The real college admissions scandal is what’s happening legally – elite colleges engaging in unfair practices that undermine diversity and don’t reward merit. The embrace of early decision and legacy preferences on these campuses systematically and structurally benefit students that are overwhelmingly white and upper income.
Read our full memo on the Real College Admissions Scandal here.
Nearly every Democrat — and likely a number of Republicans — running for statewide office this cycle will propose some sort of free college plan. Those plans need to be well-designed and in particular recognize the relationship between college affordability and college completion. Otherwise they are apt at best to under deliver, and at worst, do more harm than good for a large number of students who end up dropping out with no degree and student loan debt for non-tuition and fee costs to boot.
Free college advocates, sympathetic politicians, and policy architects should keep in mind two key points. First, college affordability for students and taxpayers is a function of time-to-degree. If we can just get students to complete on time, we can cut college costs by 20 to 33 percent. Second, if we can reduce the college dropout rate significantly lower than the 50 percent it now approaches, we will produce a sounder fiscal free college investment and be more likely to sustain continued political support.
Every free college plan should be measured against five key questions:
Why those questions?
Because college degree completion depends primarily upon student academic preparation at the secondary school level, college selection, full-time enrollment, and the efforts of colleges themselves to support completion. Limited resources for college affordability should be leveraged against those in influences and targeted where need is greatest.
Check out the data in the latest report from Michael Dannenberg and Konrad Mugglestone here. For a slimmed down read, check out our latest article in Democracy Journal here.
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By Michael Dannenberg
President Trump is proposing to empty over half of the Pell Grant program’s rainy day fund at a time when the economy is relatively stable. The money is not going to boost college grant aid for students already forced to borrow too much. Instead, like all of Trump’s proposed cuts to non-defense domestic spending, student aid funds essentially would be redirected to pay for Trump’s proposed military buildup. We should find out in a few days if Congressional Republicans will be complicit in shifting Pell Grant aid in support of the military buildup or other partisan priorities.
The raid on student aid is a bigger deal for domestic policy than just another politician dipping his hand into the cookie jar. It’s a bigger deal than being emblematic of the Trump Administration’s prioritization of weapons over people in its first budget. It’s a threat around which education advocates should mobilize, but likely won’t, because the interaction between the Pell Grant program and federal budget rules are obscure and the implications delayed in time. But the consequences of emptying the Pell Grant rainy day fund are very real for families.
A little over six years ago, the Pell Grant program didn’t have a rainy day fund and confronted a $5 billion deficit—12 percent of total program cost at the time. Because of a unique “balanced budget” rule particular to the Pell Grant program, Congress cut education spending outside of the traditional Pell Grant program to reconcile the numbers. We don’t have so-called summer Pell Grants for undergraduates anymore, because of past tiny or non-existent Pell Grant rainy day funds. We don’t subsidize education loans for graduate students during their repayment grace period any longer, because of non-existent rainy day funds.
The Trump Administration would have Congress set up a scenario where, once again, there’s a Pell Grant program funding crisis—this time manufactured—that leads to other domestic discretionary program cuts. Click below for details on how.
http://democracyjournal.org/briefing-book/the-quiet-raid-on-student-aid/
The plan is reckless, spectacularly devious, or like much of the Trump-Congressional Republican agenda, both.
Donald Trump has been making front page news again, this time for Trump University amid comments from former instructors and students describing the institution as “a fraudulent scheme” and “a total lie.”
We ought not get caught up in the idea of Trump “University” being an actual institution of higher learning, however. It granted no degrees, held no accreditation, and received no direct taxpayer money. It was simply your standard get-rich-quick business scheme.
Surprising parallels do exist, however, between Trump’s venture and actual colleges and universities that do grant degrees, do hold accreditation, and do receive substantial taxpayer support.
For years, degree and certificate granting, accredited for-profit colleges that get billions in federal funds have used many of the same recruiting tactics, organizational structures, and sales pitches as Trump University. In fact, many proprietary schools exploit the same low-income people – bottom feeding off of the hopes and dreams of folks who find themselves in dire financial situations. See the video below for examples.
And just like Trump University, the results at most for-profit colleges have been disastrous. A study released just this week revealed that associate’s and bachelor’s degree-seeking students attending for-profit colleges like the University of Phoenix, “…experience a decline in earnings after attendance.”
You might think it’s the “profit” part of Trump University and the for-profit education business model that’s the problem. Whereas not-for-profit schools are theoretically liable to those they serve, for-profit institutions are accountable to shareholders. Profit comes before education in their eyes.
Guess what, though? Non-profit colleges are not always so great.
According to a recent report by Third Way, the average private non-profit college graduates only 55 percent of freshmen within a six-year period. On average, only 63 percent of students with federal loans earned more than the average high school graduate without a college degree six years after starting.
We see similar stories with colleges in the public sector. Consider Ohio University-Southern, for example, that has only a 12 percent graduation rate– again measured six years from initial enrollment, not four. In fact, there are over two dozen other public colleges and universities that have six-year graduation rates below 20 percent.
Obama’s legacy on this issue is clear.
The most lasting aspect of President Obama’s higher education agenda just might prove to be heightened examination of college and student outcomes in addition to work on traditional access and affordability issues. At the forefront of Obama’s college quality efforts were his executive actions to ensure minimal standards for post-secondary vocational programs.
Based on his initiatives, including language that clearly defined “gainful employment,” spending on instructional services instead of marketing, sales, and raw profit at for-profit colleges is up 25 percent. Degree completion rates at four-year for-profit colleges are up nearly 40 percent.
By and large, all colleges – whether they are for-profit, non-profit, or even public – need federal funds in to survive. But they shouldn’t get a blank check from the federal government to take in students, add to the already growing amount of national student debt in this country, and then not be held accountable for failing to provide their students with meaningful opportunities to make a living post-enrollment.
So here’s our challenge for the next President:
Minimum quality standards for institutions of higher education should be set in exchange for access to federal funds. Give colleges time and help to improve first, but improve they must. A 12 percent graduation rate, or put another way, an 88% dropout rate year after year with no improvement is not acceptable.
Scams like Trump University exist in our real higher education system as well. And like Trump University, many colleges have faced or eventually will face an existential crisis.
Steven Isaacson is a Research and Communications intern with Education Reform Now.
By Marianne Lombardo
There’s no heartbreak worse than seeing your child struggle. And when they struggle to make a successful college transition, it can impact the rest of their life. In my son’s case, the public K-12 schools and the college of his dreams got paid, but he got a pink slip.
Like all parents, I wanted my kids to achieve success in life. I very purposefully moved us to one of the highest-performing (and very expensive, greatly stretching our middle-class income) suburban districts in the state to assure they would get a good education.
My son’s school experience was generally good. He got mostly good grades and easily passed the Ohio Graduation Test the first time without any issues (attaining a $500 college stipend the state provided). We found a public four-year college with a program that perfectly matched his interests and felt great that we did all we were supposed to do to launch him toward the career of his dreams.
But, it all crashed down. He only attended one quarter. He left because, surprisingly, he was not prepared for the academic demands of college. It was a surprise because it had never been pointed out by his suburban high school that his writing skills were not up to college readiness standards. That surprise deficit did him in.
The program my son wanted to enroll in at college required students to attain an “A” or “B” in a required introductory course taken during the first quarter. But because of his apparent poor writing skills, he got a “C.” Crushed that he would not be able to attain a degree in the field he had chosen, he dropped out.
My son moved back home with me and enrolled in community college, where he was placed not only in a remedial writing course, but also in a remedial math course. We paid thousands for these courses, to help him relearn what he should have learned in high school, and all the while none of it counted toward a degree. He attended community college on and off for another year and a half before eventually dropping out due to work opportunities and not seeing a clear path toward how college would add value in a career field. He has never finished a college degree and is still paying back student loans.
Our story closely matches data found by my colleagues, Mary Nguyen Barry and Michael Dannenberg, in their report “Out of Pocket: The High Cost of Inadequate High Schools and High School Achievement on College Affordability.”
It really hurts to see your kid not be able to attain his dream.
I feel as if our public education system failed him – both the highly acclaimed “public-private” district (where you can’t attend unless you can afford the $300K housing cost) that didn’t adequately prepare him, and the publicly-funded State University that whiplashes kids that didn’t get an adequate preparation from their high school.
I’m not saying kids should get a free pass, but our education system should be doing everything possible to help kids find success. In our experience, there was a complete lack of alignment between what we were told by the district (get good grades), what we were told by the state (pass the Ohio Graduation Test), and the reality that he did not have college readiness skills. The kicker is that once he graduated high school, the problem was ours alone: there was no responsibility or ownership on the part of the district, the state, or the college. We paid the additional price.
Our state has since increased the rigor of its state assessments, and there’s much more opportunity to get ongoing, honest, and objective feedback on how your child is doing based on these assessments every year they are tested. I hope parents understand the value of this information and use it to help if their own child needs intervention before they are cut loose from the K-12 system.
If we had better information, and if the high school had been required to provide intervention for kids that needed shoring up before they left for college, perhaps we would have been left with more than financial costs and a lifetime of wishes for what could have been.
By Mary Nguyen Barry
Students and families in Washington, D.C. are stuck between a rock and a hard place.
As in many cities, DC students face a number of education realities specific to an urban public school environment: segregated schools, inequitable facilities, and inequitable school resources.
But unlike most students who successfully navigate the system to high school graduation, students in Washington, D.C. face a challenge unique to the nation’s capital: they have essentially zero “in-state” public college options. All four-year college options are effectively private.
The lack of meaningful in-state public college options is one of the biggest policy issues facing D.C. high school students, said Jessica Cunningham, the principal at KIPP DC College Preparatory in Northeast.
Now technically, students do have options. They can either attend the University of the District of Columbia (UDC) or they can attend a public college out of state and receive a discount provided by the D.C. Tuition Assistance Grant Program (DC TAG).
But let’s be real. Only 6 percent of students graduate from UDC within four years. And the discount provided by DC TAG – a program designed to give D.C. students in-state rates at colleges outside the District – is no longer achieving its goal.
Congress created the DC TAG program in 1999 to expand college choices for D.C. residents. Recognizing the unique challenges faced by the lack of D.C. statehood, Congress provided annual grants of up to $10,000 to cover the difference between in-state and out-of-state tuition at public four-year colleges and universities nationwide (and up to $2,500 per year for public community colleges).
Presumably when the law was originally passed, $10,000 was more than enough to cover the in-state vs. out-of-state difference. But as states have cut financial support of their public colleges and universities in recent years, colleges have jacked up both their in-state and even more so out-of-state tuition rates to compensate. The impact on D.C. students is that their $10,000 voucher is no longer enough to meet the difference in tuition prices. So just as Pell Grants have failed to keep pace with rising college prices, so have the DC TAG grants. And ergo, DC students have another barrier – specifically tied to where they live – to college affordability and completion.
What should one do? A few options are possible:
Option 1 adheres most closely to the original goal for DC TAG. However, it functions as an inefficient stop-gap measure if college tuition continues to rise. In that sense, it would operate similar to the Pell Grant program that continually fails to keep up with rising college prices. It also misses an opportunity to attack the broader problem that Cunningham noted – the lack of meaningful public options for DC residents.
Option 2 would help boost DC TAG’s purchasing power but also raise the bar on what makes a college eligible for DC TAG funds. Currently all public colleges across the United States are eligible to receive DC TAG funds (a smaller $2,500/year grant to private HBCUs and private colleges in the DC Metropolitan area is also available). But that doesn’t have to be the case. DC TAG could implement minimum institutional eligibility requirements – say only public colleges that fall in the top 95 percent of colleges nationwide in graduation rates or student loan repayment rates may receive DC TAG dollars.
Option 3, in combination with Option 2, would further heighten resources and consequences for low-performing colleges. Let’s help UDC and other college dropout factories improve to become a meaningful option for students instead of a provider most likely to leave them in a worse financial position than had they not enrolled in the first place.
DC residents should not tolerate the fact that the only honest-to-goodness four-year public college within city boundaries has a 6 percent four-year graduation rate.
A meaningful public college option for DC residents and others requires improving the city’s current university and expanding the application of that definition nationwide.
Is the city and Congress, including Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC), tough enough to do it? Or will they continue to shortchange deserving DC students from meaningful college opportunities?
By DFER
The parade of pandering Republican candidates for President continues Monday (MLK Jr. Day) when Donald Trump becomes the latest to visit the evangelical hub known as Liberty University.
These days, most non-right wingers know of Liberty University as the college where – in the wake of the San Bernardino mass shooting – school president Jerry Falwell, Jr. called on students to obtain and carry their own guns on campus.
“Let’s teach them a lesson if they ever show up here,” Falwell told students on Dec. 4th while referencing a Glock pistol in his back pocket, according to the Washington Post’s Nick Anderson.
Now when we think of Liberty University, our thoughts focus on, well, education. Liberty University is one of the worst colleges in America for poor and minority students. It has high price, high debt, and deplorable black student completion rates as compared to peer institutions serving similar students. Here are the numbers, according to university-submitted data to the U.S. Department of Education.
High Price & High Debt
Graduation Rates for Black Students
High Price & Low Graduation Rates for Minority Students at Liberty University
As Compared to Peer Colleges Serving Similar Students
We don’t expect Donald Trump will say anything about Liberty University’s record with minority and low-income students. But someone should. In fact, civil rights accountability hawks should go further and demand Liberty take action or lose some of its very generous federal aid. With liberty comes responsibility.
When my colleague and I wrote our Tough Love report last year, we recommended the federal government draw a line at the bottom 5 percent of four-year institutions in terms of their performance in carrying out the core purposes underlying federal student aid: low-income student access, student graduation, and student loan repayment.
The bottom 5 percent of colleges would then be given a dose of Tough Love. Either improve over a set period of time – to show they could still provide students and taxpayers with some minimal value – or eventually lose access to various forms of federal financial aid. Under-resourced colleges, such as many minority-serving institutions, should receive additional financial and technical assistance before any consequences attach.
At the time, student loan repayment rate data was not available to calculate a bottom 5 percent benchmark so we took a look at very suboptimal cohort default rate data. But now, loan repayment data by institution is available thanks to the newly released College Scorecard. Now, we are finally able to identify the country’s lowest four-year college performers in terms of return on investment: colleges where more than 62 percent of former students cannot pay down any principal on their student loans. In other words, these are colleges where 62 percent of students who borrowed to enroll end up in a much worse financial situation than when they first enrolled.
Loan repayment rate data is crucial to our full understanding of problems facing our higher education system; it can pinpoint colleges that not only have degree production issues but also quality degree production issues, as measured by students’ ability to make progress on paying down their student debt.
Yet our federal accountability system – to the extent there is one – is still based on an antiquated measure of cohort default rates that only captures the worst possible outcome among student loan borrowers: those who cannot make a student loan payment for 9 consecutive months. Colleges with a default rate above 30 percent for three consecutive years or 40 percent in any one year can lose access to federal student aid. What’s more is that we know default rates are easily gamed – colleges have been documented to push students into deferment or forbearance so that they will not show up in the default calculation. Only about 20 schools have been subject to sanctions from the most recent cohort default rate standard.
Currently, there is a bipartisan bill to replace our federal accountability system based on default rates with one based on student loan repayment rates. Called the Student Protection and Success Act, it was co-sponsored by Senators Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) and Orrin Hatch (R-UT) and is currently under committee consideration. They propose that schools with repayment rates more than 10% below the national average over a three-year period lose eligibility to participate in the Title IV federal student loan system. The problem with that bill though is that it’s Tough, but it doesn’t provide much Love in terms of added support for institutions that are failing because they are grossly under-resourced.
It’s easy for politicians to be tough, and it’s easy for advocates to call for more love. It’s hard to embrace Tough Love, but it’s the right thing to do for students and taxpayers alike.
Check out our latest video on for-profit schools and the Obama Administration’s action.
More background on the Obama higher ed legacy and challenges for the next President here.
As Congress debates a re-write of No Child Left Behind Act this week, it’s worth noting that the same issues of inadequacy, inequity, and accountability for underperformance are also present in higher education policy.
In response, national leaders confront the same basic 30,000 feet-high political question: Are you for simply more resources OR reform? Or are you for more resources AND reform?
How did President Obama answer the question and what were the results? You might be surprised at the magnitude of the answer, the successes, and the failures.
Check out a sneak peek of our report on the Obama higher ed legacy and the 2016 campaign.
