Student Debt Fuels Concern and Confusion

There may be growing anxiety among many college students and their parents over whether attaining a bachelor’s degree is worth the expense, especially when student loans are involved.

Two surveys—both, ironically, commissioned by companies that provide student loans—conducted last spring with young adults reveal some of the concerns. In the survey from Ascent Student Loans, 51% of respondents said they “do not believe the value of a college education has kept up with the rising cost.” Almost half said they were responsible for paying at least 50% of their school tab.

In a survey from Discover Student Loans, 26% of current students and recent graduates were worried they’d need to take on a second job and give up leisure activities in order to pay off loan debt for their education, but that percentage rose to 59% among young adults who had been out of college for a few years.

However, a lack of financial literacy may be contributing to students’ apprehension. More than 40% of the Discover survey-takers indicated they didn’t fully understand how to budget for payments or even exactly how much they were required to pay back. In the Ascent survey, two-thirds didn’t know when loan interest begins accruing and many thought the average loan payment was less than $100 a month (Ascent said it’s more than $200).

A report on MarketWatch noted that the class of 2016 graduated with an average loan debt of $29,669, although the average was $32,596 for students whose parents had borrowed through the federal PLUS program.

New Guide Tries to Transform Transfers

Four-fifths of the students who first enroll in community colleges intend to move on to a four-year school to obtain a bachelor’s degree, yet just 32% make that transfer within six years and even fewer graduate. A new guide aims to help improve that rate.

The Columbia University Community College Research Center, working with the Aspen Institute and other research organizations, studied institutions with much higher rates of transfer and completion. “These colleges clearly made transfers a priority. They made transferring a default plan for every student, rather than optional,” researcher John Fink said in an Education Dive report.

The center’s guide identifies a number of actions institutions can take to assist transfer students. First, two- and four-year schools must communicate with each other about degree requirements so that curriculum can be designed to enable students to step up to a university without taking extra classes. As it is, too many community college students discover the course credits they earned won’t transfer.

Community colleges must also ensure students understand which courses they need to take in order to move on to a four-year school. It doesn’t always occur to students to find out degree requirements at their destination school before enrolling in community college. That means community colleges need to establish strong advising programs to guide students from the get-go, starting with determining their educational goals in order to clear a path to graduation.

Schools should also rethink their remedial classes. Students required to take these classes, which usually don’t count toward a degree, are more likely to drop out in frustration. Low-income students who may be among the first in their families to attend college may also need additional help in understanding the institution’s processes and how to apply for transfer.

More Freshmen Persisting to Graduation

A small but significant uptick in the number of U.S. college students attaining their degrees last spring is being hailed as a positive indicator for the national economy.

“For the more than 2.27 million students who started college six years ago, the signs of postrecession recovery are clear: adult students shrank as a share of the cohort, four-year public and private nonprofit institutions increased their share of the cohort, and the total completion rate surpassed the prerecession high,” said Doug Shapiro, executive director of the National Student Clearinghouse (NSC) Research Center, in its annual report on enrollment and graduation patterns for each incoming class. A key benchmark is the graduation percentage after six years.

Approximately 56.9% of the fall 2011 freshmen had graduated as of 2017. That outpaces the six-year graduation mark for the 2010 freshman class (54.8%) and the 2007 freshman class (56.1%), which had previously been the highest to date.

Almost 12% of the 2011 starters are still taking courses and the report anticipates many of those students will achieve a degree within the next two years, based on the freshman class of 2009, which managed to raise its total completion rate this year by six percentage points over its six-year rate.

Four-year schools overall had higher completion rates than two-year schools (66.7% versus 37.7%), but a much higher percentage of students who enrolled first at two-year schools would go on to earn a degree or certificate within six years (37.7%, compared to 8% of students who began at a four-year institution).

Spend More on Students, Get More Grads

Colleges and universities that spend more on students—even if they raise tuition prices—are more likely to see a bounce in enrollment and graduation rates than schools that trim their budgets and tuition rates.

A new study from the National Bureau of Economic Research appears to upend the conventional wisdom that reducing tuition would attract higher enrollment and also help students finish their studies faster. At least for public schools, according to a MarketWatch article about the study, the numbers are different.

“If your goal is to graduate more students, spending increases work better per-dollar than tuition cuts at accomplishing that goal,” noted David Deming, who was among the researchers in the study. Deming is a professor of public policy, education, and economics at the Harvard Kennedy School.

The study found that, from 1990-2013, enrollment and graduation rates rose with each 10% jump in a public institution’s spending. Schools that raised tuition did not see any effect on those rates.

The explanation, according to the MarketWatch article, is that institutions that cut back on their budgets—and were unwilling to increase tuition—often covered the financial gap by eliminating class sections. The end result was that more students were closed out of courses they needed to complete for graduation.

Research on Adaptive Learning in MOOCs

According to a research paper, students taking a HarvardX massive open online course learned more using adaptive assessments than their classmates who didn't have that opportunity. The study focused on the course Super-Earths and Life, which ran in in the current academic year.

The adaptive-learning group was provided interactive content and assistance crafted to suit their individual learning level through TutorGen’s Student Centered Adaptive Learning Engine (SCALE). Assessments were added for both the experimental and control groups to gauge the effect of the adaptive experience on students’ mastery of the material.

The knowledge gain of the students in the experimental group was 19% higher than their peers in the control group. They also moved through the class material more quickly and demonstrated greater persistence in assessments. Despite this, the study found “no statistically significant differences” between the two groups’ course-completion or certification rates.

Faculty Not Sold on Ed-Tech

College instructors still aren’t that impressed with technology in the classroom. In fact, faculty responding to the 2016 Inside Higher Ed Survey of Faculty Attitudes on Technology said they thought the quality of teaching and learning hasn’t been helped by data-driven assessments and accountability efforts, other than to keep politicians off their backs.

Just 27% of faculty members said technology has improved the quality of instruction at their institutions, while the percentage of respondents who said using ed-tech helped to improve degree-completion rates was about the same. On the other hand, 65% agreed that efforts in ed-tech were meant to pacify outside groups.

The survey found that fewer administrators and faculty members said that technology led to significantly improved student outcomes, making it hard to justify the investment. Both groups think institutions are taking the right steps to protect personal information from cyberattacks.

“Faculty members are still worried that online education can’t deliver outcomes equivalent to face-to-face instruction,” wrote Carl Straumsheim in an article for Inside Higher Ed. “They are split on whether investments in ed-tech have improved student outcomes. And they overwhelmingly believe textbooks and academic journals are becoming too expensive.”

Initiative Promotes Graduating on Time

Missouri is addressing college affordability with an initiative called “15 to Finish” that encourages students to take 15 credit hours each semester. Fewer than a third of students at Missouri public institutions take 15 credit hours per semester, according to the nonprofit group Complete College America, even though that’s what it takes to graduate in four years.

As part of the program, the Missouri Department of Higher Education is working with Complete College America on promotional materials and ways to personalize the initiative for each campus in the state.

“In many cases, students need to take just one more three-hour course every semester to graduate on time,” Zora Mulligan, Missouri commissioner of higher education, said in a release. “But completing 15 hours of college credit each semester, students can graduate earlier, enter the workforce sooner, and save thousands of dollars in education.”

An issue for many students is that they are already in the workforce, trying to make ends meet while attending classes. The University of Missouri-St. Louis has been working to push more traditional students to take 15 credit hours for the last year, raising its four-year graduation rate to the highest level in school history, but administrators remain mindful that it’s not for every student.

“Lots of our students are holding full-time jobs, making it more difficult to have students managing a workload of 40 to 50 hours per week and classes,” Adam Bryd Jr., dean of enrollment services, said in an article for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “But we’ve done this already. We’ll just work case-by-case, looking at their work schedule and class schedule. In many cases, our students find they can pick up an online class to get them those extra three credit hours.”

States, Cities Work to Boost Financial Aid

As the presidential candidates discuss the affordability of higher education for all and hold out promises of free community-college courses, at the state level more financial aid is already being funneled to students in need. Municipalities are also rolling out programs.

The National Association of State Student Grant and Aid Programs found that state-funded aid is up about 6% for the 2014-15 academic year (the most recent year for which it has collected data), according to an Inside Higher Ed report. Grants, which don’t require repayment, made up about 85% of the $12.4 billion in financial aid awarded.

In Los Angeles, Mayor Eric Garcetti is working on a plan to provide one year of free classes—two years, if he can secure enough donations—at any of the Los Angeles Community College District campuses to students who graduate from an L.A. public high school, according to the Los Angeles Times.

The L.A. College Promise is intended to help a specific segment of the student body: those who would have to work full-time in order to afford to attend school part-time. Many of these students come from families who earn just enough to disqualify them from other aid programs.

The grants would enable these students to cut back on working hours and enroll on a full-time basis, allowing them to earn a degree or certificate more quickly. Students would also have to maintain at least a 2.0 grade-point average to receive grant money.

Innovators Push for Changes in Higher Ed

To those who don’t work on a college or university campus or in a related field, the term “higher education” often conjures up moldering institutions stuck in an outdated time warp, unwilling to change. But, many schools are indeed trying new things to help their students succeed and to ensure more people can afford a college education.

Washington Monthly profiled 16 leaders in higher ed—not presidents or chancellors, but administrators and academics at schools, government agencies, and nonprofits—who have helped lead the charge in innovation in postsecondary education and access.

“These front-line innovators don’t always have a lot of power,” wrote Gilad Edelman. “So when they try to advocate for new and better ways of serving students, they are typically pushing against resistant leadership, indifferent or threatened colleagues, and a general institutional inertia that makes progress painfully slow.”

The people highlighted in “The Sixteen Most Innovative People in Higher Education” are responsible for programs that support potential dropouts, encourage students to graduate within four years, enable students to take online courses at a lower cost, admit more low-income students, and use technology to monitor student progress and intervene when necessary.

Other programs focus on competency-based education, remedial course requirements, student advising and mentoring, open educational resources, and student-success coaching.

It Pays to Graduate on Time

A new study from NerdWallet found that taking six years to complete a bachelor’s degree could cost a student as much as $300,000 in additional tuition costs, loan interest, and lost income and retirement savings. That’s a problem since the National Center for Education Statistics reported that just 40% of college students graduate in four years.

One solution being tested is making the fifth year free for students who are unable to finish in four. Such programs normally come with strict eligibility requirements, such as working with an academic advisor, taking a full course load each semester, and passing all classes, but it is a way to help reduce anxiety about college costs, according to Tom Kazee, president of the University of Evansville, Evansville, IN.

Evansville launched a fifth-year-free program this fall, but is not alone in trying the solution. The University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, provides students with a free fifth year when they are pursuing academic interests outside of their majors, while Clark University, Worcester, MA,  offers some undergrads a fifth year for free to complete both a bachelor’s and master’s degree.  In another approach, Howard University, Washington, D.C., offers a 50% rebate off the final semester of tuition to students who finish early or on time.

“It’s increasingly clear that colleges worry about getting students to finish on time,” Ben Miller, senior director of postsecondary education at the Center for American Progress, told NBC News. “You see a lot of different approaches to that.”

AP Courses Don't Predict College Success

Advanced placement (AP) courses can help high school students save money on higher education by allowing them to skip some early degree requirements. However, new research has found the courses don’t really predict college success.

The study, published by the Brookings Institute, showed that students who took AP courses in high school only scored marginally better in their college classes.

“For example, for students of similar race, socioeconomic status, and high school standardized test scores, those who took a year of high school economics earn a final grade in their college economics class 0.03 points higher than students who have never encountered that subject before,” authors of the report wrote. “What’s more, these trivially small differences hold even for students who took exactly the same college course.”

The study reported that while 82% of all high school students earn a diploma, college completion rates remain stagnate because students often arrive on campus “ill-prepared for advanced courses.” The researchers recommended schools use AP courses that require critical-thinking skills because many universities make students take those type of courses once they are on campus, even if they already have AP courses to their credit.

“National assessments need to follow students through college graduation to understand what works and what does not over the long term,” the authors concluded. “To date, many standardized tests (including international assessments) simply assume that performance in high school necessarily predicts later success, without revealing how students use such knowledge and skills in college classes or to finish their degree.”

Take More Courses to Graduate Quicker

Debt has become a $1.3 trillion problem for college students. Taking more courses each semester could be part of the solution.

If students would just take on 15 course-credit hours instead of the traditional 12, the savings are estimated at nearly $13,000 for someone trying to earn a four-year degree, according to a report by the Community College Research Center at Columbia University. The study showed that Tennessee students who signed up for 15 course credits in their first semester paid 10%-20% less per degree in tuition and fees.

Completion rates for the 15-credit students rose as well, according to an article in The Atlantic. Those community college students were 6.4% more likely to earn a degree, while the same held true for 11% of four-year students.

The report noted that students who started their college careers by taking 15 credits had the same pass/fail rates as those with 12-credit terms. The research did find that students with lower high-school grade-point averages didn’t fare as well with the extra load.

The Columbia research reinforces the results of a 2012 study that showed part-time community college students were less likely to complete a degree than their full-time counterparts. It also confirmed the findings of the “15 to Finish” campaign, a program developed at the University of Hawai’i.

“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,” Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) said in an education committee hearing last year. “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 four years for a bachelor’s or two years for an associate degree.”

A New Look at MOOC Completion Rates

Researchers have been trying to figure out why completion rates for massive open online courses (MOOCs) tend to stay around 10%. A new study showed that putting learners into study groups based on communication preferences isn’t the answer.

The research done at Pennsylvania State University showed that the groupings had no significant impact on students’ performance or completion. Participants in the survey were put into groups based on their preferred methods of communications for the course: asynchronous, which allows students to learn at their own pace with common online communication such as email or discussion boards, or synchronous, a more facilitated form of communication such as videoconferencing.

“These differences were statistically different and were moderated by English language proficiency, gender, level of education, and age,” Adelina Hristova, a Penn State doctoral student and one of the collaborators on the report, said in an article for Penn State News. “Although the groups designed for the study did not significantly influence students’ course performance and completion, our study can serve as baseline data for making grouping decisions in future online courses, including MOOCs.”

The study did note that older learners were more likely to complete the course. It also found that female students preferred to study in groups, while males preferred synchronous communications for the course.

“It has provided me with a fabulous opportunity to study how students of different ages, cultures, genders, and educational backgrounds learn and practice some of the subjects that I teach—namely, design, problem-solving, and creativity,” said Kathryn Jablokow, a Penn State associate professor of mechanical engineering and engineering design. “Those insights influence how I formulate new research studies, and the MOOC also gives me a unique setting in which to test and disseminate new research results.”

Metrics to Help Students Succeed

A new report from the Institute for Higher Education Policy (IHEP) proposed a new metrics framework to help institutions measure student performance. The report lists performance, efficiency, and equity as the measures by which colleges and universities can better serve students of all backgrounds.

The metrics are designed to assess students’ access, progress, completion, cost, and postcollege outcomes. They also look at college affordability, how resources impact completion, and the experience of all students.

“This report draws on the knowledge and experience of higher-education leaders and experts to lay out in detail the metrics we should be collecting—and explains why those data will make a difference for all students, but particularly for those who traditionally have been underserved by higher education,” said IHEP President Michelle Cooper in a report for eCampus News. “Until now, only some institutions have been willingly and voluntarily collecting data to answer critical questions about who attends college, who succeeds in and after college, and how college is financed. But, the field needs a core set of comprehensive and comparable higher ed metrics and should incorporate those metrics into federal and state data systems. Doing so will make the data available for all students in all institutions, not only those who voluntarily collect and report it.”

Reviving the Original Intent of MOOCs

Almost overnight, massive open online courses (MOOCs) went from idea stage to being the next big thing in higher education. While Sebastian Thrun’s first MOOC attracted an impressive 160,000 students in 2011, interest grew to 35 million individuals who signed up for at least one of the free online courses in 2015.

The blemish on the success story has always been completion rates, but MOOC providers also have had to show they are worth the investment. That pressure has led MOOC platforms to shift emphasis to job training and charging students for credentials.

That’s troubling to author Jonathon Keats, who suggested in a column for Wired that the real goal of MOOCs should be to interest people in everything.

“The technology underlying MOOCs—as well as their reach—provides a solid platform for broadening people’s interests,” Keats wrote. “MOOCs need to be linked across disciplines, with recommendation engines like those employed by Netflix and YouTube to entice students to compulsively take up new interests. Completion rates need to be de-emphasized in favor of curiosity quotients.

“Vocation training is just one thin layer of education,” he added. “For edutech to be worthy of its name—and for everything to truly change—MOOC platforms need to make every mind as expansive as the World Wide Web.”

Georgia School Taking Classes to Students

In 2013, Central Georgia Technical College, Warner Robbins, received a grant to test blended-learning methods in its health-care program over an 11-county area of rural Georgia. That led to BlendFlex, an initiative that provides students the option to switch instructional delivery formats.

“In the past, students had to sign up for face-to-face, hybrid, or online courses—they had to make a choice,” Carol Lee, educational technology director at CGTC, said in an article in eCampus News. “We have a lot of students who would sign up for a face-to-face class, but then lifestyle changes, sickness, or family issues would force them to drop out and we would lose those students.”

Even though CGTC has satellite campuses for rural students, before BlendFlex the only choice for many was to drive to one of the institution’s central campuses or take the course online. Once the telepresence option was added, faculty could teach in their classroom as well as to students who joined from the rural centers via the videoconferencing that is part of the program.

CGTC reports that BlendFlex classes have only a 12% dropout rate, compared to a 21% rate among other classes the institution offers. In addition, evaluations indicated that 99% of students said they liked the ability to switch delivery methods, 93% would recommend a BlendFlex class to other students, and 91% would definitely take another BlendFlex course.

“The biggest challenge is getting teachers to [rethink their role] in the classrooms that are now student-centered,” Lee said. “But that’s what it’s going to take to be a successful college these days.”

MOOC Students Need a Little Nudge

The problem with massive open online courses (MOOCs) has nothing to do with quality of content or access, according to a Northwestern professor. Students have no compelling reason to finish.

Gad Allon conducted a study of students participating in a Coursera MOOC he was teaching, sending out email reminders to a group of 175 students who had already responded to a survey. The number of visits to the class discussion board by students who got the reminder increased by 28%, while the number of posts grew by nearly 97% when compared to the control group of 160 students who didn’t get the email.

On average, students who received email reminders visited the discussion board four more times than the students in the control group and were 13% more likely to complete the quiz the next week.

In a separate experiment, Allon invited nearly 1,000 students to take part in an online discussion about the material used in the course. Only 6% accepted the invitation, but those students were 10% more likely to complete the weekly quizzes and their scores on the tests increased by 2% to 10%.

“One of the biggest issues in education is not the lack of resources, it is actually [a lack of] commitment and accountability,” Allon said in an article for Chicago Inno. “What is really missing, and what the nudge is trying to do, though it is really clearly not enough, is to create some commitment from the students.”

Initiative Will Help More Earn Degrees

Research has found that students earning an associate degree are more likely to complete a four-year undergraduate education and improve their employment opportunities. A new initiative could make it possible for two million community college students to retroactively receive their associate degrees.

The Reverse Transfer Project, an initiative from the National Student Clearinghouse, is a standardized process that allows two- and four-year institutions to transfer student credits. Technology advances in data storage and analytics make it possible to identify credits earned at any institution and transfer them back to the two-year program where a student started, according to a report in eCampus News.

“The data capacity of the Clearinghouse will allow institutions to assist students who have transferred,” said Jamie Merisotis, president and CEO of the Lumina Foundation. “Institutions will now have better data to conduct degree audits on students’ accumulated records and students will have recognition for achieving their associate degree.”

There are already 3,600 institutions participating in the reverse transfer program and more states are working on similar programs through the Correctly Recognizing Education Achievements to Empower (CREATE) Graduates legislation.

“The Clearinghouse Reverse Transfer Project is a major step in improving higher-education outcomes, which will benefit us as a nation,” said Walter G. Bumphus, president and CEO of the America Association for Community Colleges. “More students will get the degrees they deserve. Community colleges will be recognized for the value they add to education. And by granting more degrees, states will be better positioned to attract new business.”

Better Quality Needed in Online Courses

Online course offerings have become commonplace, particularly on community college campuses. However, that quantity does not necessarily mean quality, according to a new report by the Public Policy Institute of California.

The group found that one in nine online courses offered by community colleges in the state has a pass rate considered “successful,” meaning students doing at least as well as in equivalent traditional courses and in more challenging classes. The study, Successful Online Courses in California Community Colleges, noted that 16% of online courses had acceptable pass rates, compared to 44% of traditional classes.

The report found that the median pass rate was about 10% higher for traditional courses, with online students receiving more failing or incomplete grades. It also noted that the success of an online course depended on the instructor.

“The questions that started this project were, ‘Are there certain subjects better taught online? Are there certain community colleges that do a good job online?’” Hans Johnson, one of the authors of the study, said in a report in the Santa Cruz Sentinel. “We thought we may find some patterns by using those kinds of criteria, and the answer is we didn’t.”

Free Community College Works in Tulsa

The idea of tuition-free community college is not all that new. Tulsa Community College, Tulsa, OK, has been offering students the credits to earn a free associate degree since 2007.

The program, Tulsa Achieves, pays tuition for three years of college for high school grads from Tulsa County. The only stipulations are the students must enroll right out of high school, maintain a 2.0 GPA, and perform 40 hours of community service each year they’re in the program.

The college even covers book costs for several hundred of the students through a textbook trust created through private donations. The school enrolled 1,350 students the first year of the program and has had about 1,500 local students sign up each year since then.

There is a cost, of course. Tulsa CC paid nearly $3 million in additional aid in the program’s first year and $3.7 million last year. However, 44% of the first class transferred to a four-year institution and 22% of those first students have earned since a bachelor’s degree.

“We consider it a strong economic-development tool for Tulsa County,” Lauren Brookey, vice president for external affairs at Tulsa CC, said in a report for Inside Higher Education. “People in Tulsa love this program.”