Diane Auer Jones has proposed that schools start to report a “federal regulatory compliance fee” so that students and others can see the impact of added reporting requirements. She does a nice job of explaining her proposal and the reasons such a move would be useful.

Perhaps her idea is a good one. Not only for the reasons she presents, but because it would be interesting to see how much actually is spent on required reports. A part of me wonders why it would be so difficult and costly to report graduation rates for athletes.

There just seems to be an unending chorus of voices lamenting reporting requirements.  But, per the title of this post, don’t colleges and universities have some obligation to report on the most fundamental aspect of why they exist? Don’t we have an obligation to account for whether learning occurs and people finish their education?

I agree that there have been lots of added reporting requirements, and that these add costs. But the reports that I think we should object to because they are burdensome and costly are in the non-academic areas. Perhaps any federal compliance reports might separate out costs for academic reports and non-academic. Perhaps rather than railing about too many reports, we in higher education should define what it makes sense to report and what does not. Doesn’t it make sense that we should report about learning?

Too often the loudest objections are not about useless and bureaucratic reports, but rather about reporting on the very essence of our work.

What do you think? Please feel free to leave a comment.

Mike

I object to the opening comment that Tamar Lewin makes:  “only one in five of the students who enroll in two-year institutions graduates within three years.  And even at four-year colleges, only two in five complete their degree within six years.”  As I have written in the past, the three and six year timeframes are wrong-headed, and I think the findings in this survey highlight that fact.  I am certainly interested and hopeful that students will finish their degrees.  But to say that the 150% point (3 years for a 2-year degree, 6 years for a 4-year degree) is when they should finish is silly, especially when you consider that 85 percent (per this blog’s name) of college students are either older, studying part-time, and/or working while going to school. We need to consider a longer timeframe that allows for the reality of how these students proceed through to degree completion.  

But let’s look at the study—and at the article.  What do they tell us?
•    60 percent of those who dropped out were financially independent—got no financial assistance from their parents.
•    The story flips when the parents help out—60 percent of the students who got some financial support from their parents finished their degree.
•    Of those who dropped out, 70 percent did not have scholarship or loan aid while of those who finished, only 40 percent did not receive such aid.
•    The top reason for dropping out is that it was too hard to support themselves and go to school at that same time.
•    More than 1 in 3 said that even if they got funds to cover tuition and books, they still could not afford to return to school due to family and work obligations.
•    Of those who finished, 72 percent came from households with annual income over $35,000, while of those who dropped out, more than 50% came from households with less than $35,000 per year

There are at least two things going on here. One is the 85 percent issue. We still make public policy assuming that college students go directly from high school to study full-time on a campus, and are supported by their parents. This despite the fact that 85 percent are older, and/or studying part-time, and/or financially independent, and/or working.  The second thing is that lower-income students face significant challenges.  A good number of lower income students are part of the other 85 percent.

No wonder the survey respondents did not see adding online courses or making the application process easier as solutions. They are dealing with major challenges in finding the time, money, and energy to pursue a college degree. Their ideas for child care, cost reduction, and allowing more financial aid for part-time students make complete sense for what they face.

What results will this study have? Will anyone listen to the facts about the challenges facing the vast majority of contemporary college students?  When will we stop being driven only by the assumption that the high school student and his/her parents are the singular audience for higher education public policy decision-making?

Your thoughts? Please feel free to leave a comment.

Mike

Please feel free to share your thoughts and comments.

Mike

But what they propose is just plain silly; self-serving but still silly. They describe ongoing nursing shortages, saying that the growing shortages caused “93% of hospital-based registered nurses to report a lack of sufficient time and staff to maintain patient safety, detect complications early, and collaborate with other health care team members.” I am not at all sure how they conclude that this is a problem to be solved by education but the idea of increasing the barriers to practice nursing by requiring a bachelor’s degree seems counter-productive at best. This is further evidence that not only is health care dysfunctional but so are the politics of nursing and nursing licensure.

What really irritates me about this piece is that the authors attack (though they insist that is not really what they are doing) the associate degree in nursing (ADN) and the colleges that offer these programs, many of them community colleges. Patricia Benner, one of the authors, is quoted as saying such a change “would hold community college nursing programs more accountable.” That “the minimum amount of time a student has to spend in these ‘two-year programs’ is actually three years.”

Fortunately, Kim Tinsley of North Arkansas College and a member of the National Organization for Associate Degree Nursing pointed out that “I teach in a rural setting and the main advantage of offering a two-year RN degree is that it puts the nurse graduate to work in a shorter amount of time so they can support their family. They cannot afford four years of BSN classes and not work. The ADN student does sometimes have to take up to four years to complete their degree but it is due to the fact that they are working (sometimes full time) and have a family to support. The average age of our students is 27. The majority of our students are either married with a family or are a single parent. They cannot afford the time nor resources to attend a four-year program.”

Thanks to Ms. Tinsley. What her statement lays out clearly is that this is not just an attack on a type of degree but on the people who most often pursue that degree—the other 85%. The students in the ADN programs are older. Rather than being financially dependent on their parents, they more often have families of their own who depend on them. And, whether a family or not, they are often working.

Let’s be honest here. Schools like those that the authors of this report work at are not willing or able to serve the audiences that attend the ADN programs. The authors say that these BSN schools would need to “increase capacity by approximately 90 percent.” Is that likely to happen during a recession? Absolutely not and it would not happen during the best of economic times. That is because BSN programs at research universities use the undergraduate programs as feeders for their graduate programs. They want traditional students who compete for entry into elite programs. They don’t want to serve the folks in the ADN programs because the students in these programs don’t fit the mold and some, if not many, of these students might require remedial assistance. The fact is that there is a racial and class overlay here that is just below the surface. Community colleges and other ADN providers are serving a far more racially diverse audience than the BSN schools as well as many low-income students.

The authors claim that they are not opposed to the community colleges and their suggested change might lead to better articulation agreements. Yes, when hell freezes over. All we need to do is to look at the current state of such articulation agreements nationally to have one more proof point that schools like the ones the authors are defending remain elitist and are not interested in seriously getting at the fact that it is the diverse and low income students who are earning ADN degrees and becoming registered nurses. These nurses are holding our health care system together and there is no way that a group of BSN nurses admitted under current admissions standards that are intended to limit access will ever replace them.

The truth is that this call is about getting more funding for the BSN programs. Any call for continued elitism and raising barriers to entry in a profession that is suffering serious shortages is just plain silly.

I encourage you to share your thoughts.

Mike

The fact that learning has been improved is wonderful. That alone makes this effort worthwhile. But there is no denying that Ms. Twigg is disappointed. She makes that abundantly clear when she says “you’re dealing with a culture that does not care about reducing costs.”

The article cites several schools that just stopped tracking costs. Twigg is quoted again, “if administrators do not continue to be involved and simply let it devolve to a faculty project, most faculty don’t care about costs.” The problem is stated as one where there are disincentives for saving money because the provost merely takes it away.

This is truly scary. There are faculty quoted as saying they think higher education should receive more funding and therefore they are not invested in trying to reduce costs. But, those outside of higher education are fed up and much of their anger is about the constantly increasing price of attending college. This is no small disconnect. The academic culture appears to be one of supposed entitlement because the work of higher education is assumed to be so important. But there are limits and we are either dangerously close to hitting those limits or may even have surpassed them. Twigg is quoted as saying “people in higher education believe in what we’re doing, as long as they don’t have to do it.”

Any ideas on how to change this culture?

Mike

Your thoughts? Please feel free to leave a comment.

Mike

Predictably, the higher education establishment dismissed the idea. Frank Balz of the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities (NAICU) is quoted as saying that there is not a lack of information, but a glut that is hard to wade through and that “its hard to see how adding a layer of bureaucracy will improve anything.” This represents a viewpoint held by many that any new requirements or expectations for accountability should be resisted.  I do not share that view. Anything that empowers the prospective student to make good choices is of great value. And, while there may be lots of data out there, very little has been converted into meaningful, actionable information.  That is especially true when it comes to assessing learning outcomes. The proposal by Soares is probably not perfect, but it certainly is a step in the right direction. And a step forward in an inevitable march toward greater assessment of, and transparency about, whether learning actually occurs in our schools.

I am pleased to see this call for action.  Your thoughts? Please feel free to leave a comment.

Mike

Soares uses the term working learners to describe those students who are already in the workforce and are “juggling work and learning.”  He notes that “75 percent of college undergraduates in the 1999-2000 school year were in some way nontraditional.”  He is talking about the other 85 percent of college students who did not come directly to full-time college study on a campus and remain dependent on their parents.  And, consistent with the points made in this blog, he notes that public policy shortchanges these students.  He states that “Pell Grant treats working learners, most of whom pursue postsecondary credentials as nontraditional students, less favorably than traditional students.”  He supports this viewpoint by pointing out that one of the characteristics that define the nontraditional student is being financially independent “for purposes of determining eligibility for financial aid.”  Noting that 60 percent of the 5 million low-income Americans who received a Pell Grant during the 2007-8 academic year were financially independent, he states that “the statutorily mandated federal needs analysis that determines the amount of federal aid puts far more burden on these older students than on their dependent peers.”  “A single, working learner Pell Grant recipient earning $30,000 or less can be required to pay at least 30 percent of their gross earning for postsecondary education.”  He goes on to point out how the Pell Grant program limits aid for students who attend college less than half-time, does not fund shorter-than-semester length courses, and “penalizes students for work.”  Soares concludes that “our financial aid structure today is inadequate to accommodate the different circumstances of working learners.”  He correctly states that working learners need the following:

•    Flexible financial assistance that promotes getting college credit over time
•    Access to 21st century-career coaching to design a successful work-education path
•    Accurate information about education and training quality
•    Educational institutions able to adapt their service delivery to working learners needs

Again, Soares’ paper is an important one, and I highly recommend giving it a read.  Not only because it aligns with the concerns expressed in this blog, but because he makes a compelling argument for the national significance of educating today’s workforce and the failure of our current systems to enable the necessary mix of learning and work.
I think that this paper further documents the serious public policy misunderstanding about what our country needs in regard to postsecondary education due to a reliance on a romantic view of what college-going is in today’s world.  And, it correctly points to some of the policies that not only don’t encourage the working learner, but place barriers in the way of their participation in postsecondary education.  While I am pleased to see a paper like this, I only wish I could claim optimism about whether positive change is coming.  Instead, I see messages out of our nation’s capital that there is concern about things like credit hours – seat time. At a time when we desperately need visionary leadership, we are seeing retrenchment and calls for greater controls. The fact is that federal financial aid, including the Pell Grant, is locked into old ways of thinking about education and is getting more and more locked into approaches that block rather than encourage either innovation or support for working learners.

Your thoughts? Please feel free to leave a comment.

Mike

There is no question that trouble is brewing.  The worst economic downturn in decades should be enough to stimulate action.  At least one would hope that to be the case.  And Jane Wellman of the Delta Project on Postsecondary Education Costs, Productivity and Accountability offered what is described as a “blunt” assessment that no new money is going to come to higher education.  Unfortunately, the article reports that this group demonstrated a long-honored tradition of talking about the predominant institutional model at the exclusion of community colleges and, perhaps, other alternative models.

It is good to see that leaders of the institutions that attended this gathering are talking about change – even if they have talked rather than acted for many years.  Maybe this time will be different … though I would not want to place any bets on that.  The real question is not whether change will occur, there are simply too many external pressures for that not to happen, but whether the change can or will come from within mainstream higher education.  Time will tell.

Please feel free to leave a comment.

Mike

The institutions most often cited as having low completion rates are community colleges, for-profit colleges, and colleges that serve adult students.  The reported completion rates can be incredibly low, even zero, and invariably, when reported, set off a flurry of self-righteous condemnation of these schools.  But the indignation may be misplaced.  I say “may” because the way the data is collected, we really have no idea what the real completion rates are.  That is because federal data (Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System—IPEDS) on completion rates counts only a very limited and specific set of students.  It only counts those students who start college for the first time and remain enrolled at the same institution on a full-time basis throughout their college career.  The way this is described is “first-time, full-time.”

If you have read this blog before and understand my main premise, then you will realize immediately that only a few students in today’s world actually go to college and remain as full-time students through to completion at the same institution.  That is just not the way students act anymore.  Add to this that the calculation of completion rates also assumes that the student will finish within six years of when they start.  That is something else I have written about—when many students are attending part-time, six years may not be an appropriate timeframe.

The idea of “first-time, full-time” is only relevant to the minority of students who go to college full-time after high school.  It is only relevant to that romanticized view of what college is like and that view is not at all accurate in today’s world where students are older, mixing work with study and enrolled part-time.  The latter type of student attends community colleges, for-profit online schools and schools that serve adults.  Take Capella as an example.  Virtually every one of our students is older.  They have very likely attended other schools before coming to us.  And, they are studying part time.  The fact is that if you have almost no students who meet the “first-time, full-time” criterion (Capella had a whopping 3 students who fit this criteria in 2008), you will have almost no completions.

In addition, the Department of Education has identified several variables that predict low completion rates.  Those include being older (delayed enrollment), studying part-time, working full-time, having children or being financially independent of parents.  Four of more of these factors predict completion rates of only 10 percent.  Those variables literally define the students who attend the schools that have relatively low completion rates.  So, the “first-time, full-time” definition and the audience served both work against colleges serving these audiences.

Fortunately, influential public-policy organizations recognize the problem with use of “first-time, full-time” and are calling for changes.  For example, the National Governor’s Association has published an “issue brief” that cites this problem and others and calls for states to take steps to measure more effectively.  The report cites the fact that federal data excludes too many students, and that about half the students in public colleges and universities are not counted.  The report specifically states that “many long-held stereotypes about college students—that they live on campus, enroll full-time, and graduate in four years—fail to describe the U.S. college student population.”  The report goes on to say “meaningful data on postsecondary students should track part-time students, full-time students, first-time students, transfer students, and students pursuing education for non-credential purposes.”  I agree with that statement and the implied fact that the federal data is not meaningful.

So, the next time someone gets bent out of shape over supposed low completion rates based on federal data, remember that the data are biased to an outdated, romanticized view of college and fail to count many, many students—the very students who attend the types of schools that receive the criticism.

Please feel free to leave a comment.

Mike