Counseling Makes a Difference for Low-Income Students Attending College

From Inside HigherEd by Scott Jaschik.    "A theme of several studies in the last year has been that there are plenty of academically talented low-income students who for some combination of reasons are not applying to competitive colleges to which they would probably be admitted.  A new study along those lines -- this time documenting the impact of intense college counseling -- was released Monday by the National Bureau of Economic Research. The study (abstract available here) found that a nonprofit group that focuses on college counseling in Minneapolis-St. Paul had a significant impact in increasing the rate at which low-income students enrolled in four-year colleges, including competitive institutions.

The study was conducted by Christopher Avery of Harvard University -- co-author (with Caroline Hoxby of Stanford University) of a study released in December that found that most highly talented, low-income students never apply to a single competitive college. That work has set off widespread discussions about what sort of interventions might make a difference.  Avery's new study looks at College Possible, a program that provides in-depth college counseling as well as tutoring on the ACT or SAT. Avery was able to study the impact of the program by comparing results on College Possible participants with those who applied to (and were not admitted to) the program despite having slightly better academic preparation.  The study found no statistically significant gains in ACT scores for those who participated in the program. Avery writes, however, that this may understate the impact of the program, because he suspects that some of those who didn't get into College Possible found test-prep services elsewhere.  But the study found a significant impact on College Possible participants in applying to and enrolling in four-year colleges, and especially to competitive colleges. More than 45 percent of the students in the College Possible program enrolled at a four-year college, while the figure in the control group was 34 percent. And the most popular college among those in the program was Augsburg College, a competitive liberal arts college that did not enroll a single student from the control group (though some would appear to have been academically qualified had they applied).  The findings could be significant in that the earlier Avery-Hoxby study noted that low-income students who enroll in more competitive colleges are more likely to land at institutions with better graduation rates, more financial aid, and more resources to promote their academic success.

Read more: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/10/29/study-tracks-impact-counseling-low-income-students#ixzz2j7MWcOPu

Highlights from College Completion Annual Conference: Game Changers

The College Completion Annual Conference was this week.   <Read the entire report on the Chonicle of Higher Education webpage.>  Much of Monday's discussion centered on what Complete College America calls the "game changers"—strategies that it says can double the number of remedial students passing college-level courses, triple the graduation rates for students transferring with associate degrees to four-year colleges, and quadruple completion of career certificate programs.  Those include tying state appropriations to student performance; making introductory college-level courses, rather than remedial courses, the default placement for almost all students; and offering co-requisite remediation, which is offered alongside college-level courses, to those who need it.

Speakers also argued that too many students are placed directly in remedial courses on the basis of a single placement test, dooming many to a semester or more of courses they pay for but don't get credit for.  Mathematics educators described accelerated math pathways, like Statway and Quantway, that they say are more relevant to most students than the traditional sequences that trip up many learners  The approach, which was developed with the University of Texas at Austin's Charles A. Dana Center, is being used this fall across all of Texas' 50 community-college districts.

The group also heard from students. Kierra Brocks said that when she enrolled at Ivy Tech Community College, in Indiana, she missed the cutoff in math by two points and ended up in a remedial class that didn't challenge her. "It wasn't only money wasted but time wasted," she said. "It doesn't give you motivation to continue."

New Report from ACT and COE, Condition of College Readiness 2013: First-Generation College Students

"This report on first-generation students is significant because it acknowledges the necessity of developing policies to promote college readiness with the needs of this population in mind." <Click here to download this report from ACT and COE.>

"Not surprisingly, first-generation students lag behind their peers in meeting college readiness benchmarks in core subject areas.  The lack of families’ college background makes it all the more vital that schools with large percentages of first-generation students integrate supportive services into the required curriculum to create a college-going culture. Also, they must implement these services and strategies on a school-wide basis to ensure that all students are embarked on a path to college. Further, we recommend that schools partner with local colleges to offer dual enrollment in areas of greater propensity and interest for first-generation students. Dual-enrollment programs capitalize on students’ strengths and demonstrate to them that they are capable of doing college-level work.

The findings of this joint ACT/COE report underscore the importance of greater support for college access programs like TRIO and GEAR UP. For decades, these programs have provided academic tutoring, mentoring, counseling, and other supportive services to low-income and first-generation students to make the dream of college a reality. Recent federal initiatives have emphasized early childhood education; the nation must capitalize on that investment by continuing to support these students once they enter elementary and secondary school."  Maureen Hoyler, President, Council for Opportunity in Education

15 to Finish: Why don't college students enroll in 15 or more credits?

There has been quite a storm of reaction to the recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, "Redefine 'full time" so students can graduate on time, paper suggests."  Complete College America is holding their annual conference and released another policy brief that endorsed the solution to the college completion problem is to simply make students take 15 credits every semester till they get done.  They do an excellent job of stating the obvious:

• Most college students (69%) not enrolled in a schedule that leads to on-time graduation, even if they never changed majors, failed a course, or took a class they didn’t need
• Even among “full-time” students, most (52%) actually taking fewer than 15 hours, standard course load that could lead to on-time graduation
• At most two-year colleges, less than a third “full-time” students taking 15 or more hours
• At four-year colleges, typically only 50 % or fewer “full-time” students enrolled in 15 hours.

Then they state the obvious consequences of such actions:

• Taking 12 credits per term instead of 15 can add a year to a four-year degree or half a year to a two-year degree, even if students never fail a course, change majors, or take a class beyond their degree requirements.
• Students, parents, and public financial aid programs paying more for a degree when students have to enroll in more semesters.
• Students lose out on a year of employment and income if they spend an additional year in school.
• Fewer students served by institutions with limited capacity—advising, parking, dormitories, etc.
• Dropout rates are higher for students who take fewer credits.  In the 2004/2009 BPS study, 17% of students who completed 30 credits their first year dropped out without a degree by the end of six years, compared to 23% of students who completed 24-29 credits.(The difference in completion rates is even bigger, since the low-credit students are also more likely to remain enrolled without a degree.)

The simple solution, everyone takes 15 or more hours.  Or else.  From the CCA website, "Incentives [for enrollment in 15 or more credits] can be as simple as preferred parking on campus and as substantial as financial aid policies that reward credit accumulation.”  So if you don't keep up, give more financial aid to the students who are taking 15 or more and financially punish those that do not.  I looked through the CCA website and never read anything that explained why students would be so foolish to not enroll in 15 or more credits.  Readers of the article in the Chronicle provided the nuanced answer.  <Click here for a sample of their responses and my posting to a email listserv on this topic.>   Students don't have time due to working multple part-time jobs to pay for rising tuition, students bring to college credits earned elsewhere, students have family obligations, and the list goes on.  The answer is a lack of "time" and the students are smart to limit their course load to a level they can accomplish. 

I decided to dig deeper and went to the research studies the CCA was citing.  the 15 to Finish website, http://www.15tofinish.com/ contains the reports from a community college in Hawaii that has studied this issue.  <Click on this link for one of their research studies.>

Research Objective:  Impact of enrolling 15 or more credits on student performance.  First-time freshmen for the UG Community College campuses Fall 2009, 2010, 2011  Only 7.4% of the 17,960 freshmen took 15 or more credit hours in their first semester.  The average credit hour load was 10.6 hours.  Students divided into two groups:  took less than 15 or enrolled in 15 or more hours..  Each group organized by academic preparation, demographics, and academic success.

Findings of students who took 15 or more hours:

• Higher average Compas placement test scores.
• Were younger, tended to be recent high school graduates, and had a higher percentage with financial need met, and less likely to be an ethnic minority.
• Performed better as measured by first semester GPA, percentage with a “B” or “C+” or higher grade average, credit completion ration above 80%, and persistence.
• Students with higher academic preparation scores performed better academically 

The Research Study Conclusion:  “First-time students at the UH Community Colleges can successfully carry 15 credit hours.  Student success varies by academic preparation, with those students scoring higher on academic preparation preforming better…  Students taking 15 or more credits outperformed students taking fewer than 15 credits across all levels of academic preparation.  The fact that students taking 15 or more credits persist at higher rates may indicate greater student engagement.  The more important question is why so few students at the UH Community Colleges take 15 or more credits.  Analysis indicates that academic preparation is not the limiting factor.  The low percentage of students taking the higher credit load may indicate that 12 credits has become the culturally accepted norm for full-time enrollment.” 

Too bad they didn't ask the students why they did not take 15 or more.  More than half of the report are data tables that carefully document their findings.  But they did not analyze number of hours worked, number of jobs worked, and a host of other factors that help explain why students do not have time to enroll in 15 or more.  The study said the 15 or more students were younger.  I wonder about relationship status and number of dependents between the two groups.  Younger, academically prepared students with full financial aid probably do not have the financial needs and time obligations of the others.  And those that take less than 15 hours.  They number over 90 percent of the student body.  Would you not want to understand WHY?  This is the research the CCA cites as proof the answer is simple, make everyone take 15 or more credits without concern why they behave the way they do. 

It is obvious CCA is displeased with the federal government's definition of full-time status to receive Pell Grants is 12 credits.  Here is my question for the CCA, how long until you begin to lobby for raising the minimum credits to 15 to receive a Pell Grant?  It is only a matter of time.  It is such a simple answer.  Supposedly H. L. Mencken said, "For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong."

The Hidden Supply of High-Achieving, Low Income Students: Many low-income high achievers never think of applying to selective schools

From the National Bureau of Economic Research:  In The Missing "One-Offs": The Hidden Supply of High-Achieving, Low Income Students (NBER Working Paper No. 18586), Caroline Hoxby and Christopher Avery study every student in the high school graduating class of 2008 who scored at the 90th percentile or above on the SAT or ACT and whose high school GPA was A- or above. They show that despite the fact that these high-achievers are well qualified for admission at America's most selective colleges, the vast majority of low-income high achievers do not apply to any selective school.

More than 50 percent of low-income high achievers apply exclusively to non-selective two-year and four-year schools that typically have low graduation rates and low instructional resources. Only 8 percent of them apply in a manner similar to that of high-income high achievers, who normally apply to several "peer" schools where the median student has scores like their own, the graduation rate is high, and instructional resources are ten times those at non-selective schools. High-income high achievers also usually apply to a few "reach" and "safety" schools.

These authors show that because low-income high achievers rarely apply to selective colleges, there are many more low-income high achievers than admissions staff thought. What the admissions staff see are eight to fifteen high-income applicants for every low-income applicant. However, the ratio of high-income high achievers to low-income high achievers is only about two-to-one in the population.  The authors eliminate a number of explanations for low-income high achievers' failure to apply to selective colleges, including cost. They show that very selective colleges offer high-achieving, low-income students such generous financial aid that they could attend these colleges and pay less than they are currently paying to attend the much less selective colleges in which they enroll.

Nor do low-income high achievers fail if they apply to selective colleges. The authors show that if a low-income student and a high-income student with the same achievement apply to the same college, they have outcomes (matriculation, persistence, on-time graduation) that are so similar that they cannot be distinguished statistically.  A lack of effort on the part of selective colleges does not explain these results, either. Their admissions staffs visit hundreds of high schools, organize campus visits, and work with many local college mentoring programs.

Why, then, do the vast majority of low-income, high-achievers not apply to very selective colleges? The authors show that those who do not apply are dispersed: they are "one-offs" in their high schools and localities. Thus, there is no cost-effective way for colleges to reach them using the traditional methods listed above, all of which work best when students attend a school with a critical mass of high achievers (such as a magnet school) or live near a selective college (such as the Harlem students who live near Columbia University). This dispersion also explains why the students' counselors do not develop expertise about very selective colleges. If a counselor has 350 advisees (the typical number in the United States) and only encounters a high achiever once every few years, that counselor will develop skills to help her other advisees -- many of whom may be struggling to stay in school or attend any postsecondary institution -- rather than skills that will help the rare one-off.

10 'Best Practices' for Serving First-Generation Students and Searchable Database of Best Practices

By Justin Doubleday from the Chronicle of Higher Education. 

A report released on Thursday by the Council of Independent Colleges gives guidance to institutions that want to improve resourcesfor students who are the first in their families to attend college.<Click on this link to download the entire report of identified best practices.> 

<Click on this link for the website established for the identified best practices from the project.> With two generous grants from the Walmart Foundation, the Council of Independent Colleges funded 50 college success programs across two cohorts of private colleges and universities in 2008 and 2010. For a full list of funded programs, see the Program Profiles page. Although all 50 programs focused on assisting first-generation students succeed in higher education, each program went about this in different ways. CIC identified 13 broad strategies that were implemented by multiple institutions. The programs are grouped by these strategies in order to help other colleges and universities find and implement the best strategies for a given institution.

• Academic Support
• Alumni Involvement
• Campus Life
• Career Preparation and Internships
• Course Planning and Faculty/Staff Development
• Cultural Experiences
• Faculty/Staff Mentors
• Family Involvement
• Peer Mentors
• Scholarships
• Stipends and Vouchers
• Summer Bridge/Orientation Programs
• Target Student Populations

Based on the experiences of 50 colleges that received grants from the group and the Walmart Foundation to enhance such programs, the report lists 10 "best practices" to promote first-generation students' academic success. Those suggestions are as follows:

1. Identify, actively recruit, and continually track first-generation students.  Aid eligibility is one indicator institutions can use to help identify first-generation students.

2. Bring them to the campus early.  Summer bridge programs let colleges better prepare first-generation students for the rigors of higher education. The programs also give students a chance to bond with classmates, meet faculty and staff members, and become familiar with the campus.

3. Focus on the distinctive features of first-generation students.  First-generation students on any given campus will often share one or more characteristics. Building support systems around those similarities can help colleges better meet students' needs.

4. Develop a variety of programs that meet students' continuing needs.  Colleges should develop programs that prepare first-generation students for academic success during college and for careers after graduation.

5. Use mentors.  Mentors, whether they are fellow students, staff or faculty members, alumni, or people in the community, can provide valuable guidance to first-generation students. Some of the best mentors are those who were also the first in their families to attend college.

6. Institutionalize a commitment to first-generation students.  Colleges should involve the entire campus community in promoting the success of first-generation students. That approach creates a supporting and welcoming environment.

7. Build community, promote engagement, and make it fun.  Colleges need to focus on more than academic performance to improve retention. Through nonacademic activities, students can build meaningful relationships.

8. Involve families (but keep expectations realistic).  First-generation students often struggle more than their peers with moving away from home. Communicating with families can help keep them connected to their student while he or she is away.

9. Acknowledge, and ease when possible, financial pressures.  With many coming from low-income families, first-generation students often struggle with finances. Colleges should provide financial-aid information to students and parents whenever possible. Creating scholarships specifically for first-generation students can help as well.

10. Keep track of your successes and failures: What works and what doesn't?  Colleges should look beyond grade-point averages and retention rates to assess its first-generation programs. Other methods for measuring success include: college records, surveys, in-depth interviews, and focus groups.

Counseling Program Improved Needy Students' College Options, Study Finds

Low-income students who were coached and tutored by a nonprofit group during their last two years of high school were more likely to enroll in four-year colleges and to end up in more-selective institutions, according to the results of a study.  [Click to read the original article in the Chronicle of Higher Education.]

The study focused on College Possible, a group based in St. Paul that uses AmeriCorps mentors, most of them recent college graduates, to prepare students for college.  The study drew on a trial involving 238 students in eight high schools in Minneapolis and St. Paul, 134 of whom were randomly selected for admission to the after-school program.

College Possible mentors assist students with SAT and ACT preparation, advise them on college admissions and financial aid, and help them with the transition to college.  Interventions such as sending students text messages about steps needed to prepare for college or providing them with customized college information have been found to affect their choice of whether and where to enroll.

College Possible's founder, Jim McCorkell, said that finding is important because low-income students are more likely to "undermatch," or to end up at colleges that don't challenge them."  While 73 percent of upper-income American teenagers go on to earn a college degree, only 8 percent of low-income students do, the report says.  After participating in the program, students set their goals higher, enrolling in four-year rather than two-year colleges and shifting from less-selective to more-selective institutions, the study found. For instance, among students in the control group, 34 percent enrolled in four-year colleges and 30 percent in two-year colleges. For those who received the extra support, 45 percent enrolled in four-year colleges and 19 percent in two-year institutions.