Republican control of the White House, U.S. Congress and most state
capitols likely means less focus on the production of higher education
credentials, at least those earned at traditional, four-year colleges.
Job training almost certainly will get more attention than college
completion in coming years. But those two goals can be compatible. And
the completion push already has begun to include looking at what happens
to students after they graduate.
Inside Higher Ed spoke with 20 experts who work on college
completion from a wide range of perspectives (they are listed below).
Some common themes emerged.
The movement and its message have evolved during the seven or so
years since the Obama administration joined with the Lumina Foundation
and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to go all in on a broad
effort to increase the proportion of Americans who hold a meaningful
postsecondary credential.
The White House at times appeared to focus on the bachelor’s degree
in its completion push, particularly early on. But certificates and
associate degrees got more attention from Washington in recent years.
And this administration did more to elevate community colleges than any
previous one, even proposing a national free community college plan
based on Tennessee’s completion and work force development-grounded free
community college scholarship.
"The job of the community college is going to be more important in
the new administration … The administration is going to challenge us to
be better connected to the economy and work force needs. But that’s
something we’re doing already."
-- Eloy Ortiz Oakley, president of Long Beach Community College and incoming chancellor of California's community college system
Likewise, in 2014 Lumina
added
“high-quality” certificates to its annual tabulation of progress toward
the foundation’s national goal for 60 percent of Americans to hold a
college credential by 2025.
That goal, which mirrors one set by the White House, is likely out of
reach. In 2014, 45.3 percent of working-age adults held a degree or a
job-earning certificate, according to the
most recent data from Lumina.
In 2008, Lumina’s metric showed 37.9 percent of Americans holding at
least an associate degree, meaning degree attainment is up 2.5 percent
during the last six years (4.9 percent of Americans held a high-quality
certificate in 2014).
College completion rates have begun to climb after a two-year slide.
The National Student Clearinghouse Research Center this month said the
six-year completion rate grew to 54.8 percent, an increase of roughly two percentage points over the previous year.
While those tepid improvements aren’t all that exciting, the numbers are moving in the right direction as
college enrollments have slid,
largely due to the collapse of for-profit higher education and the
gradual economic recovery since the recession. College enrollments
typically go down when the job market improves.
"The question nobody seems to be able to answer is what is the
'right' graduation rate, and I would argue that the answer is 'it
depends.' There is no single right or wrong rate, since college
completion is influenced by a multitude of factors in addition to
quality. At what point do we compromise quality or access in the name of
higher completion rates? At what point do we drive the cost so high in
order to solve one problem that we end up creating another problem?"
-- Diane Auer Jones, senior fellow at the Urban Institute and former
Education Department official during the George W. Bush administration
The completion agenda also has taken root across much of the academy,
adding completion to student access as primary goals for higher
education.
Many say helping ensure that more students get to graduation was not
in the past viewed as central to the jobs of faculty members or even
college administrators. That view has changed to a substantial extent
(at times provoking worries about a cheapening of college credentials to
meet completion demands).
Hence the demise of the old trope “look to your left, look to your
right, because one of you won't be here by the end of the year.”
Meanwhile, there’s a growing feeling among higher education experts
and policy makers of both major political parties that a singular goal
of having more Americans earn college credentials isn’t enough.
For one thing, achievement gaps between wealthier white students and
their lower-income, more diverse peers have persisted. Academic quality
remains a variable, raising the question of what, exactly, students are
completing. And increasingly, higher education is under pressure to
demonstrate the value of college credentials in the job market.
The Obama administration
tried unsuccessfully
to link federal financial aid availability to how colleges stack up on
student outcomes, including completion rates and graduates’ earnings
data. And the White House was able to push through regulations that
would sanction for-profits and vocational, nondegree programs at
community colleges that fail to meet thresholds for graduates’ ability
to repay their loans.
The so-called gainful employment rule probably won’t be the last
attempt by the feds to hold colleges accountable for their affordability
and for the job-market value of the credentials they issue. Meanwhile,
performance-based funding formulas -- some of which include data on
graduates’ wages -- are on the books in
more than 30 states.
"There are fairly clear biases [among Republicans] about moving
beyond completion, moving beyond higher education’s comfort zone."
--Tony Carnevale, director of Georgetown University's Center on Education and the Workforce
Yet support for the college completion agenda could wane if, as many
suspect, an administration led by Donald J. Trump were to say that too
many people are attending college. Experts say big spending on
infrastructure, which the president-elect’s team has discussed, could be
heavily focused on jobs for people with high school diplomas, not
college credentials -- a substantial portion of Trump voters.
Equally challenging is the general public’s loss of confidence in the
value of higher education. While data show that college degrees are
increasingly the ticket to the middle class, just 42 percent of
Americans say college is necessary for success in the work force, a
13 percent drop since 2009,
according to polling by Public Agenda.
Whether or not the college completion momentum continues could depend
on how “college” is defined. One-year certificates earned at a
community college or for-profit institution count as “college,” too.
Leaders at the Gates and Lumina Foundations say they are undeterred about the completion agenda.
“We’re doubling down,” said Dan Greenstein, director of education and
postsecondary success at Gates. He cited “unassailable facts” that
“educational attainment tracks directly with earnings.”
Messaging on College Completion Is Shifting
College affordability, student debt and the likelihood of getting a
well-paying job after graduation have dominated conversations about
higher education in recent years.
Those measures of student success and accountability, particularly
with an emphasis on a credential’s value in the labor market, will need
to be at the core of the completion agenda for it to remain relevant.
"One of the most important ways to have good relationships with
employers is to have direct personal relationships between faculty
members and employers. The businesses don’t have any other way to
communicate to the world about what they need besides platitudes and
gross generalizations."
-- Steven L. Johnson, president of Sinclair Community College
In addition, the push for more students to complete college is a
comfortable reform focus for the higher education industry, said Tony
Carnevale, director of Georgetown University Center on Education and the
Workforce.
“This is the kind of problem you want to have,” he said of the higher
education industry, arguing that completion also misses the larger
concern about value. He calls the push "industrial hygiene,” an attempt
to clean up a self-serving issue.
The next iteration of the completion agenda, according to Steve
Gunderson, president and CEO of Career Education Colleges and
Universities, the for-profit sector’s primary trade group, includes a
longer list of imperatives: retention, completion, employment, repayment
and student satisfaction.
And the word “college” more often than not should be replaced by “postsecondary skills,” he said.
At the same, time, some observers say higher education has yet to
adequately resolve even first-order questions about how its access and
student success missions should fit together. As budgets tighten,
particularly at public universities and small private colleges, there
often are trade-offs between the two and tough decisions to make.
Legitimate concerns about the completion push often are conflated with
just hewing to the status quo.
Meanwhile, the nation’s widening political divisions haven’t helped advance the crucial discussion about the purpose of college.
"Strident partisanship on the left and right is a tremendous
obstacle. We have lost our appetite in this country to understand across
boundaries."
--Alison Kadlec, senior vice president and director of higher education and work force programs at Public Agenda
State and Local Governments Will Continue the Completion Push, as Will Colleges Themselves
College completion is a big part of the growing interest in
performance-based funding at the state level, particularly in red states
like Tennessee, which has perhaps the nation’s most robust completion
policies.
Lawmakers in many of these states view college completion as a work
force issue. Employers need more skilled workers, and for now, skills
are represented by credentials. There also is bipartisan agreement that
college outcomes need to improve, including along equity lines. That’s
unlikely to change, given worries about the skills gap, job creation and
income inequality.
“Postsecondary learning is more important than ever before,” said Jamie Merisotis, president and CEO of the Lumina Foundation.
Lumina has shifted its approach to more directly address the work force side of completion. For example, the foundation’s
new strategic plan
focuses on how to reach adults who hold some college credits but no
credential, as well as people who have no higher education experience.
To meet its completion goal, Lumina will need to increase attainment in
the former group by 6.1 million and 5.1 million in the latter.
"Higher education continues to be a path into the middle class. … I don’t know how we do that without education."
-- Dan Greenstein, director of education and postsecondary success for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Likewise, Tennessee
has expanded its free community college program to include slots for returning adult students.
And while free college for all (with annual family income of up to
$125,000) is on hold for now, with the defeat of the presidential
candidate who championed it, Hillary Clinton, college promise programs
like Tennessee’s are spreading to other states and many local
communities.
As the college completion agenda matures, several experts said it
will move toward a focus on jobs and on the nitty-gritty of implementing
the next phases of reforms that began years ago.
For example, as colleges sought to improve graduation rates during
the last eight years, they were actually looking at student progression
and retention, said Ellen Wagner, vice president of research for
Hobsons, a company that works on student success, including the use of
data analytics.
"The completion agenda is deeply ingrained in the operating systems of our institutions."
-- David Baime, senior vice president for government relations and
policy analysis for the American Association of Community Colleges
That work has a financial benefit for colleges, because each student
retained means one more who doesn’t need to be recruited, which can be
expensive. Quitting that effort would be counterproductive.
One way to view the completion agenda, Wagner said, is an effort to
“reduce friction” and barriers as students move through a P-20 education
system. That’s a big job, she said. “We’re never going to be done with
this.”
Don’t expect the federal government to drop its interest in completion, either.
It’s a safe bet that congressional Republicans, who may well be the
driving force in federal higher education policy for the next four years
if a Trump administration focuses on other topics, will seek a smaller
role for the feds. But Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee and
Representative Virginia Foxx of North Carolina, who will lead the two
congressional education committees, are both supportive of the value of
higher education and of college completion. (Foxx, though,
recently told Inside Higher Ed that she didn’t know what the Obama administration’s completion agenda was.)
"Congress really does hold the cards in terms of how the issues get framed."
-- Jamie Merisotis, president and CEO of the Lumina Foundation
Common Ground on Alternatives to the Traditional College Pathway
The incoming Trump administration has floated the idea of an
infrastructure improvement program with a $1 trillion price tag.
According to Carnevale, 70 percent of the jobs created by such spending
would require only a high school diploma.
Even so, some of that money would almost certainly be used for job
training at colleges, particularly two-year institutions. If the funding
actually happens -- a big if at this point -- it's impact on higher
education would dwarf the Obama administration’s $2 billion work force
program that was aimed at community colleges.
A focus on high school training would also have a higher education
component. That’s because of growing interest in dual and concurrent
enrollment programs, which Republicans in particular tend to favor.
More than 10 percent of high school students are taking college
courses, according to the National Alliance of Concurrent Enrollment
Partnerships. About one-third of dual enrollments are in career and
technical education courses, the alliance said, with particular growth
in rural schools and those where a majority of students are ethnic or
racial minorities.
Likewise, apprenticeships are growing in popularity, with bipartisan
support. And supporters say apprenticeships should expand beyond
technical jobs.
"The election has opened up space to talk about high-quality alternatives to the four-year degree."
-- Mary Alice McCarthy, director of the Center on Education and Skills with the education policy program at New America
A career and vocational focus earlier in the education pipeline is a
form of “tracking,” which is more common in Europe. Tracking tends to
freak out Americans, particularly when it is seen to diminish
educational opportunity and if it is imposed on students, giving up on
them too early.
Yet tracking, when done well, shares some common philosophies and goals with the
degree “pathways” approach
Gates is leading. The foundation is spending $5.2 million to help 30
community colleges in 17 states “design and implement structured
academic and career pathways at scale, for all of their students.”
Free community college programs in some ways also bring together high
schools and two-year colleges. Tennessee’s government, for example,
says it is
the “first state in the nation to have a fully funded K-14 public
education.” Talking about K-14 is major shift, and one that mirrors what
the Obama administration was trying to accomplish with its free
community college proposal.
Other postsecondary alternatives that sit
somewhere between high school and traditional college
are expanding and enjoy bipartisan support. Those approaches include
competency-based education programs, skills boot camps and employer
certifications.
Some community colleges have begun offering competency-based
credentials, through the federal government's $2 billion work force
grant and in partnerships with Western Governors University. Several
two-year-college leaders said competency-based programs would expand in
the sector.
Some of these emerging players offer “bite-size, high-value”
credentials, said Carnevale. “The labor market and costs are melting the
system.”
"We need to expand the pathways. … We’re going to have a bigger tent, with different providers."
-- Jason Tyszko, executive director of the Center for Education and Workforce at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation
Another rare spot of agreement between Republicans and Democrats is
that the accreditation process should be reformed, albeit in different
ways.
The Obama administration and Senate Democrats have pushed accreditors
to scrutinize student outcomes, including completion rates and
employment outcomes.
Republicans seem less likely than Democrats to prod accreditors to
set “bright lines” for graduation rates. And some conservatives say too
much of a push on completion rates can lead to unintended consequences,
including a weakening of academic standards. Faculty unions and many
professors agree.
"We need educated people to fuel economic growth. … In a knowledge economy, a college education is the way to bridge the gap."
-- Josh Wyner, executive director of the Aspen Institute’s College Excellence Program
Yet members of both parties have sought to create alternative
accreditation pathways for noncollege providers, including Senator
Michael Bennet, a Colorado Democrat, and Senator Marco Rubio, a Florida
Republican.
Lumina also has been active in exploring new forms of credentialing,
with an eye toward completion and job training. If those efforts take
hold, they could feature different approaches to quality control.
Deregulation, For-Profit Colleges and Open-Access Admissions
It’s been a rough five years for the for-profit sector, which has
seen aggressive scrutiny, high-profile collapses, sliding enrollments
and hemorrhaging revenue.
While experts disagree about the role of federal regulation in the
sector’s decline, the U.S. Department of Education has been tougher with
the industry in recent years, and contributed to the demise of
Corinthian Colleges and ITT Technical Institutes, among others.
The decline of for-profits has slowed the country's overall
postsecondary attainment rates. That’s not a bad thing, according to the
industry’s critics, who say for-profit-issued credentials too often
lack value in the job market.
Congressional Republicans plan to roll back federal regulations aimed
at for-profits, including gainful employment. The Trump administration
likely would back that move.
Some community colleges are worried that a major recovery by
for-profits would increase competition and cut into their enrollments.
“There is a palpable sense of fear” on community college campuses about
for-profits rising again, said Josh Wyner, executive director of the
Aspen Institute’s College Excellence Program.
Yet for-profits have sustained potentially lasting damage. Many
players in the industry also face structural challenges, including a
price point that is a tougher sell and a stigma around the term
“for-profit.”
Gunderson said the shift in Washington is an “opportunity for us to reintroduce ourselves.”
But he said for-profits are unlikely to again seek to enroll large
numbers of students who are unprepared for college and face low odds of
completing.
“This sector is not going back to where it was in 2010 when it
focused on open access,” said Gunderson. “We cannot ever endure the
experience we have had over the last eight years.”
Direct link to article:
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/12/08/experts-talk-about-college-completion-push-and-what-comes-next
