Over the last three years a large-scale experiment called Project Win-Win has helped more than 4,200 former college students obtain an associate degree, months or years after they dropped out. Yet the venture has also underscored the challenges of identifying, evaluating, and locating would-be graduates, who are highly mobile—and not always interested in a diploma.
On Tuesday representatives of participating two- and four-year institutions gathered here to discuss what they had learned from the project, which was led by the Institute for Higher Education Policy and financed by the Lumina Foundation and the Kresge Foundation. Spanning nine states, the venture includes 51 community colleges and 10 four-year institutions that grant associate degrees. Their goal is to identify former students who, though eligible, have never received an associate degree, as well as those who stopped just a few classes short.
“There are a lot of people walking around this country empty handed ... who should have a degree,” said Clifford Adelman, senior associate at the institute.
First, participating colleges had to comb vast haystacks of student data. Although some institutions used different criteria, many searched their databases for former students who had earned about 60 credits and maintained at least a 2.0 grade-point average over the previous decade or so, but who had not earned a degree or certificate.
That proved difficult for many colleges, Mr. Adelman said. Some had never tracked students in that way, or their data systems did not include all of the above variables. In some cases, new databases had not been reconciled with old ones.
Nevertheless, the institutions collectively identified 130,630 students as potentially eligible for a degree. Then the colleges matched that information with data from states and the National Student Clearinghouse to find former students who had re-enrolled elsewhere or received a credential from another institution. Those students were removed from the pool, and some colleges excluded others who had not met specific curricular requirements, or who had a financial or disciplinary “hold” on their transcript.
That left approximately 43,000 students, whose transcripts received a degree audit, which involved many questions. Despite his or her grades and credits, did a student really qualify? Which course catalog should be used during evaluations: the current one, or the one in use when a student was last enrolled? For most colleges, the audits were a time-consuming task, requiring 10 to 15 minutes per student (some campuses reviewed more than 1,200).
In the end, the institutions turned up a total of 6,455 students who were eligible for an associate degree, and nearly 21,000 “potentials,” who needed no more than 12 credits.
More than half (54 percent) of those already eligible were female. A majority (73 percent) were white, 9 percent were black, and 3 percent were Hispanic (15 percent were “other/unknown”). Most—63 percent—had entered college before age 20.
‘Always in Motion’
Next, colleges had to locate all of those former students. That required some sleuthing, which affirmed an essential truth about higher education: Students, Mr. Adelman said, are always in motion, migrating from one college to the next, and often crossing state lines to do so.
That complicates attempts to track students and their progress. The colleges used e-mail, telephone calls, postal mail, PeopleFinder.com, and motor-vehicle records, among other means, to find the “eligibles.”
Over the years, some had changed their addresses, and others had new last names, said Dan Kellogg, registrar at the University of Wisconsin at Stevens Point. His institution found more 230 eligible students, including a few who owed the university money. All of them received a letter saying “we’re going to award you this degree unless we hear different,” Mr. Kellogg said. Among those who ultimately received one of those degrees was Jordan Zimmermann, a starting pitcher for the Washington Nationals.
Of the 6,455 potential graduates identified through Project Win-Win, just 4,260 (66 percent) got degrees. Why?
One answer: A fifth of the students were never located. And most participating colleges have an “opt in” policy that requires students to apply for a degree (and, in many cases, to pay for it). Colleges with an “opt out” policy bestow degrees unless a student actively declines it; such institutions may grant degrees to students they cannot find.
Colleges also contended with procedural barriers—such as residency requirements and the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, known as Ferpa—that complicated attempts to find students and to attain information about them.
Another obstacle involved the kind of associate degree colleges offered. The default—an associate degree in general studies—did not interest some candidates who had pursued a different credential. “Our students don’t apply with an intent to an associate degree,” Mr. Kellogg said. “They come to get a bachelor’s degree.” And at community colleges, some students who had sought a specialized degree had little interest in another credential, some college officials here said.
Still, the conversations with former students often proved useful. “Students talked to us about their challenges,” said Tammi Drury, a transcript evaluator at Linn-Benton Community College, in Oregon. Although some former students did not want an associate degree in general studies, she said, seeking them out “just starts a dialogue,” allowing the college to help students consider their options.
Some students in line for associate degrees were skeptical when colleges contacted them. Edwin Litolff, associate vice president for institutional research at the University of Louisiana system, recalled a young woman who had dropped out of McNeese State University after coming down with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. When she was told she qualified for an associate degree, Mr. Litolff said, “her first reaction was, ‘This is a joke, a prank.’”
At commencement, her family watched her walk across the stage. “When I think about that young lady, to me it makes all of this worthwhile,” he said.
Barriers to Re-enrollment
Coaxing “near-completers” back to a campus often proved difficult. Many officials recalled conversations with former students who said life—children, lost jobs, ailing parents—had prevented them from finishing their degrees. Of the nearly 21,000 students who needed just a handful of credits to finish, just 875 have returned to college. Some (about 16 percent) could not be found; 20 percent had not taken required mathematics courses, and were long shots for completion.
Although Mr. Adelman described the number of potential graduates who re-enrolled as disappointing, he noted that a third of the participating colleges had not finished their work with this cohort, having spent most of their time on degree audits.
In his opening remarks, Mr. Adelman celebrated the incompleteness of the project. The lessons it affirmed, he suggested, were more important than the data it had produced so far. “This is about students, real flesh-and-blood people who have gone through our system,” he said. “Human beings, as opposed to pieces of paper, as opposed to white papers.”
The painstaking work many participants described, Mr. Adelman said, was a crucial point. “You can’t wave magic wands in the higher-education business.”
