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In a new policy brief just released by the Scholars Strategy Network at Harvard University, I make the case that the emotional meanings of financial aid can and should be enhanced to promote student success.  Sociologists and psychologists have long known that money has social value and that this can be increased through social connections.  The creators of the GI Bill understood this and took advantage of it by ensuring all recipients understood where funding for that program came from and what it meant. The same must now be done for the federal Pell Grant.  In fact, it could be done for all grant programs.  Governors, mayors, legislators, and yes, presidents, should get involved in conveying a strong, supportive message to the millions of needy yet promising students struggling every day to make it through college. PS. Just got the following response on Twitter. @ saragoldrickrab TRUTH. as # Pell Recipient, I had no idea why I received 3K for my education.. jus...

Over the last several years, UW-Madison has increased its tuition at a higher rate than its System peers, thanks to the Madison Initiative for Undergraduates. That shift has not been accompanied by a decline in the percent of students receiving Pell Grants--in fact there's been a 5.5 percent increase in % Pell since 2000. Some are saying that this means that low-income students have been "held harmless" from the rising tuition, and that further increases would likely not lead to diminished economic diversity on campus. Furthermore, we are told, we can look to the outreach campaigns of institutions like UVA and UNC-Chapel Hill (home to Access UVA and the Carolina Covenant respectively) for models of anti-"sticker shock" programs that "work." These claims are terrific examples of why it's a bad idea to make causal claims based on correlational data. If you want to make those statements, you can look to those examples and find support for your ag...

There's growing concern with higher education's affordability problem, as well there should be. It's hard to see how college will promote social mobility if a kid's ability to access it is increasingly linked to whether or not his family has money. So it's heartening to see college leaders attempting to provide solutions. But it'd be even better if we first saw them earnestly attempting to understand where the real sources of trouble lie. I'm afraid that step's being skipped a bit too often, running the risk of making things worse. Here's a recent example. At this month's Regents Board Meeting , University of Wisconsin System President Kevin Reilly was explicitly asked to name some solutions to promoting affordability at his institutions. There were many ways he could respond. To his credit, Reilly acknowledged the importance of growing the state's paltry support for need-based aid and he said that multiple solutions were needed--there...

I love a good controversy about an important higher education topic. What better way to enjoy a Wisconsin snowstorm than to sit cozily inside, trading emails with knowledgeable folks who are trying to sort out why it appears college completion rates have declined in the U.S. over the last 30 or 40 years. I'm hard-pressed to think of one (well, maybe, after a long day of work having this 38-week fetus out of me would be nice). So, thanks to Sarah Turner , John Bound, and Michael Lovenheim for giving us such a nice meaty analysis to chew over this week. There's already been a good bit written about and commented on this report, particularly by Cliff Adelman , the man who gave the world America's longitudinal transcript data and a robust series of reports on what they tell us about colleges and students. The fact that so many people find so many different messages in the analysis actually bodes well for the paper--it's partly a story about trends in completion rates ...

The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights recently announced that it would investigate whether some colleges are discriminating against women in an effort to generate a more gender-diverse student population. Reaction was mixed, with some saying it's about time that the "crisis with boys" in higher education is acknowledged and addressed, and others expressing some disbelief and ridicule that the gender wars have come to this. But part of the overall response really stuck in my craw--the oft-repeated claim that we "just don't know" what's going on with boys. According to many, sources for the gender differential in higher education are a complete " mystery ," a puzzle , a whodunit that we may be intentionally ignoring. Yes, there are numerous potential explanations for the under-representation of men in higher education--and in particular the growing female advantage in terms of bachelor's degree completion. For example, it could be that boys ...

A spate of recent articles, including those covering Bill Bowen and Mike McPherson's new book (which I promise to review just as soon as my copy arrives), have left me a bit perplexed-- wondering aloud "where have you all been?" The punchline each time is that a fair proportion of adults starting college are not finishing. Yes, and duh. This is not new, and if it's news well I guess it's only because we've deliberately kept our heads in the sand. But there's no way that folks like New York Times reporter David Leonhardt have been deliberately oblivious, and yet he's writing about low college completion rates as if they've just been unearthed. In a recent blog post , Kevin Carey implied the same-- just as he did in a recent American Enterprise Institute report . But this has been a prominent topic of discussion for years--maybe a decade plus! Just look at Kevin's own 2004 report A Matter of Degrees (which received plenty of media covera...