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Since when did an effort to ensure that students receive a high-quality affordable education in exchange for their financial aid become unconstitutional micromanagement of colleges and universities ? This is where the rubber hits the road, folks. Where the needs of a particularly elite form of academia comes into conflict with the average student's right to an affordable public education. And apparently it's about to get ugly.  Don't believe the hype. President Obama is not attacking faculty, he is not seeking to destroy public colleges and universities which are the workhorses of higher education, and for pete's sake he is not proposing a pseudo-NCLB for higher education. The President's main goal is simple:  After decades of hoping that students could hold institutions of higher education and states responsible for providing a high-quality, affordable college experience that leads to degrees, he's calling the nation's attention to the fact that the market...

Reviewing the range of responses to President Obama's plan to reduce college costs, and the questions that are being raised on Twitter, it seems important that the Administration clarify a few things sooner rather than later. 1. This effort to reduce college costs is a first step and thus it is not intended to solve all problems.  The President should say something more specific about the ultimate goal and what it would look like in practice. Are we working towards a free community college education? Are we trying to close achievement gaps?  What is the intended outcome down the road? 2. This is not NCLB for higher education.  The President needs to assure the public that he is not calling for standardized testing, the end of professorial tenure, or a focus on specific fields or majors.  He is trying to help more Americans access the quality post secondary education they seek, not water down quality or redefine what matters. 3. This is an effort to protect public h...

One of the most prominent concerns raised about President Obama's proposed performance-based funding plan for higher education is that it could reduce access by encouraging creaming.  In other words, what's to stop colleges and universities from simply raising the bars for entry, tightening their admissions policies, in order to improve graduation rates and lower default rates? Good question. I'd like to make a few points and then open this up for discussion.  It's one of the big areas that needs bright minds thinking hard in search of solutions, and I hope you'll jump in with good ideas.  We're going to have to look far and wide for solutions, as we can expect that folks in education probably don't have all the answers. 1. The problem already exists.  The number of colleges raising their admissions requirements over time tells this story.  So let's not pretend like we're creating a new problem. The question is whether we're making it worse. 2. N...

Cross-posted from the Chronicle of Higher Ed.   Over all, I’m a fan of President Obama’s proposal to rate colleges and link the results to financial aid. The plan is to give students attending institutions rated high—on such measures as tuition and graduation rates, debt and earnings of graduates, and the percentage of low-income students enrolled—larger grants, as well as lower-interest loans. The proposal ends the “tinkering” that most higher-education reform has pursued; it aims squarely at the main drivers of college costs: private and for-profit institutions (and their happy followers, the elite public flagships) and states. That is the approach my colleagues and I argued for in a recent paper for the American Enterprise Institute. “Recent national opinion polls indicate that 74 percent of Americans believe that higher education is unaffordable, and 92 percent of college presidents agree,” we noted. “While analysts have offered several potential explanations for ...

In 2010, UW-Madison graduate student Kia Sorensen and I published a paper in the Future of Children about college access and success among single parents attending college. We utilized data from the 2008 National Postsecondary Student Aid Study (NPSAS) and the latest NPSAS just came out for 2012. I notice the following trends related to this population.  The representation of single parents among undergraduates grew again. In the 1980s it was 7% and by 2008 it was 13%-- in 2012 it was 15.2%. That growth was entirely among women, not men.  The fraction of male undergraduates were are single parents remained steady at 8%, while the fraction of female undergraduates who are single parents grew from 17% in 2088 to 20.7% in 2012. The racial/ethnic differences in single parenting changed slightly, creeping upwards by a point for non-Hispanic white students and down a point for Asian students. The situation for single parents on college campuses nationwide has not improved much over...

Four years ago I attended a presentation at the annual meetings of the American Sociological Association (ASA) in which Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa previewed the findings of Academically Adrift , their influential book published in 2010.   In a column for the Chronicle of Higher Education, I wrote that this “cool study” was producing some interesting results.   Most importantly, I reported, that it seemed like the learning gains identified by the research “didn’t look like much.”   I was concerned, for sure, and thus wasn’t surprised when the authors eventually subtitled their book “Limited Learning on College Campuses.”   Fast forward, and after attending a presentation at this year’s ASA in New York last week, I’ve come to question my assessment—and theirs.    At the time, I was looking at percentage point gains over time, and we know that these are not a good way to assess effect sizes since they do not take into account the amount of variation in th...

Ben Castleman and Bridget Long of Harvard University just issued a terrific new paper on the impacts of a Florida need-based grant distributed to students across the state.  Using a rigorous regression-discontinuity design, the authors make several contributions to the study of the impacts of financial aid by tacking a couple of of tough questions: Does need-based aid promote college completion? Who benefits most from need-based aid? Is it the highest-achievers to whom merit aid is often targeted? They find that YES, need-based aid (without any performance criteria) produces strong and statistically significant impacts on credits earned and degree completion.  Specifically the authors find that $1,000 more of grant eligibility increased the probability of staying continuously enrolled through the spring semester of students' freshman year by 3.3 percentage points, increased the cumulative number of credits students completed after four years by 2.3 credits, and increased the...

Just a few years ago, we the people of UW-Madison were hearing quite a bit about the flagship university of another state -- the University of Virginia.  Our Chancellor at the time, Biddy Martin, is from Virginia, and lauded UVA's efforts to gain autonomy from the state while also increasing affordability through its "Access UVA" program. I vehemently and repeatedly disagreed with Martin's assessment of UVA and its "successes" at the time, but to little avail.  She managed to convince most of the university that a semi-divorce from the state would allow for financial flexibilities that would help to make college more affordable. While some of her plans were thwarted by the rest of Wisconsin, she got the vote of the Faculty Senate and to this day, many students and faculty speak of her efforts as if they made UW-Madison more affordable. In point of fact, they did not, and today even the poster child she commended-- UVA-- fell to pieces. Access UVA will no lo...

We are welcoming a new chancellor to UW-Madison this fall, along with many other new leaders.  I have been receiving many emails from colleagues and students expressing feelings (both positive and negative) about campus life and the direction it is taking, and in response I will soon begin to host Room for Debate - style forums on key topics. The intention is to provide our community with a sense of the array of opinions, and share insights with our administrators-- including Chancellor Rebecca Blank. I welcome your participation. Please email me at srab@education.wisc.edu with suggestions as to what questions the forums should be asking, and who you'd like to hear from.   This is open to anyone in the UW-Madison community, very broadly defined-- including community members, people working at other institutions, etc. In addition, please email me if you are willing to contribute your opinion to the forums.  If you have a compelling reason to write anonymously (and there ar...

The New York Times has been running a terrific series helping to illustrate why costs of healthcare in this country are so incredibly out of control. Today's story is masterful in the way it breaks down the cost of an artificial hip replacement in the U.S. versus Belgium.  The cost in the U.S. is over $78,000, while in Belgium it is $13,660. The main cost differences lie in variation in the surgeon's fee (about 16 times higher in the U.S.), the implant cost (more than 8 times higher in the U.S.) and the hospital room cost (about 8 times higher on a per-night basis).  These differences helped direct the reporters towards a story that unpacks the reasons for variation in impact and hospital costs, while unfortunately saying little about the differences in surgeon's fees. Imagine what we could learn from similar analyses of the costs of higher education in this country versus in others.   Time and again I hear that costs of education students at the postsecondary level are ...

Starting today, the National Student Power Convergence is occupying UW-Madison.  My home department of Educational Policy Studies is a proud sponsor of this terrific event.  It is FREE, open to the public, and the place to be for the next 5 days.  UW Alum Maxwell Love , newly elected Vice-President of the United States Student Association, is a key organizer. The agenda is entirely constructed by student organizers and aimed at sharing political and tactical analyses, and creating replicable campaigns to put student issues on the table in higher education nationwide. Among the program highlights relevant for readers of this blog: Friday August 2, 230-4 pm, Ingraham Hall Room 122 at UW-Madison Student Debt: Dealing with Existing & Future Debt Nelini Stamp as Moderator, Heather McGhee of Demos, Anne Johnson of Generation Progress, Sami Alloy of Oregon Working Families Party, Scott Ross of One Wisconsin, and Sophia Zaman of United States Student Association The millenn...