In 2012, I wrote a paper that predicted that some colleges would respond to performance-based funding requirements and the college-completion agenda by adopting more-selective admissions criteria.
A recent paper by Robert Kelchen and Luke J. Stedrak of Seton Hall University, “Does Performance-Based Funding Affect Colleges’ Financial Priorities?,” confirms this prediction by demonstrating reductions in federal Pell Grant funding on a per-student basis for public colleges that are subject to performance-based funding, as compared with public colleges that are not. This suggests that these colleges have shifted their enrollment away from low-income students.
This result illustrates the tension between college access and success. Even in the absence of performance-based funding challenges, getting low-income, minority, and at-risk students to graduate requires more support of all types, financial, academic, and social. This doesn’t come cheaply: It takes more money to get these students to the finish line.
At the same time, budgetary pressures and “efficiency” improvements lead to cuts in support programs and/or reductions in enrollment of students who need more support. The failure of government grants to keep pace with increases in college costs on a per-student, inflation-adjusted basis shifts more of the burden of paying for college from the federal and state government to students and their families. This leads to shifts in enrollment patterns (e.g., from four-year to two-year colleges) that contribute to declines in bachelor’s-degree attainment by low-income students.
One of the most effective tools for colleges seeking to improve graduation rates is to adopt more-selective admissions policies, since academic performance, as measured by high-school grades and admissions-test scores, is predictive of college completion. For example, the average graduation rate increases from 21 percent for students with a combined SAT score of 1,000 to 92 percent for those with a score of 2,200 or higher.
Certainly, some colleges vary from these averages, and there may be best practices that can be shared among colleges seeking to improve degree attainment. But the almost linear correlation speaks to the existence of a strong baseline trend. Even so, increased selectivity is a ridiculously shortsighted approach to increasing graduation rates. It causes a decrease in the number of low-income students who graduate by shifting funding away from low-income students — essentially providing welfare for the wealthy.
Colleges and policy makers should focus on funding models that add value instead of focusing on outcomes devoid of human context.
Consider college students who are single parents. They are much less likely to graduate than single students who don’t have children. If their babysitter is sick, they are forced to stay home from school, missing class. After they miss enough classes, their academic performance suffers, and they are eventually forced to drop out of college.
There are two possible approaches to solving this problem.
The first approach is to deny admission to students who are single parents. While no college will admit to discriminating against students who are single parents, adopting more-selective admissions criteria implicitly discriminates against them, as well as low-income, minority, and first-generation students. Thus, the more selective the institution, the lower the percentage of students who are federal Pell Grant recipients. Performance-based funding rewards colleges for engaging in such behavior.
The second approach is to eliminate barriers to the success of students who are single parents. For example, a college might provide students who are single parents with lists of reliable child-care resources, including emergency drop-in centers, and add high-quality child care on the campus. Colleges that provide this kind of support find that students who are single parents graduate at the same rate as other students.
The first approach is shortsighted and superficial. It manipulates the performance numbers without adding value. It reduces access to college by low-income students by shifting funding away from colleges that enroll many low-income students. It shifts funding to colleges that have better performance statistics because they enroll fewer at-risk students. Such colleges have less room for improvement, so the increase in funding will not lead to significant improvements in outcomes.
In the long term, it is more cost-effective to increase spending on student-support programs that help at-risk students graduate. Federal and state tax revenues increase with rising educational attainment, more than enough to cover the cost of the programs that help students succeed.
Unfortunately, as we can see, trying to fix one problem may unintentionally create or exacerbate other problems. There are no simple solutions that will magically and meaningfully increase degree attainment, because there are complex interactions among the many factors that affect college access and success. Simplistic solutions often backfire, leading to unintended consequences that are in conflict with the primary goals.
This is also true when, for example, low-income students are asked for verification of information they provide on the Free Application for Federal Student Aid. Those students are disproportionately selected for verification because they are more likely to qualify for a Pell Grant. But many low-income students don’t complete verification, not because of fraud, as the U.S. Department of Education implies, but because verification creates yet another in a series of obstacles they must overcome.
The demand for additional paperwork gives their parents another opportunity to say no to their college dreams. Their parents may also be unavailable to help with verification, due to incarceration, hospitalization, or institutionalization, or the paperwork may have been misplaced. Verification creates another opportunity for self-doubt to take root. Working a full-time job may seem like an easier way of paying for college. How many times do you have to prove that you’re poor?
Colleges and policy makers need to focus on funding programs that add value instead of focusing on outcomes devoid of human context. To that end, program evaluators should normalize graduation rates to account for the percentage of the student population that is low-income, first-generation, or otherwise at risk of failing to persist or graduate.
Elite colleges may have high graduation rates precisely because they admit only students who are likely to graduate no matter where they enroll. Yet a student who succeeds despite adversity is much more impressive than a student who was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. And a need-blind admission policy does not really provide a level playing field.
Low-income students are less likely to be admitted than wealthy students, because they do not have the money to pay for test-preparation courses or the luxury of lettering in a sport or learning to play the oboe. What’s more, legacy admissions and early-decision admissions policies favor the wealthy.
Instead, colleges need to create admissions preferences for low-income students. Educating the poor should be a priority, even though few college mission statements mention a charitable purpose.
Mark Kantrowitz is publisher and vice president for strategy at Cappex.com, a free website that connects students with colleges and financial aid.