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Category: Higher Ed Policy

Brookings State Grant Aid Study

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Released last week by the Brown Center on Education Policy at Brookings, Beyond Need and Merit: Strengthening State Grant Programs describes the scope and type of state grant programs across the US, and provides recommendations for improvement. Such programs currently provide over $9 billion in aid to students each year and comprise, on average, approximately 12 percent of total state funding for higher education. However, they vary widely in number, complexity, eligibility criteria, grant amounts, and efficacy.

Average annual tuition at a public four-year institution in the US is just over $7,000, and the average state grant disbursed to students ranges from $44 in Alaska to over $1,700 in Sourth Carolina (averaging $627 across all states). While 73 percent of all such aid is disbursed based primarily on financial circumstances, many states have adopted large, merit-based programs in recent years that direct grants to non-needy students. For example, the report notes that in Louisiana, where the average annual household income is $45,000, 45 percent of total state grant funds went to students from households with income above $80,000.

Ultimately, the report focuses on ways to potentially streamline state grant programs and better target their resources to those students who need them most in order to increase the impact on both college access and completion. Major recommendations include:

  • Focus grants on students with financial need, who have been shown by research to be most postively affected by grant aid.
  • Simplify grant programs to the extent possible while still being able to target resources to needy students. Straightforward applications, early knowledge of awards, and effective net-price calculators all have a positive impact on application and enrollment rates for students with financial need.
  • Consolidate multiple programs where possible, including converting state required tuition set-asides to state grants to avoid the appearance that the students are subsidizing needy students instead of the state.
  • Create financial incentives for students while they are enrolled by requiring minimum but attainable grades and steady progress toward completion.
  • Consider targeting resources to non-traditional students, including those who are older, part-time, and placebound.
  • When resources are constrained, ration grant aid in a way that is clear and predictable for students.
  • Consider state grant aid incentives in concert with federal and institutional aid to ensure that programs are not operating at cross purposes.
  • Evaluate existing programs as well as test and evaluate new approaches.

Although not discussed much in the report, Washington State has one of the most generous state grant programs in the nation, even though it currently does not have enough funds to accomodate all qualified students. 98 percent of Washington grant funds are awarded based on student financial need and the average grant per student is nearly $900, compared to the national average of $627. Washington State Need Grant funding and policy has and will continue to be key to maintaining college affordability as scarce resources have necessitated rising tuition while household incomes are stagnant. This report provides some useful guidelines for ensuring that taxpayers receive the best return for each dollar invested in student success.

For Profits Resist Executive Order Protecting Veteran Students

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We’ve blogged about recent federal scrutiny of the for-profit higher education sector, and specifically about their reported exploitation of veteran students. In addition to new Department of Education higher education regulations implemented last year, President Obama signed Executive Order 13607 in late April. The Order charges several administrative agencies (Defense, Veterans Affairs, and Education) with developing a set of principles that will apply to all institutions receiving funds from federal military and veteran education benefits programs, including the GI Bill. The Principles must be developed within 90 days of the Order and ensure the following for all students eligible for such benefits:

  • Require that institutions provide prospective students with information about the total cost of the education and the portion of that cost that will be covered by their military or veteran benefits as well as estimated student loan costs.
  • Require that institutions provide prospective students with clear data about student outcomes such as graduation rates and time to degree.
  • End all fraudulent or overly aggressive recruiting techniques.
  • Provide individualized educational plans detailing how a student will fulfill program requirements and provide an estimated time to degree.
  • Provide a contact for financial and academic advising to each student.

The Order also mandates development of a centralized system that allows any student receiving military or veteran benefits to register complaints with the federal government. Additionally, it seeks to trademark the term GI Bill and other related terms to cut down on misleading or faudulent use.

Although the Executive Order applies to all institutions who enroll students receiving these benefits, including the UW, the vast majority of violations of these principles exist in the for profit sector. Recognizing that the sector is most affected by the new Order, the Association of Private Sector Colleges and Universities is  appealing to Congress by arguing that the Administration is creating unessecary and duplicative oversight. In the meantime, the involved agencies are moving forward in compliance with the Order.

New OPB Brief on Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs)

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Today, with public financing for higher education eroding, tuition on the rise, and little growth in household income, the idea that technology can and must revolutionize higher education has once again taken strong hold. Recent start-ups, Coursera and Udacity, founded by Stanford faculty members, and a joint MIT/Harvard venture called edX have the country talking once again about the future of higher education. A new OPB brief  describes these new developments, clarifies the differences between classroom learning, online learning and Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), and evaluates their roles in and impact on higher education in the US.

Tom Friedman published a glowing op-ed about MOOCs this week that reads more like a commercial for these start-up companies than a careful consideration, but many of the Reader Picks comments are quite good in pointing out the many, many questions that remain about how this use of technology will fit into education into the future.

Fewer Californians Enrolling at UC/CSU

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The Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) released a report addressing the effects of state disinvestment on enrollment rates in Californian higher education institutions. California high school graduates, despite applying and being eligible for enrollment, are less likely to enroll in the UC or CSU system today than five years ago. The report blames this decline on state cuts in higher education spending, which has led to skyrocketing tuition and enrollment limits at California schools. While California community colleges have absorbed some of this decrease, the report finds that students are increasingly going out-of-state or not enrolling in college at all.

Highlights from the report include:

  • Enrollment rates of Californians at UC and CSU have fallen by one-fifth in the past five years, from 22 percent of CA high school graduates in 2005 to 18 percent in 2010.
  • UC and CSU have rationed enrollment and increased tuition in order to blunt the effect of decreasing state support on educational quality. Tuition rose by 50 percent between 2007 and 2011 at UC, and by 47 percent at CSU.  Tuition at CA community colleges has also almost doubled in that time.
  • UC has reduced its campus enrollment targets and places students not accepted to their campus of choice into a referral pool, which grants them admission to less popular campuses where they are less likely to enroll. CSU now requires a higher SAT/GPA combination for CA students that live further from their chosen campus in an effort to limit enrollment. Community colleges cannot officially deny enrollment, but they have increased class sizes and decreased program offerings which effectively limits slots.
  • Most students accepted to UC who decide not to enroll there, go to private institutions, usually out of state (34 percent).  30 percent enroll at CSU, 12 percent to community colleges in California, 8 percent to public schools out of state, and 10 percent do not enroll in college at all.

The report finds these trends troubling, since it represents a great loss of human capital to California. Estimates say that two out of five jobs in CA in 2025 will require a bachelor’s degree; if current trends continue, California will be short one million bachelor’s degree holders by that time. The report recommends locking in tuition for four years for each incoming class, offering deferred tuition payment plans, reinvesting in higher education and increasing the availability of financial aid to students in order to combat decreasing enrollment rates. The full report is available in this PDF link.

Report Promotes Autonomy for UC Campuses

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The Center for Studies in Higher Education (CSHE) at UC Berkeley has released a new report calling for a modernization of the UC system’s governance structure. Today, the UC system is run as one university with multiple campuses, and most decisions are made by a single, system-wide Board of Regents. The Center contends that the UC system has undergone huge changes in the past 50 years and that this centralized governance system is outdated. The campuses face individual challenges and opportunities: less funding from the state of California, increasing complexity, more diversity in the student body, and special programs, faculty and capital projects. The report contends that a more localized system of governance would be responsive to the needs of the campuses, would promote more efficient decision-making, and would allow the Regents to better capitalize on the unique opportunities of each campus.

The authors recommend that the UC system shift towards a hybrid system of governance, maintaining the Board of Regents while creating individual campus governing boards. The UC Board of Regents would continue to provide system-wide coordination and planning, preserve the UC-wide state budget, ensure access, and protect the reputation for academic excellence the UC system has cultivated. The local campus boards would approve campus budgets and allocate financial aid monies, set tuition for graduate and out-of-state students as well as for resident undergraduates (within Regental limits), set total enrollment capacity, decide on faculty cost-of-living adjustments, and approve campus construction projects.

The plan is controversial, and has received mixed reviews from UC authorities. While UC President Mark Yudof does not endorse the CSHE proposal, he concedes that the system should have further conversations about governance to make the system more flexible and efficient.  Robert Birgeneau, one of the report authors and the current UC Berkeley Chancellor, defended the proposal, claiming it provides the necessary autonomy for campuses to address their individual challenges and opportunities.

More about the proposed structure of the campus boards, and the specific responsibilities they would hold, is available in the full report.

HECB Transitions to the Student Achievement Council

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Last year, SB 5182 officially abolished the Higher Education Coordinating Board (HECB), replacing it with two new agencies. The change was intended to focus state appropriations on financial assistance for students, and direct a smaller appropriation to coordinated policymaking and planning, directed by a new council with different membership than the HECB’s.

This year, the Legislature passed HB 2483, which amends SB 5182 in several ways. The bill creates the Student Achievement Council, comprised of an Executive Director appointed by the Governor, five citizen members (one of whom must be a student), and one representative each from the four-year public institutions, two-year public colleges, K-12, and a non-profit higher education institution. The new Council is tasked with promoting educational attainment and conducting research and analysis on higher education. The bill also creates a Joint Committee on Higher Education to assess the progress of the Council and propose legislation, made up of four members from each legislative chamber. While the Office of Student Financial Assistance remains, the Office now reports to the Council.

Effectively, this bill changes very little—the Student Achievement Council and the Office of Student Financial Assistance, while both are more focused on financial and governance matters, retain many of the basic duties of the HECB, including:

  • Administer state and federal financial aid, loan programs, and oversee the GET program;
  • Review budget requests of higher education institutions and propose recommendations to the Office of Financial Management and the Legislature;
  • Create strategic plans for higher education;
  • Increase educational attainment and access, particularly for minorities, and set goals for degree production;
  • Engage in higher education policy research, and ensure the quality and accountability of state degree programs;
  • Furnish a prioritized list of capital improvement projects to the Legislature; and,
  • Administer scholarship endowment funds, Washington Scholars Program.

All employees of the HECB were automatically transferred to the Council to assist with its duties, as per the final bill.

The most significant change is that the Office and the Council are relieved of certain reporting and policymaking duties to which the HECB was formerly assigned, such as analyzing technology programs, approving degree programs, estimating annual state support for students and costs associated with higher education delivery. While the Council is relieved of these duties, the strategic planning, system design, and budget recommendation work is ongoing.

Another Report on the Effect of Public Investment on Attainment

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Demos, a research and advocacy organization, recently published a report entitled “The Great Cost Shift” discussing the effects of higher tuition and lower state investment on a growing and diverse college population. The report focuses on the Millennial generation, the group of students born in the 1980s and 90s and beginning to enter college in the 2000s.

 There were 26.7 million young people (ages 18-24) in the US in 1990, and 30.7 million in 2010. This population growth combined with increased participation in higher education created a 37.9 percent undergraduate enrollment increase in public universities over 20 years. Additionally, the Millennial generation is characterized by much greater racial ethnic and racial diversity than previous generations (12.3 percent are African American, 57.2 percent are white, and 20.1 percent are Hispanic). Both the growth and diversity of the young adult population has altered the needs of students, and institutions have had to adjust both services and support as a result.

These changes in the number, type and needs of students over the last 20 years has been accompanied by a steady disinvestment of state governments in higher education, which resulted in significant  tuition increases. The very institutions, public, that have absorbed the majority (65.5%) of enrollment increases have also endured the largest decline in funding per student (26.1% decline in real terms from 1990-2010). As a result, public four-year institutions raised tuition by 112.5 percent, adjusted for inflation, over the same time period while the real median household income rose just 2.1 percent.

While states and institutions have often offset these tuition increases with larger financial aid packages for student with need, it is increasingly not enough to cover students’ educational expenses, and students borrowed 4.5 times more in 2010 than in 2000.

The report concluded with a number of recommendations:

  • Recognizing that lower investment in higher education results in higher tuition and lower access for low and middle-income students, states should appropriate more money to higher ed, especially investing more in large institutions that produce a significant number of degrees.
  • Reform the tax system to relieve the tax burden on low and middle-income families.
  • States should move away from merit-based aid and focus on need-based financial assistance. They should also increase awareness about the benefits of federal student loan programs to decrease the volume of private debt students take on.

To read the entire report, please click here.

Faculty Salaries Remain Flat

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AAUP released its annual academic salary information this week. The data show, once again, that faculty salaries have not kept up with inflation, that they have not increased significantly over many years, and that the pay gap between professors at public and private institutions continues to grow.

Although these data do not address the rapidly increasing costs of benefits (healthcare especially), they do make clear that the growing cost of tuition is not primarily driven by increasing faculty salaries, a popular argument. Don’t expect that explanation to fall out of favor, however, as previous years of data have seemed to make no impact on its prevalence.

Change? Us?

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City University of New York dean Ann Kirschner (note she also sits on the Apollo Group’s Board of Directors) posted an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education yesterday about “change” in higher education. She characterized the “glacial pace” at which higher education institutions evolve despite funding crises, new technology, and mounting pressure from for-profit institutions and federal political agendas. This article correctly identifies many of the challenges facing public higher education and also, the need to meet old and new challenges with new ideas.

However, one thing missing from this piece is an analysis of what things about higher education today (and yesterday) are worth protecting, preserving and investing in more deeply. Further, we would like to challenge the claim that universities have not evolved during the last century. Students donning clickers, ID cards with electronic journal access, and nearly 24-hour email access to professors might agree. Kirschner’s article appropriately identifies many of the challenges that make change difficult at (sometimes) huge, complex, and varied institutions. However, we would add that each institution must examine its values and determine what is worth preserving (or even, expanding) and what is in need of reform, and then reform quickly. As many of the thoughtful comments on this article state, change for change’s sake, or the wholesale adoption of untested change is more than futile, it can be incredibly destructive.

News Flash! Report Confirms Dismal Reductions in State Support for WA Higher Ed

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The latest State Higher Education Executive Officer (SHEEO) State Higher Education Finance Report (SHEF) confirms that the Great Recession accelerated public four-year institutions’ reliance on tuition revenue as state funding declined. Released annually, this report is helpful because it summarizes state appropriations and net tuition revenue for the prior fiscal year well before the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data Set (IPEDS) is available.

The SHEF report provides net tuition revenue, state appropriations and calculates these revenue streams on a per student FTE basis, combining student FTE from all sectors into one state-wide denominator. According to the report, Washington has experienced some of the most significant higher education state funding reductions in the country, particularly over the last five years, at the same time as student enrollment is growing. Table 5 measures educational appropriations by state and shows that Washington’s educational appropriations per FTE decreased 21.2 percent in FY11. Across all states, Washington was one of twelve states that cut higher education funding per FTE over 20 percent, including Utah (20%), South Carolina (32%), and Michigan (24%).

When FY11 state appropriations are combined with net tuition revenue to calculate a total net loss of revenue per FTE, Washington again falls to the bottom quartile of the rankings. However, it is important to note that this calculation includes community colleges, which collect far lower amounts of tuition. Washington’s large community college population significantly lowers the total tuition revenue collected per student FTE and makes it difficult to accurately compare the result to states with a very different mix of types of students.

It is clear that Washington’s public institutions (including the large community and technical college sector and all six public baccalaureates) have experienced significant state funding cuts in recent years and have not raised tuition as much as institutions in many other states. As a result, Washington’s total educational funding shift has been more dire than most when  compared to the national average, but the dubious distinction of having the deepest and worst state funding cuts to all of higher education in the last year, much less the last 25 years, belongs to Vermont and New Hampshire.