25 years in higher education, I have never seen more
attention paid to the issue of college completion. It is a true bi-
partisan issue, and this support has served to motivate many campuses
to turn their attention to student success. In many cases, these were
institutions that, in the past, were content with their efforts and
mediocre results. At Georgia State University, we have had teams from
approximately 160 other colleges and universities visit us over the
past 2 years to study our programs and initiatives.
With that said, there are still far too many disincentives for
colleges and universities that wish to make a difference in the lives
of the students who most need a college degree. While there is much
talk about performance funding, few States have actually put meaningful
amounts of funding behind the model. Universities are still far too
often rewarded for serving students who bring success in with them as
they matriculate in college rather than those who become successful
because of college. High SAT scores and privileged social status are
the most common distinguishing traits of highly ranked universities,
not their ability to innovate. Such ``inputs'' are the primary basis
for national rankings such as U.S. News and World Report. In fact, even
as Georgia State was improving its graduation rates by 22 percentage
points and awarding more bachelor's degrees to African Americans than
any other non-profit college or university in the Nation, it was losing
points (and ground) in the U.S. News and World Report rankings by
dropping in average SAT scores and serving more students for fewer
dollars. Something is wrong with such a system. Most university
presidents will not enroll more low-income and first-generation
students as long as it means risking a drop in the national rankings.
We need to change the equation.
We need to be very careful not to recreate disincentives in
national ratings systems. The single best prediction of an individual's
income level after graduating from college is that individual's family
income level before enrolling in college. Rating systems that
uncritically assess campuses by the debt levels or default rates of its
graduates without equally weighing the incoming income levels of its
students are destined to continue to create disincentives for campuses
that might wish to do the hard and needed work of serving at-risk
populations.
Colleges and universities that both (1) enroll large numbers and
percentages of low-income and first-generation students, and (2)
graduate them at high rates should be supported with greater amounts of
Federal financial aid to distribute to students. Currently, there is no
such benefit. As a Nation, we must invest in the campuses that are
serving students effectively rather than merely enrolling effective
students.
Question 2. What policies would give for-profit colleges an
incentive to improve outcomes for their students?
Answer 2. Ultimately, the best way to end predatory practices aimed
at the most vulnerable students and their families is to make such
practices unprofitable. If campuses and their students were awarded for
their success with graduating, not merely enrolling, students, for-
profit colleges would be incentivized to innovate on behalf of students
rather than at their expense. They also might be incentivized to
dedicate a higher portion of their profits to educational purposes
rather than to advertising and recruitment.
How can we achieve this aim? First, the Federal Government needs to
adopt a far better system of tracking the success of students than the
model currently employed by IPEDS. I would suggest the Student
Achievement Measure (SAM) system developed by the Association of Public
and Grant Universities (APLU) and employed by universities such as
Georgia State. (See http://www.aplu.org/projects-and-initiatives/
accountability-and-transparency/student-achievement-measure/). SAM
tracks the progression of part-time, transfer and other student
populations in addition to full-time students who are in college for
the first time, a critical factor in assessing the overall performance
of institutions. Second, we need to set clear standards for success,
requiring a minimum ratio of students graduated per Federal dollars
invested. This means that, in effect, that institutions charging $1,000
per credit hour would be required to produce better results than a
community college charging $100 per credit hour. This is how it should
be. We need to create a system that incentivizes institutions to
produce results in terms of student success for reasonable costs. If
for-profit colleges are able to deliver results by this standard, we
should be happy to accept them as partners in our efforts to educate
Americans.
senator scott
Question 1. Between 1970 and 2009, undergraduate enrollment has
more than doubled, while the completion rate has been unchanged.
Students from more diverse backgrounds have been able to access
college, but we still have a responsibility to ensure that those
students are working toward degree completion while they are in
college. Studies have shown that college dropouts cost taxpayers
billions of dollars a year in State and Federal dollars. Dr. Renick, I
understand Georgia State has utilized innovative resources for
monitoring and promoting student success. From using data-driven
indicators of success to your bridge grant program, which is similar to
University of South Carolina's ``Gamecock Guarantee'' program, what
types of initiatives have been shown to close achievement gaps, and how
can that model be applied to Federal programs?
Answer 1. See below.
high impact strategies employed by georgia state university
1. GPS Advising
------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------
High-impact strategy...................... Use predictive analytics and
a system of more than 800
alerts to track all
undergraduates daily, to
identify at-risk behaviors,
and to have advisors
respond to alerts by
intervening in a timely
fashion to get students
back on track.
Related Goal.............................. Goal #1: Increase in the
number of undergraduate
degrees awarded by USG
institutions.
Goal #2: Increase the number
of degrees that are earned
``on time''.
Goal #3: Decrease excess
credits earned on the path
to getting a degree.
Goal #4: Provide intrusive
advising to keep students
on track to graduate.
Summary of Activities..................... System went fully live in
August 2012. This past
academic year, there were
more than 43,000 individual
meetings between students
and advisors that were
prompted by alerts from GPS
Advising.
Baseline Status........................... Current Six Year
Graduation Rate: 54 percent
Total Students
receiving undergraduate
degrees in the 2013-2014
Academic Year: 4,622.
Interim Measures of Progress.............. The numbers we are achieving
via the programs are
exceptionally strong. We
have been tracking the use
of the system and gathering
interim metrics such as:
Measures of Success....................... Undergraduate Six-
Year Graduation rates.
Number of
Undergraduate Degree
conferrals.
Lessons Learned........................... The true potential
of predictive analytics
comes, not from its ability
to identify students at
risk, but in its ability to
support intensive advising
practices. In order for
predictive analytics to
make a significant impact
in higher education,
technology solutions must
be accompanied by
investment in advising
personnel and practices
that can most effectively
translate data into action.
Academic choices
have a significant impact
on career aspirations and
vice versa. With the
introduction of a new
career matcher feature into
our existing GPA advising
platform (powered by data
from Burning Glass),
students are shown lists of
common careers commonly
associated with their
chosen or prospective
majors, as well as
information about what
skills are sought after by
employers in those fields.
Advising students with a
view to life beyond
graduation provides them
with a broader perspective
about what academic success
means, as well as stronger
sense of direction and
motivation to pursue their
degree, not as an end in
itself, but as a
springboard to future
success in life and career.
What if students who enroll at large, public universities received
the same kind of personalized attention that is afforded to students at
small, elite colleges? How would such personalized attention transform
student success rates? At Georgia State, we are pursuing the answer to
these questions in part by leveraging new technologies. Our cutting-
edge GPS Advising, a partnership with the Education Advisory of Board
(EAB), uses more than 10 years of GSU student data--over 2.5 million
grades--to create predictive analytics for how each individual student
will fare in any major and in most courses that we offer. The system
tracks students' decisions and academic performances, and it is updated
with data from our student information systems on a daily basis--with
alerts going off when a student is off path. Last academic year, the
system generated more than 43,000 individual meetings between advisors
and students to discuss specific alerts--all aimed at getting the
student back on path to graduation. Since Georgia State went live with
GPS Advising 3 years ago, freshmen fall-to-spring retention rates have
increased by 5 percentage points and graduating seniors are taking
fewer excess courses in completing their degrees.
In 2016, Georgia State University will consolidate with Georgia
Perimeter College (GPC). EDUCAUSE, with the support of the Bill &
Melinda Gates Foundation and the Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley
Charitable Trust (the Helmsley Trust) and in partnership with Achieving
the Dream (ATD), has awarded Georgia State University a grant to
facilitate our efforts to deploy our technology solution and adapt our
advising strategy in order to increase graduation rates for the 22,000
students seeking associate degrees at GPC. In addition to providing
much-needed support to students seeking associate degrees, the
extension of our GPS to encompass the entirety of the new consolidated
university provides us with the opportunity to better understand and
support transfer pathways between 2- and 4-year institutions.
2. Summer Success Academy
------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------
High-impact strategy...................... Use predictive analytics to
identify admitted students
for the fall freshman class
who are academically at-
risk and require that these
students attend a 7-week
summer session before fall
classes.
Related Goal.............................. Goal #7: Increase the
likelihood of degree by
transforming the way that
remediation is accomplished
Summary of Activities..................... Program was initiated in
2012 as an alternate to
deferring weaker freshmen
admits to the Spring
semester. Students earn 7
hours of credit toward
their Bachelor's degree
while receiving intensive
academic and personal
support including
supplemental instruction,
advisement, learning
communities, team building,
financial literacy
training.
Baseline Status........................... Last year, the 1-
year retention rate of 87
percent for Success Academy
graduates marked a
significant increase over
the 50 percent retention
rate that would be expected
by this population as
recently as 2011.
Interim Measures of Progress.............. Retention rates for
the students for the at-
risk students enrolled in
the Success Academy (87
percent) exceed those of
the rest of the freshman
class (83 percent).
In summer 2015, the
program enrolled 370
students, up 50 from summer
of 2014.
Measures of Success....................... Retention rates.
Graduation rates.
Degree completions.
Lessons Learned........................... While the Summer
Success Academy is a
program that would most
certainly be of benefit to
all students, it is
important to ensure that
the size of the program
does not outstrip
resources. The amount of
personalized attention that
students receive in the
program is a significant
reason for the program's
success, not only because
of the level of academic
coaching required for our
most at-risk students, but
also because mentoring by
peers and professionals
also provides academy
students with a sense of
self-efficacy and the
``soft'' skills necessary
to ``do college.''
Georgia State
currently has a proposal
before the Kresge
Foundation to expand our
current program, while at
the same time collecting
validation data that would
allow the Foundation to
help promote the Success
Academy as a national best
practice for closing the
achievement gap for at-risk
populations
Georgia State takes students admitted to the fall freshmen class
who are most academically at risk and requires that they attend a 7-
week summer semester before the start of fall courses. Students enroll
in 7 credits of college-level (non-remedial) courses and are given the
support of all of GSU's tutoring, advising, financial literacy, and
academic skills programs at their disposal. All students are in
freshmen learning committees. Last year's cohort was retained at a rate
of 87 percent. This compares to an 83 percent retention rate for
reminder of the freshmen class who were, on paper, better academically
prepared for college. It is important to note that these same students,
when Georgia State was deferring their enrollment until the spring
semester (as is the common practice nationally), were being retained at
only a 50 percent clip. This equates to more than 100 additional
freshmen being retained via the Summer Success Academy this past year
alone than would have been the case under the old model.
3. Panther Retention Grants
------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------
High-impact strategy...................... Provide micro grants to
students at the fee drop
each semester to help cover
modest financial shortfalls
impacting the students'
ability to pay tuition and
fees to prevent students
from stopping/dropping out.
Related Goal.............................. Goal #1: Increase in the
number of undergraduate
degrees awarded by USG
institutions.
Goal #10: Mitigate the
detrimental effects of
financial need on student
recruitment, retention, and
graduation.
Summary of Activities..................... Staff examine the drop lists
for students with genuine
unmet need, who are on
track for graduation using
our academic analytics, and
who have modest balances
for tuition and fees.
Students are offered micro
grants on the condition
that they agree to certain
activities, including
meeting with a financial
counselor to map out plans
to finance the rest of
their education. Last
academic year, nearly 2,000
grants were offered.
Baseline Status........................... Last academic year,
61 percent of the seniors
receiving PRG funding
graduated within two
semesters of receiving the
grants.
Interim Measures of Progress.............. Of freshmen who
were offered Panther
Retention grants in fall
2013, 93 percent enrolled
the following spring, a
rate higher than that of
the student body as a
whole. 83 percent of
freshman PRG recipients
returned to class in fall
2014. The retention rate
for freshmen who were
offered the grants in fall
2014 was 88 percent.
We are also
tracking the rate of
``returnees'' to the
program, which we have been
able to keep under 25
percent.
Measures of Success....................... The ultimate
measure of success is
college completion. The
largest group of recipients
last year were seniors, who
often are running out of
Hope funding or exhausting
other aid.
Lessons Learned........................... A data-driven
approach to award
dispersion ensures that
support is given to
students who are both in
need and who are likely to
succeed when their need is
met. This represents a
shift in perspective, away
from distributing funds as
a response to financial
need alone, and toward an
approach that is first and
foremost motivated by an
interest in eliminating non-
academic barriers to
student success.
Many students lack
the financial literacy
necessary to ensure that an
otherwise sustainable
amount of financial support
is managed effectively
through to the end of their
degrees. The Panther
Retention Grants are an
excellent way to respond to
the financial needs of
student who are on track to
a degree, but who encounter
financial shortfalls as
they near graduation. In an
effort to be more
proactive, GSU has added a
set of financial indicators
to its predictive analytics
and has also committed to
establishing a dedicated
financial counseling center
by the end of Spring 2016.
Through proactive
interventions like these,
GSU expects to see fewer of
its students run into
financial problems later in
their degree, while at the
same time providing its
students with the tools
necessary for financial
security in career upon
graduation.
This past fall, over 18,000 of Georgia State's 25,149
undergraduates (72 percent) had some level of unmet need, meaning that
even after grants, loans, scholarships, family contributions and the
income generated from the student working 20 hours a week, the students
lack sufficient funds to attend college. Each semester, hundreds of
fully qualified students are dropped from their classes for lack of
payment. For as little as $300, Panther Retention Grants provide the
emergency funding to allow students who want to get their degrees the
opportunity to stay enrolled. Last year, nearly 2,000 Georgia State
students were brought back to the classroom--and kept on the path to
attaining a college degree--through the program. Sixty-one percent of
the seniors who received PRG support last academic year graduated
within two semesters of receiving the grant.
4. Keep Hope Alive (KHA)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------
High-impact strategy...................... In 2008, the graduation
rates for students who lose
the Hope scholarship were
only 20 percent, 40 points
lower than the rates for
those who hold on to it.
Gaining the Hope
Scholarship back after
losing it is a statistical
longshot: only about 9
percent of Georgia State
students pull this off.
Using a $500 incentive for
two semesters after the
scholarship is lost, the
Program requires students
to sign a contract agreeing
to meet with their
advisors, attend academic
skills workshops and
participate in financial
literacy training.
Related Goal.............................. Goal #1: Increase in the
number of undergraduate
degrees awarded by USG
institutions.
Goal #10: Mitigate the
detrimental effects of
financial need on student
recruitment, retention, and
graduation.
Summary of Activities..................... By signing a contract to
receive $500 for each of
the first two semesters
after losing Hope, students
agree to participate in a
series of programs and
interventions designed to
get them back on track
academically and to make
wise financial choices in
the aftermath of losing the
scholarship.
Scholarship Criteria:
Baseline Status........................... Since 2008,
institutional HOPE
retention rates have
increased by 50 percent,
from 49 percent to 75
percent in 2013.
Compared to 2008,
the 6-year graduation rate
for students who lost their
HOPE scholarship, at some
point in their academic
career, has doubled from 21
percent in 2008 to 41
percent in 2013.
Interim Measures of Progress.............. For students in KHA in the
period from 2011 to 2014,
better than 55 percent
gained the scholarship back
at the next marker.
Leveraging our $1,000
scholarship investment by
gaining between $6,000 and
$12,000 of Hope dollars
back again.
Measures of Success....................... Retention rates for students
receiving the HOPE
scholarship.
Six-year graduation rates
for students who lost their
HOPE scholarship at some
point in their academic
career.
Lessons Learned........................... Losing the HOPE scholarship
puts students far more at
risk than losing a 3.0 GPA.
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
With 59 percent of Georgia State students coming from Pell-eligible
households (where the annual household income last year was less than
$30,000), the Hope scholarship can be a mixed blessing. The $6,000+
scholarship provides access to college for thousands of Georgia State
students, but for the student who does not maintain a 3.0 college GPA,
the loss of Hope often means the student has to drop out for financial
reasons. KHA provides a $500 stipend for two semesters to students who
have lost Hope as an incentive for them to follow a rigorous academic
restoration plan that includes meeting with advisors, attending
workshops, and participating in financial literacy training--all
designed to help students improve their GPAs and to regain the
scholarship. Since 2008, the program has helped to double the
graduation rates of Georgia State students who lose the Hope
scholarship.
5. Meta-Majors
------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------
High-impact strategy...................... Requiring all students to
choose a meta-major puts
students on a path to
degree that allows for
flexibility in future
specialization in a
particular program of
study, while also ensuring
the applicability of early
course credits to their
final majors. Implemented
in conjunction with major
maps, block scheduling, and
freshman learning
communities, meta-majors
provide clarity and
direction in what would
otherwise be a confusing
and unstructured
registration process.
Related Goal.............................. Goal #2: Increase the number
of degrees that are earned
``on time.''
Goal #3: Decrease excess
credits earned on the path
to getting a degree
Summary of Activities..................... Upon registration, all
students are required to
enroll in one of seven meta-
majors: STEM, Arts &
Humanities, Health,
Education, Policy & Social
Science, and Exploratory.
Once students have selected
their meta-major, they are
given a choice of several
block schedules, which are
pre-populated course
timetables including
courses relevant to their
first year of study. On the
basis of their timetable
selection, students are
assigned to Freshman
Learning Communities
consisting of 25 students
who are in the same meta-
major and take classes
according to the same block
schedules of 5-6 courses in
addition to GSU1010, a 1-
credit hour course
providing students with
essential information and
survival skills to help
them navigate the
logistical, academic, and
social demands of the
University.
Baseline Status........................... In the 2013-14
academic year, enrollment
in a Freshman Learning
Community according to meta-
major resulted in an
average increase in GPA of
8 percent.
In the 2013-14
academic year, enrollment
in a Freshman Learning
Community by meta-major was
found to increase a
student's likelihood of
being retained through to
the following year by 5
percent.
Interim Measures of Progress.............. Adopting an opt-out
model has mean that 95
percent of non-honors
freshmen are in freshman
learning communities with
common block schedules.
This is up 15 percent from
the 80 percent rate that
was seen when the program
was first implemented in
its current form in Fall
2013.
Measures of Success....................... Average GPA.
Freshman retention
rates.
Lessons Learned........................... Time is money, and
students who switch between
majors, especially after
the freshman year,
accumulate wasted credits.
With large numbers of low-
income students who have
strictly limited resources,
mistakes in choosing majors
can equate to college
attrition.
Meta-majors, block
scheduling, and freshman
learning communities have
all been shown to
significantly improve the
chances of student success.
GSU has introduced each of
these approaches at
different times in its
history. Bringing each of
these best practices
together as part of an
integrated admissions
strategy has produced a
synergy, with power greater
than the sum of that of its
parts.
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
At a large public university with 32,000 students, freshmen can
feel overwhelmed by the size and scope of the campus and can have
trouble building friendships and support systems. FLCs organize the
freshmen class into cohorts of 25 students arranged by common academic
interests, otherwise known as ``meta majors'' (STEM, business, arts and
humanities, policy, health, education and social sciences). Students
travel through their classes together, building friendships, study
partners and support along the way. Block schedules--FLCs in which all
courses might be between, for example, 8:30 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. 3 days a
week--accommodate students' work schedules and help to improve class
attendance. FLC students not only are retained but graduate at rates 4
points above those of non-FLC students. Almost 80 percent of this
fall's freshmen class are in FLCs.
The net impact of these intervention has been to totally eliminate
achievement gaps based on race and ethnicity, as seen in the chart
below.
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
All disparities based on economic status have also been eliminated.
My responses to the questions of the various Senators outline a set
of steps that would allow these same types of gains to be realized at
other universities. We need to create Federal incentives for
universities to enroll at-risk populations and then require that
universities produce results. How can we achieve this aim? First, the
Federal Government needs to adopt a far better system of tracking the
success of students than the model currently employed by IPEDS. I would
suggest the Student Achievement Measure (SAM) system developed by the
Association of Public and Grant Universities (APLU) and employed by
universities such as Georgia State. (See http://www.aplu.org/projects-
and-initiatives/accountability-and-transparency/student-achievement-
measure/). SAM tracks the progression of part-time, transfer and other
student populations in addition to full-time students who are in
college for the first time, a critical factor in assessing the overall
performance of institutions. Second, we need to set clear standards for
success, requiring a minimum ratio of students graduated per Federal
dollars invested. This means that, in effect, that institutions
charging $1,000 per credit-hour would be required to produce better
results than a community college charging $100 per credit-hour. This is
how it should be. We need to create a system that incentivized
institutions to produce results (in terms of student success) for
reasonable costs and invest in the kinds of innovations that
universities such as Georgia State have shown to be cost-effective and
impactful.
Response by Lashawn Richburg-Hayes to Questions of Senator Alexander,
Senator Cassidy, Senator Collins, Senator Enzi, Senator Murray, and
Senator Warren
MDRC is pleased to have this opportunity to respond to the request
for additional information from Chairman Alexander, Ranking Member
Murray, and members of the committee on what the research field has
found about various ways to improve the academic success of low-income
college students. We have attempted to provide complete but succinct
answers to the questions; where we do not have expertise, we have
suggested researchers who may be able to provide information that is
more complete.
senator alexander
Question 1. In your testimony, you explain that access to higher
education has expanded widely over the last 50 years, but degree or
certificate completion has not. Does research indicate that there are
any reasons for stagnant completion rates?
Answer 1. Viewed historically, rates of completion at 4-year
institutions have been unchanged since the Federal Government began
tracking them in the 1970s and rates at community colleges have
remained largely the same since tracking began in the 1990s.\1\ While
research suggests a number of reasons for stagnant completion rates,
there is no simple answer. The reasons are very complex and partially
reflect the increased diversity of the college-going population and the
average decline in preparation for college (largely reflecting the fact
that a larger number of students now attend college who might not have
attended decades ago, as they may not have been considered ``college
material'').\2\ Research also suggests that the change in how students
attend college contributes to completion rates not increasing at the
same rate as access. For example, greater part-time attendance, delayed
entry after high school, and increased work while attending college are
all associated with increased time to degree attainment, especially at
community colleges.\3\ The type of institution attended also matters;
4-year institutions have higher completion rates than 2-year
institutions.\4\ Indeed, some research suggests that the decline in
resources provided to students at less selective public-sector schools
is more important in explaining the stagnant rates of completions at
these institutions than the above-mentioned changes in academic
preparation.\5\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ Thomas Brock, ``Young Adults and Higher Education: Barriers and
Breakthroughs to Success,'' Future of Children 20, 1 (2010): 109-32.
\2\ For a broad overview of these trends, see Sandy Baum, Charles
Kurose, and Michael McPherson, ``An Overview of American Higher
Education,'' Future of Children 23, 1 (2013): 17-39.
\3\ John Bound, Michael F. Lovenheim, and Sarah Turner, ``Why Have
College Completion Rates Declined? An Analysis of Changing Student
Preparation and Collegiate Resources,'' American Economic Journal:
Applied Economics, American Economic Association 2, 3 (2010): 129-57;
Ali Berker and Laura Horn, Work First, Study Second: Adult
Undergraduates Who Combine Employment and Postsecondary Enrollment,
NCES 2003-167 (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, National
Center for Education Statistics, 2003).
\4\ Bound, Lovenheim, and Turner (2010).
\5\ John Bound, Michael F. Lovenheim, and Sarah Turner,
``Increasing Time to Baccalaureate Degree in the United States,''
Education Finance and Policy 7, 4 (2012): 375-424.
Question 2. There are multiple proposals regarding how to provide
year-round Pell grant availability, meaning allowing eligible students
to receive more than one Pell grant in a year. Currently, part-time
students can already receive their one Pell grant in fall, spring and
summer. Though their award can fall short, if they want to attend more
than the equivalent of two full-time semesters. Does research provide
any indications on how to best provide this additional aid, in a way
that promotes credit accumulation and progress toward completion?
Answer 2. Research by MDRC and others has identified several
factors associated with higher credit accumulation by students and
higher likelihood of degree or certificate attainment. These include:
(1) reducing hours worked while attending school, (2) greater intensity
of enrollment (for example, full-time rather than part-time
enrollment), and (3) enrollment in summer and winter intersessions.
Financial aid programs offer an opportunity to promote student
success via these mediating factors--for example, by reducing the
number of hours students need to work in jobs unrelated to their course
of study. In the context of year-round Pell, an expansion of the
program that encourages students to enroll full-time or attend summer
and winter intersessions could improve students' likelihood of
obtaining a certificate or degree. Here are two ways such an expansion
could do so:
Students are currently eligible for a maximum Pell award
upon enrolling in 12 credits in a single semester, but do not receive
additional aid for enrollment beyond that. A redesign of Pell could
provide incentives to enroll in additional credits. For example, Sandy
Baum and others have advocated that students receive additional aid
upon enrolling in 15 credits, the level of enrollment needed to
graduate ``on time'' from many 4-year institutions.\6\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\6\ Sandy Baum, Kristin Conklin, and Nate Johnson, ``Stop
Penalizing Poor College Students,'' New York Times (November 12, 2013).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Pell awards for the spring and fall semesters currently
count against students' total Pell limit for the year, reducing the
amount of aid remaining for a winter or summer award. A redesign of
Pell could provide a separate award for winter or summer intersessions,
precluding scenarios where students would need to choose between
receiving spring/fall aid and summer/winter aid.
These examples are far from comprehensive--there are many ways that
the Pell Grant program could be structured to encourage full-time or
intersession enrollment. Further research is needed to determine the
impacts and relative efficacy of different potential approaches, as
well as the costs associated with each. In other words, current
research suggests ``what'' an effective redesign of Pell might
accomplish, but not as much ``how'' or ``how best'' to achieve it.
Additionally, care should be taken that an expansion of Pell with an
eye toward boosting completion does not compromise the program's
original commitment to college access by creating undue obstacles for
low-income students in need of aid.
Question 3. Are benchmarks or expectations in financial aid
programs effective at promoting student behaviors that lead to student
success? Based on what is known from existing research, is the current
structure of satisfactory academic progress for students in today's
Federal student aid programs effective in promoting student progress?
How could it be changed to provide better signals to recipients?
Answer 3. Little is known about whether financial aid increases
access and there is a growing body of evidence that financial aid
improves academic success. Previous research suggests that financial
aid is positively associated with increased enrollment in postsecondary
education.\7\ Previous research also suggests it is positively
associated with increased persistence.\8\ There have been a few studies
of the effect of financial aid on other student outcomes, such as the
type of institution chosen by students (2-year versus 4-year), the
composition of financial aid packages (grants versus loans), course-
taking patterns, and completion, but the few findings that do exist are
mixed.\9\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\7\ Susan Dynarski, ``Hope for Whom'' Financial Aid for the Middle
Class and Its Impact on College Attendance,'' National Bureau of
Economic Research Working Paper No. 7,756 (Cambridge, MA: National
Bureau of Economic Research, 2000); Susan Dynarski, ``Does Aid Matter''
Measuring the Effect of Student Aid on College Attendance and
Completion,'' American Economic Review 93, 1 (2003); Christopher
Cornwell, David B. Mustard, and Deepa J. Sridhar, ``The Enrollment
Effects of Merit-Based Financial Aid: Evidence from Georgia's Hope
Program,'' Journal of Labor Economics 24, 4 (2006).
\8\ Edward St. John, Shouping Hu, and Jeff Weber, ``State Policy
and the Affordability of Public Higher Education: The Influence of
State Grants on Persistence in Indiana,'' Research in Higher Education
42 (2001); Susan Choy, Access and Persistence: Findings from Ten Years
of Longitudinal Research on Students (Washington, DC: Center for Policy
Analysis, American Council on Education, 2002); Eric Bettinger, ``How
Financial Aid Affects Persistence,'' in Caroline M. Hoxby (ed.),
College Choices: The Economics of Where to Go, When to Go, and How to
Pay for It (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007).
\9\ For a summary, see Don Hossler, Mary Ziskin, Jacob P.K. Gross,
Sooyeon Kim, and Osman Cekic, ``Student Aid and Its Role in Encouraging
Persistence,'' in J. C. Smart (ed.), Higher Education: Handbook of
Theory and Research (Netherlands: Springer Science + Business Media
B.V., 2009). Also see Judith Scott-Clayton, ``On Money and Motivation:
A Quasi-Experimental Analysis of Financial Incentives for College
Achievement,'' Journal of Human Resources 46, 3 (2011).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yet empirical research across a number of fields provides evidence
that incentives do work to align actual behavior with desired behavior,
with positive relationships found between monetary incentives and a
number of behaviors such as welfare exits, crime reduction, and smoking
cessation.\10\ Perhaps as a result, there has been a recent explosion
of work applying incentive schemes in the field of secondary education
to encourage students to increase time spent reading, test taking and
test scores, course performance, and matriculation.\11\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\10\ For findings related to welfare exits, see Cynthia Miller,
Virginia Knox, Patricia Auspos, Jo Anna Hunter, and Alan Orenstein,
Making Work and Work Pay: Implementation and 18-Month impacts of the
Minnesota Family Investment Program (New York: MDRC, 1997); Winston
Lin, Philip Robins, David Card, Kristen Harknett, and Susanna Lui-Gurr,
When Financial Incentives Encourage Work: Complete 18-Month Findings
from the Self-Sufficiency Project (Ottawa, Canada: Social Research and
Demonstration Corporation, 1998); Charles Michalopoulos, Philip Robins,
and David Card, When Financial Work Incentives Pay for Themselves:
Early Findings From the Self-Sufficiency Project's Applicant Study
(Ottawa, Canada: Social Research and Demonstration Corporation, 1999).
For findings on crime, see Naci Mocan and R. Kaj Gittings, ``The Impact
of Incentives on Human Behavior: Can We Make It Disappear? The Case of
the Death Penalty,'' National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper
No. 12,631 (Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research, 2006).
For findings on smoking cessation, see Kevin Volpp, et al., ``A
Randomized, Controlled Trial of Financial Incentives for Smoking
Cessation,'' New England Journal of Medicine 360, 7 (2009).
\11\ For incentives used to encourage private school attendance,
see Joshua Angrist, Eric Bettinger, Erik Bloom, Elizabeth King, and
Michael Kremer, ``Vouchers for Private Schooling in Colombia: Evidence
from a Randomized Natural Experiment,'' American Economic Review 92, 5
(2002). For incentives used to increase test scores, see Eric
Bettinger, ``Paying to Learn: The Effect of Financial Incentives on
Elementary School Test Scores,'' Review of Economics and Statistics 94,
3 (2012); Kirabo Jackson, ``The Effects of an Incentive-Based High-
School Intervention on College Outcomes,'' National Bureau of Economic
Research Working Paper No. 15,722 (Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of
Economic Research, 2010); Nuria Rodriguez-Planas, ``Longer-term Impacts
of Mentoring, Educational Services, and Incentives to Learn: Evidence
from a Randomized Trial in the United States'' (MOVE, IZA and FEDEA
working paper, 2010). For incentives to increase attendance, see
Michael Kremer, Edward Miguel, and Rebecca Thornton, ``Incentives To
Learn,'' Review of Economics and Statistics 91, 3 (2009); Amanda
Pallais, ``Taking a Chance on College: Is the Tennessee Education
Lottery Scholarship Program a Winner?'' Journal of Human Resources 34,
1 (2009). For incentives to increase test scores, attendance, and
reading, see Roland Fryer, ``Financial Incentives and Student
Achievement: Evidence from Randomized Trials,'' Quarterly Journal of
Economics 126 (2011). For incentives to graduate high school, see
Joshua Angrist and Victor Lavy, ``The Effects of High Stakes High
School Achievement Awards: Evidence from a Randomized Trial,'' American
Economic Review 99, 4 (2009).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
While the findings from these studies have been mixed, the
underlying theory is potentially powerful: With the correct incentive
scheme, it may be possible to induce a change in behavior to produce
desired educational outcomes without costly monitoring, which will
benefit both students and society in the long run. However, there are
also potential downsides, in that incentive schemes may induce
undesirable behaviors such as cheating.\12\ There is a considerable
body of literature in the field of psychology that suggests that
monetary incentives could result in decreases in the desired behavior
because of the destruction of intrinsic motivation.\13\ As a result,
the design and implementation of incentives must be done carefully. The
best evaluation approach to disentangle alternative explanations is a
randomized controlled trial.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\12\ For evidence of cheating among teachers in response to an
incentive to increase test scores, see Brian Jacob and Steven Levitt,
``Rotten Apples: An Investigation of the Prevalence and Predictors of
Teacher Cheating,'' Quarterly Journal of Economics 118, 3 (2003).
\13\ Edward L. Deci, Richard Koestner, and Richard M. Ryan,
``Extrinsic Rewards and Intrinsic Motivation in Education: Reconsidered
Once Again,'' Review of Educational Research 71, 1 (2001); Bruno S.
Frey and Reto Jegen, ``Motivation Crowding Theory,'' Journal of
Economic Surveys 15, 5 (2001); Alfie Kohn, Punished by Rewards: The
Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A's, Praise, and Other Bribes
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1999).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
To date, no randomized controlled trials have been conducted to
evaluate the efficacy of the implementation of satisfactory academic
progress (SAP), which is required to maintain any title IV Federal aid
(including Pell Grants). As you know, SAP entails three components:
passing 60 percent of courses attempted (to demonstrate academic
progress), earning a grade point average (GPA) of at least 2.0 in these
courses (to demonstrate academic performance), and, if these first two
components are violated, increasing performance during an academic
probation semester to be returned to good standing.\14\ While these
criteria appear straightforward, in practice students may fail for
several terms before their eligibility is restricted, as 2-year
institutions are only required to check SAP annually for students in 2-
year programs (though they can check more frequently). In addition,
students may continue to be in violation of SAP, lose their title IV
eligibility, and yet remain enrolled if the costs of tuition and fees
are very low.\15\ As a result, the incentive scheme under SAP may be
weak in inducing students to alter their behavior.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\14\ For specific details, see Chapter 1 in U.S. Department of
Education, Federal Student Aid Handbook 2012-13 (Washington, DC: U.S.
Department of Education, 2012).
\15\ For evidence of this phenomenon in California, see Sue
Scrivener, Colleen Sommo, and Herbert Collado, Getting Back on Track:
Effects of a Community College Program for Probationary Students (New
York: MDRC, 2009) for evidence of this in California.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Several recent studies have been conducted--all employing rigorous
experimental designs--to evaluate the effect on academic progress of a
particular type of incentive scheme that we term incentive-based
grants. Incentive-based grants are defined as additional financial aid
to students that is contingent on academic performance. These grants
are in addition to aid that students would typically receive based on
their institutions' provision of financial aid, and therefore represent
a net addition. In some instances, the grants--which do not need to be
repaid--are intended to provide students with supplemental resources
while simultaneously giving them an incentive to meet performance
benchmarks. In other instances, the grants are only intended to
motivate students to be more academically productive. In contrast, pure
need-based aid provides students with resources to attend college while
requiring that they meet minimal performance benchmarks. Nine
randomized controlled trial studies demonstrate that incentive-based
grants result in a larger proportion of students meeting academic
benchmarks, a greater number of credits earned, and modest effects on
GPA in the first year.\16\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\16\ For a review of these studies, see Lashawn Richburg-Hayes,
``Incentivizing Success: Lessons from Experimenting with Incentive-
Based Grants,'' PP. 101-26 in Andrew Kelly and Sara Goldrick-Rab
(eds.), Reinventing Financial Aid (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education
Press, 2014).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
While these studies do not show that making SAP requirements more
noticeable to students will have effects on its own, the theory of
change seems pertinent to any changes in the SAP requirements. That is,
since many students are not aware of an institution's SAP requirements,
and since institutions typically evaluate SAP progress at the end of
each academic year (so students do not know if they are at risk of
failing to meet the standards), making the requirements salient--as in
the studies--could improve performance. This change could be
accomplished through interventions that draw on findings from the
fields of behavioral economics and psychology regarding the deliberate
crafting of messages and the effective delivery of information. Such
changes could involve reminders to the parents of freshmen, reminders
with aid disbursement, or the reserving of some portion of aid to be
disbursed along the lines of incentive-based grants. Another innovation
in financial aid could have institutions implement an early
notification system, so that students have the opportunity to change
their behavior if they are at risk of failing to meet SAP standards.
While such systems are often labeled as student success strategies,
they can have sizable implications for financial aid as well. Georgia
State University's predictive analytics intervention is a well-known
example of this type of intervention.
Question 4. Why is it important that students complete their degree
or certificate?
Answer 4. Most students who attend college aspire to attain a
degree or certificate--so low rates of completion, which are especially
prevalent at community colleges, ``reflect widespread failure,
disappointment, frustration, and thwarted potential among the millions
of students who do not achieve their educational goals.''\17\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\17\ Bailey, Thomas R., Shanna Smith Jaggars, and Davis Jenkins,
Redesigning America's Community Colleges: A Clearer Path to Student
Success (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
In addition, earning a degree is positively associated with better
life outcomes including, but not limited to, improved economics and
health, increased civic participation, decreased use of the criminal
justice system, and decreased reliance on public benefits.\18\ Although
more difficult to determine definitively, most evidence suggests that,
on average, degree or certificate completion is a cause of improved
life outcomes in these realms.\19\ Moreover, for society, related
benefits are accrued in terms of the economic benefits of an educated,
internationally competitive workforce (including increased tax
revenues), reduced poverty, and decreased criminal justice and social
service costs.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\18\ See U.S. Census Bureau, ``The Big Payoff: Educational
Attainment and Synthetic Estimates of Work-Life Earnings'' (Washington:
U.S. Census Bureau, 2002); Sandy Baum, Jennifer Ma, and Kathleen Payea,
``Education Pays: The Benefits of Higher Education for Individuals and
Society'' (Washington, DC: College Board, 2013).
\19\ Thomas S. Dee, ``Are There Returns to Civic Engagement?''
Journal of Public Economics 88 (2004): 1,697-1,720.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
senator cassidy
Question 1. I am a father of a child who is dyslexic. As any proud
father, I want the best for her and to see her succeed academically and
in life. As such, research from the National Center for Learning
Disabilities shows that students with learning disabilities--such as
dyslexia--value a college education and most want to attend either a 2-
year or 4-year postsecondary education program.\20\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\20\ http://www.ncld.org/reports-and-studies/2014-state-of-ld/.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
While 68 percent of students with learning disabilities are
graduating high school with a regular diploma--a statistic that is too
low but has risen over time\21\--these students continue to lag behind
their peers in entering and completing college. Just 34 percent of such
students completed a 4-year degree compared to 51 percent of students
without disabilities.\22\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\21\ http://www.ncld.org/reports-and-studies/diplomas-at-risk-a-
critical-look-at-the-high-school-graduation-rate/.
\22\ http://www.nlts2.org.
As your organizations reviewed reasons for students not
succeeding in college and as part of your development of initiatives to
help such students succeed, what considerations were given to students
who had learning differences?
If we really want students with learning disabilities to
have access to postsecondary education, what are colleges and
universities doing to educate their faculty about the needs of these
college students? What are colleges and universities doing in general
to accommodate these students?
Answer 1. Thank you for asking these important questions. We want
to provide you with an accurate and thoughtful answer, but,
unfortunately, MDRC does not have expertise on these specific topics.
However, other researchers may have more knowledge on this issue and we
encourage you to make contact with them:
Debra Neubert, Ph.D., University of Maryland, College
Park, Counseling, Higher Education, and Special Education (CHSE)
Division, [email protected]. Dr. Neubert has expertise in transition
services and secondary education, transition assessment, and technology
in classrooms and communities.
Susan De La Paz, Ph.D., University of Maryland, College
Park, sdelapaz@umd
.edu.
Jo M. Hendrickson, Ph.D., University of Iowa, executive
director of UI REACH (Realizing Educational and Career Hopes), jo-
[email protected].
Question 2a. The U.S. Department of Education's College Navigator,
an online tool to provide parents and prospective students with
information about colleges falls short in collecting information about
services available to students with learning disabilities. A random
review of the profiles of 400 institutions of higher education in the
College Navigator revealed that only six provided any information to
students and the public about services available for students with
learning disabilities at that college.\23\ When information is not
provided to parents and students, it's difficult to make informed
decisions about which college to attend.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\23\ NCLD conducted review in January 2014.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
How do colleges communicate with prospective and enrolled students
about the types of services and supports offered for students with
learning disabilities, such as students with dyslexia?
Answer 2a. Unfortunately, MDRC does not have expertise on this
specific topic. However, the researchers named above may be able to
provide assistance.
Question 2b. Overall, how do colleges work with the K-12
educational system to support a seamless transition from high school to
postsecondary education for students with learning differences, such as
students with dyslexia? If colleges and universities do not work with
K-12 educational systems for such students, is this something Congress
should consider as we reauthorize the Higher Education Act?
Answer 2b. Generally, there is wide variation in the extent to
which K-12 and college systems collaborate. Some systems do not
collaborate at all, while other ``collaborations'' do not entail
meaningful, shared programs or action behind the label of
collaboration. As a result, ``seamless'' transitions are not the norm
for the majority of students. It seems reasonable, then, to presume
there also is variation in whether and how much K-12 districts and
colleges collaborate in support of students with learning difficulties.
We might hope that there is a formal hand-off from a support/Special
Education staff member at a high school to a designated college staff
member charged with supporting such students, but we do not know
whether that happens. MDRC has evaluated models like P-TECH, which are
designed to help students make smooth transitions between secondary and
postsecondary schools, but these models do not specifically target
students with special needs or learning challenges (even though some
students enroll with individual educational plans, or IEPs).
As you know, IEPs allow for transition plans for students from high
school to work/college. There are colleges that specialize in helping
students with learning disabilities make the transition from high
school to college. Landmark College (www.landmark.edu) is one such
institution. Since MDRC does not have expertise on this specific topic,
we encourage you to make contact with Noel Gregg at the University of
Georgia ([email protected]) or Jennifer Windstorm at the University of
Georgia ([email protected]).
senator collins
Question 1. The various forms of Federal financial aid have helped
increase college access. I am concerned, however, that there is little
Federal effort to increase awareness among students about college
costs, debt, and repayment, and that students can become discouraged
from completing their degrees if they feel overwhelmed by cost.
Husson University in Bangor, ME, where I worked prior to my
election to the Senate, requires all freshmen students to enroll in a
one-credit student success seminar, which includes financial literacy
and other essential skills development. In your view, what forms of
financial counseling are most effective? Are there Federal impediments
to increasing student financial awareness?
Answer 1. MDRC has conducted research that speaks to parts of this
question, but more research that is rigorous is needed to identify
effective financial counseling approaches. MDRC did evaluate a Student
Success Course at Guilford Community College. This evaluation did not
look specifically at financial literacy or other outcomes related to
college financing, but it did find that the course positively affected
students' self-management, interdependence, self-awareness, interest in
lifelong learning, emotional intelligence, and engagement in college,
among students with low levels of these attributes.\24\ These results
suggest that such courses may be a good way to improve related outcomes
such as financial literacy (although the evaluation did not find
evidence that the course positively affected students' academic
achievement).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\24\ See Elizabeth Zachry Rutschow, Dan Cullinan, and Rashida
Welbeck, Keeping Students On Course: An Impact Study of a Student
Success Course at Guilford Technical Community College (New York, MDRC,
2012).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
MDRC is also evaluating a new program, called Aid Like A Paycheck,
which distributes students' financial aid refunds on a biweekly
basis.\25\ One goal is to spread out students' income more evenly
across the semester in order to help them better manage their finances.
MDRC is also leading a large project to apply insights from behavioral
science to social services programs: the Behavioral Interventions to
Advance Self-Sufficiency project, sponsored by the Administration for
Children and Families in the U.S. Department of Health and Human
Services.\26\ The studies in this project have demonstrated that low-
cost behavioral interventions, such as crafting messages and providing
information, can meaningfully change behaviors. Similar efforts to
increase financial literacy are also worth exploring.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\25\ See www.mdrc.org/project/aid-paycheck#overview.
\26\ See www.mdrc.org/project/behavioral-interventions-advance-
self-sufficiency-project#over
view.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
senator enzi
Question 1. Could you please tell us about the efforts that
Institutions of Higher Education are making to accommodate retraining
for adults to change careers by attending school part-time, especially
in an economy as changing as ours?
Answer 1. In general, community colleges are particularly well-
suited to serve this population and about half of all students work at
least part-time while attending such institutions. While 4-year
institutions also offer services and programs to working adults seeking
to upgrade their skills, community colleges serve such students in many
ways:
Community colleges offer short-term and long-term
certificate programs in hundreds of occupations, allowing workers to
acquire industry-recognized or college-provided certificates while
still working.
Community colleges offer classes during the evening so
that adults who work during the day can pursue training and education
at night.
Community colleges collaborate with local employers to
provide customized training for incumbent workers.
Community colleges are ``eligible training providers'' for
Workforce Investment Act funding and often work closely with the local
One-Stop Career Centers to serve the needs of dislocated and unemployed
workers who have low incomes and who are therefore eligible for
Workforce Investment Act funding that can pay for tuition and living
costs.
Community colleges are becoming increasingly active in
providing training for apprenticeship programs, which allow people to
work and earn while at the same time learning new skills.
Community colleges have low costs and open admission, and
are located at convenient locations throughout the country, affording
easy access to low income, working adults.
Community colleges are often the main providers of Adult
Basic Education and English Language Learner programs that serve a
particularly vulnerable population with low academic skills.
senator murray
Question 1. Poverty and financial need can have a profound impact
on students' ability to succeed. Research shows that high-achieving
students from low-income backgrounds are less likely to complete than
high-achieving students from families with higher incomes, even when
controlling for their academic preparation at the time of enrollment.
Are there opportunities for postsecondary institutions, including
community colleges and traditional 4-year colleges, to develop
counseling and support services specifically geared toward meeting the
unique needs of high-achieving, first-generation students from
economically disadvantaged backgrounds and ensuring that they are
successful?
Please describe how such initiatives might work and the benefits
they could bring to this demographic of students.
Answer 1. Many opportunities exist for postsecondary institutions
to develop counseling and support services that target low-income,
high-achieving, first-generation students with the intent of ensuring
their success. A number of postsecondary institutions have developed
and implemented a wide range of programs and other forms of support to
help this group of students in their transition on college campuses.
Below we provide a few examples.
Lansing Community College students who are enrolled in the
federally funded TRIO program have access to student support services
that include academic advising, tutoring, educational development
plans, student development courses, cultural events, and campus visits.
To learn more, visit www.lcc.edu/trio.
The University of Cincinnati offers students access to first-
generation themed housing, which is complemented by advising and other
forms of support. To learn more, visit http://www.uc.edu/gen-1-theme-
house.html and see the 2009 New York Times feature story ``Second Home
for First-Gens''\27\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\27\ Dana Jennings, ``Second Home for First-Gens,'' New York Times
(July 20, 2009).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Clemson University operates the FIRST Generation Student Success
Program, which offers living learning communities, peer and alumni
mentoring, study-skills and time-management workshops, and career-
exploration opportunities for first-generation students. To learn more,
visit http://www.clemson.edu/academics/programs/first.
Housed in the Academic Resource Center, Loyola Marymount University
offers a First to Go Scholars Program (which has its own mission
statement and learning outcomes). Program features include a Scholars
Program for first year-students, learning communities, academic
immersion programs, faculty and staff mentors, a job-shadowing
experience with faculty and staff members, and a one-credit writing
workshop and first-gen voices student journal. To learn more, visit
http://academics.lmu.edu/arc/programswesupport/firsttogocommunity/
firsttogoscholarsprogram.
In 2011, the University of Kentucky developed the Office of First
Generation Initiatives to ``lead campus-wide efforts to recruit, retain
and graduate more first generation students.'' According to its
website, the office delivers a comprehensive set of collaborative
services that includes but is not limited to specific programs for
students in their first year, sophomore, junior, and senior years of
college; scholarship support; and ``living-learning communities'' that
combine course work with residential programs.
The university's website reports many benefits for students who
participate in the living-learning community. Students,
``get better grades--in the first fall semester 3.26 GPA,
compared to 2.80 for peers not in a Living-Learning
environment. In addition, students in the Living-Learning
Program stay in school; 88.4 percent more return for their
sophomore year, compared to 80.8 percent for their cohort
peers. Students are also more likely to adjust more
successfully to the academic demands of college, declare a
major in their freshman year and find their academic work more
interesting. Participating in a living learning community,
which incurs no additional cost, helps keep students on track
toward graduation by helping them connect with advisors,
professors and other staff.''
To learn more, visit: Office of First Generation Initiatives:
www.uky.edu/academy/1G; or First Generation Living Learning Community:
http://uknow.uky.edu/content/students-live-and-learn-uk.
Some of the Nation's most selective colleges have also recognized
the need to support first-generation students, and some, including
Harvard University, begin in the recruitment phase. Harvard
University's Admissions Office created the Harvard First Generation
Program, which focuses on ``directing college awareness to future first
generation college students.'' The program is staffed by coordinators
who provide support and information as high school students begin to
navigate the college application process. Once enrolled, students have
access to a first-generation tutor (adviser), a specific student union
for first-generation students, and an alumni special interest group
that is focused on helping first-generation students make a smooth
transition at the university. To learn more, visit:
Harvard First Generation Program: https://
college.harvard.edu/admissions/hear-our-students/first-generation-
students;
Harvard First Gen Student Union: www.hcs.harvard.edu/
firstgen/;
Harvard First Generation Alumni:
www.firstgenerationharvardalumni.com/; or The New York Times article
``First Generation Students Unite'': or
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/12/education/edlife/first-
generation-students-unite.html?_r=0.
Duke University reports that in 2009, the university created the 1G
Network, an informal collaboration among the Academic Resource Center,
Counseling and Psychological Services, and other offices to offer a
pre-orientation workshop, advising, peer mentoring, and social
opportunities for its approximately 500 first-generation
undergraduates. Throughout the year, 1G students are invited to
community dinners and faculty networking sessions, as well as informal
get-togethers. Five years later, in 2014, Duke created a university-
level financial aid position--a director of outreach and access--to
cater to low-income and first-generation applicants. To learn more,
visit:http://dukemagazine.duke.edu/article/blazing-trail and
www.dukechronicle.com/article/2014/09/new-position-created-support-
first-generation-students.
The division of Undergraduate Retention in the Office of
Undergraduate Education at the University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill promotes the success of its ``Carolina First'' students through a
website (http://firstgeneration.unc.edu) that features the personal
stories of students (as well as faculty and staff members) who are (or
were at one time) first-generation students. The website also includes
links to campus services and resources.
These are just a few of the types of support that are being
implemented in the Nation's 2- and 4-year colleges for low-income,
moderate- and high-achieving, first-generation students. While these
initiatives vary widely in scope, they share a common set of goals to:
fill information gaps that students have about the college
experience and what is expected of them academically and socially;
reduce students' feelings of isolation and disengagement
by creating opportunities for them to become integrated in the academic
life of the institution and by encouraging their participation in the
overall college/university culture;
increase students' network by connecting them to on-campus
and off-campus resources;
recognize students' existing social capital and buildupon
it;
reduce student attrition rates;
increase student retention rates;
increase graduation rates; and
promote awareness of the unique needs of first-generation
students among an institution's faculty, staff and administration.
While these programs seem promising, there is little definitive
evidence on whether they improve student outcomes. One program with
such rigorous evidence is the City University of New York's Accelerated
Study in Associate Programs (ASAP), a program that covers any tuition
and fees not covered by need-based financial aid, covers public
transportation costs, and provides additional financial assistance for
textbooks combined with a rich package of intensive student services
and other reforms. In its early years, ASAP targeted students who had
no developmental education needs. While this group had some students
who may not be considered ``high-achieving,'' the positive graduation
outcomes obtained for this group (in addition to other student types)
suggests that the program may also be highly beneficial for high-
achieving, first-generation students from economically disadvantaged
backgrounds.
senator warren
Question 1. Do colleges have enough incentives to improve student
success?
Answer 1. Colleges may not have sufficient incentives to improve
student success, although this likely varies by institution type. Where
incentives are not strong enough, the performance-based funding/
outcomes-based funding approach to incentives, as discussed in the
Senate hearing, is risky. This approach may help, it may hurt, or it
may have neutral effects. However, we believe that performance funding
is likely to punish many effective institutions and reward many
ineffective institutions, potentially undermining its intentions.
Broadly speaking, there are at least three ways for colleges to
improve institutional outcomes (for example, graduation rates):
(1) Improve institutional effectiveness;
(2) Select students who are more likely to graduate; and
(3) Lower institutional standards to achieve desired outcomes.
The main goal of performance funding should be to provide
incentives for the first strategy while avoiding the other two. The
typical solution suggested to protect against colleges using the second
strategy is to use input-adjusted outcomes (where outcomes are adjusted
to account for differences in student demographics), and the typical
solution suggested to protect against the third is to rely on
accreditors. While these solutions may mitigate concerns, they will not
eliminate them, and it is unclear whether they will diminish them
significantly.
Two major obstacles to comparing colleges' relative effectiveness
are: (1) institutions serve different types of students, and (2)
generally, there are not standardized outcomes in higher education. As
discussed during the hearing, there are ways to mitigate (although not
eliminate) concerns about the first obstacle. For example, institutions
could receive bonus points for serving low-income students whose
likelihood of succeeding is, on average, lower than their higher income
counterparts.\28\ Making adjustments like this may make cross-
institutional comparisons fairer, but such approaches will not result
in apples-to-apples comparisons. For example, the low-income students
attending open-access 4-year colleges are not the same as the low-
income students attending elite 4-year colleges. Making such
adjustments based on measured characteristics will only partially
address the fact that institutions serve different types of students
with different propensities to succeed.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\28\ A number of States already have such adjustments. See Martha
Snyder, Driving Better Outcomes: Typology and Principles to Inform
Outcomes-Based Funding Models (Washington, DC: HCM Strategists, 2015).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The even bigger challenge is that proposed outcomes for performance
funding are not standardized, making cross-institutional comparisons
ambiguous at best, and meaningless at worst. For example, consider a
common performance-funding outcome like degree completion. Little is
known about how much variation exists across institutions in the
difficulty of earning a degree. One reason for this is that we cannot
disentangle difficulty of earning a degree from institutional
effectiveness. To make the point clear, even if College X and College Y
both serve students who look identical upon their entrance, comparing
their graduation rates does not enable one to know whether (a) one
college is more effective than the other or (b) one college simply has
higher standards than the other.
While it may be impossible to quantify how much variation in
difficulty of earning a degree there is in higher education, research
in K-12 education can provide some guidance. An analogous situation has
been carefully examined in K-12 schools, where States are required to
report the percentages of students achieving proficiency in reading and
mathematics on statewide exams. Importantly, each State administers a
unique State exam with unique content and a unique proficiency cut
score (much as each college can be thought of as having its own unique
requirements to graduate and its own unique stringency to meet those
graduation requirements).
Because the State exams are different, one might wonder whether
there is utility in making cross-State comparisons in proficiency rates
on these State exams, in order to determine which States have the
highest achieving students. The U.S. Department of Education
commissioned a paper to examine this issue taking advantage of the
National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), a national
standardized exam that allows for valid cross-State comparisons.\29\
The general conclusion of the study is that, ``The observed
heterogeneity in States'' reported percent proficient can be largely
attributed to differences in the stringency of their standards.''
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\29\ National Center for Education Statistics, Mapping 2005 State
Proficiency Standards onto the NAEP Scales (NCES 2007-482), U.S.
Department of Education, (Washington, DC: National Center for Education
Statistics, 2007).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
In other words, the study found that if you compare the percentage
proficient in one State with the percentage proficient in another State
using an outcome that is not standardized across States, differences
largely have to do with the stringency of standards. Simply put: It may
be invalid to use nonstandardized outcomes, like college graduation
rates, to make cross-institutional comparisons.
Below is a plot of the data from that U.S. Department of Education-
commissioned paper.\30\ On the x-axis is each State in the United
States. The y-axis shows the percentage of fourth-graders meeting
proficiency standards using their State's math test (the leftmost bar,
in gray) and the NAEP (the rightmost bar, in black). Although each
State's test is designed to measure mathematics achievement, the tests
are different and the proficiency definitions are different. NAEP also
measures mathematics achievement, but unlike the State exams, all
students in the country take the same test using the same definition of
proficiency. There is almost no relationship between the percentage
proficient on NAEP and the percentage proficient using the State test.
Massachusetts exemplifies the problem: Looking at the NAEP scores,
Massachusetts has the highest-achieving fourth-graders in the country.
However, because Massachusetts' State test is extremely difficult, the
State ranks fourth from the bottom on the percentage of students
passing their own statewide exam. If K-12 education implemented
performance funding based on the percentage proficient on State exams,
Massachusetts--the State with the highest-achieving students--would be
penalized.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\30\ Chart is derived by MDRC based on numbers from http://
nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/studies/statemapping/
2007_naep_state_table.asp.
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
This example illustrates that rewarding or punishing colleges based
on their relative effectiveness is going to be problematic. Performance
funding could penalize those operating in the desired direction while
rewarding others who may not merit the resources, as no standard exists
to measure relative performance adequately.
As a result, we can say that there are several reasons to be
cautious about performance-based funding in higher education. We cannot
determine institutions' relative effectiveness, so rewards will only be
connected loosely with institutional effectiveness and will mostly be
doled out at random. Moreover, there is concern that performance
funding may suffer from unintended consequences, like providing
incentives to ``cream'' students and to lower standards, although well-
crafted safeguards could help. Despite these issues, it is nonetheless
possible, but unknown, that performance-based funding could have an
overall positive effect by increasing focus and attention on outcomes
rather than enrollment rates.
Alternative approaches to provide incentives for improvement may
offer similar benefits, but bear less risk. For example, government
entities could provide incentives for institutions to replicate
programs with strong evidence of effectiveness from randomized
controlled trials (for example, CUNY's ASAP). Simultaneously, they
could provide incentives for institutions to participate in randomized
controlled trial evaluations to add to the knowledge base concerning
effective practices. One example of this general approach is the First
in the World competition, which offered validation grants to colleges
willing to replicate programs with a proven record of accomplishment
and which requires rigorous independent evaluation for grant
recipients.
Question 2. What policies would give for-profit colleges an
incentive to improve outcomes for their students?
Answer 2. Thank you for asking this important question. We want to
provide you with an accurate and thoughtful answer, but, unfortunately,
MDRC does not have expertise on this specific topic. However, we
suggest that you make contact with Dr. James Rosenbaum, Professor of
Sociology, and Education and Social Policy, Northwestern University (j-
rosenbaum@ northwestern.edu).
[Whereupon, at 11:30 a.m., the hearing was adjourned.]
[all]