PPIC Higher Education Center – Page 7 – Public Policy Institute of California

Videos: Higher Education Priorities

Last week in Sacramento, PPIC researcher Lunna Lopes outlined key findings from the latest PPIC Statewide Survey, which focuses on higher education. The following day in San Francisco, PPIC president Mark Baldassare and Monica Lozano, president of the College Futures Foundation, talked about the survey’s implications for governor-elect Gavin Newsom.

The survey finds that most Californians think public higher education should be a high priority for the next governor. For Monica Lozano, this is a key takeaway: “Overwhelmingly, Californians said that a four-year degree is essential to the economic vitality of the state. And, as much as we have considered Jerry Brown a real progressive on lots of issues, there is a sense that he did not do enough on higher education.”

Lozano also noted that Californians are focused on helping students succeed. Their concerns are less about access and enrollment capacity and more about student support: student debt, financial aid, and academic and other kinds of support. “The public is putting students at the center of this equation,” she said.

A majority of Californians see affordability as a big problem. In a state with one of the highest costs of living in the country, residents are divided on whether tuition and fees or housing and living expenses are the bigger burden: 45% say tuition and fees, 34% say housing and living expenses, and 17% volunteer that the two are equally burdensome. As Baldassare put it, “There’s more to affordability than tuition and fees.”

Noting that governor-elect Newsom has an ambitious agenda for “cradle to career” education, Baldassare asked how higher education advocates and experts could help the new administration move forward.

Lozano replied, “Our challenge is to actually help them think about the fundamental issues that surfaced in this survey.” For example, most Californians think state higher education funding is inadequate and many support a funding guarantee for UC and CSU. “If the system of financing higher education has to change so that it’s more predictable—so that there’s some sort of a dedicated revenue stream that’s tied to some accountability measures—how would you actually do that?”

More generally, Lozano and Baldassare agreed that the survey shows how highly Californians value higher education; as Lozano put it, “This survey gives the next governor permission to be bold.”

Gender Differences in Higher Education Start Early

Female students in California tend to have stronger high school records and greater rates of college attendance and completion than male students do. At the same time, there are large gender differences in many college majors, with some majors (e.g., computer science) predominantly male and others (e.g., liberal arts) predominantly female.

New data on high school courses shows that gender divides in college are already evident by high school. For example, only 31% of high school students in AP computer science courses are girls, while only 38% of students in AP English courses are boys. AP courses provide college-level curricula to high school students and are an important indicator of student pathways to college.

Mirroring differences by college major, AP course enrollments are also notably unbalanced in art, psychology, and foreign languages—all have large majorities of girls. In contrast, physics has a large majority of boys. But in other cases, gender differences in AP courses are not reflected in college majors. For example, in high school more female students take history and math AP classes, but in college more male students major in these subjects.

The low share of girls and women in computer science has been a particular cause for concern. But there is some good news. The share of girls in computer science AP courses has increased markedly in just five years (from 23% in 2012–13 to 31% in 2017–18). Across the state, some high schools have achieved near gender parity in their AP computer science courses. For example, at Troy High School in Fullerton, a magnet school with the largest AP computer science enrollment in the state, 45% of students are girls.

Overall, female students in California are doing well. Female students make up 57% of enrollment in AP courses and a similar majority of college students. But the lack of women in some key fields is a concern. Colleges should do more to increase enrollment and access for women in subjects like engineering and computer science. High schools also have an important role to play—encouraging more girls to take AP classes in these subjects in high school could help pave the way for more women to pursue them as college majors and careers.

New Reforms at California Community Colleges

California community colleges are reforming to the way they assess their students’ college readiness and place them in remedial courses. A recently passed measure—Assembly Bill (AB) 1805—may increase both the uniformity and transparency of placement policies. PPIC research indicates that AB 1805 has the potential to improve student outcomes and narrow achievement gaps.

Our research finds that clearer and more uniform policies can make assessment results more portable for students. A previous measure, AB 705, established a set of measures a college must use to determine college readiness (e.g., coursework, grades, and/or grade point average). However, colleges continue to have autonomy to set their own rules, as opposed to using the Chancellor’s Office default placement rules. Our latest study finds that varying policies across colleges is a cause for concern. For example, two colleges within the same district might both use high school GPA to place students, but their GPA cutoffs might differ; this could pose problems for students who are assessed at one institution but want to take a transfer-level course at the other college.

AB 1805—which will be implemented systemwide in fall 2019—may help address this concern by mandating that colleges publicize their placement policies. As a result, students will be better informed and may also be more motivated to challenge placement decisions or enroll at colleges with broader access to transfer-level courses.

Variation in placement policies may also contribute to inequitable access to transfer-level courses. Our research indicates that underrepresented students may have more difficulty gaining access to transfer-level courses if they attend colleges with stricter placement rules. AB 1805 requires colleges to report the number of students placed into transfer-level coursework (with or without concurrent support) to the Chancellor’s Office and the public each year, providing racial/ethnic breakdowns. This should make it easier to see whether colleges are implementing placement policies that are fostering inequitable student outcomes.

Over the summer, PPIC engaged in an exhaustive scan of college websites and catalogs to get a sense of how placement policies are being communicated to students. We found that most community colleges do not provide clear and complete information—in fact, only 19 colleges provide placement details (e.g., GPA cutoffs). As we move forward, it will be critical to monitor the implementation of AB 705 and AB 1805 at the college level—including the placement measures being used and levels of access to transfer-level courses. By examining the policies and practices at colleges where underrepresented students experience uneven access to transfer-level courses, progress can be made toward improving outcomes and narrowing achievement gaps.

Video: Stackable Credentials at California Community Colleges

California’s community college system is the state’s primary provider of postsecondary career education and plays a critical role in meeting workforce needs. Stackable credentials are a key component of career education programs—students who “stack” multiple, related awards can build skills and increase their potential to advance in a career over time. As the state continues to invest in career education, it is important to understand how these programs can expand employment opportunities, particularly for students who do not get four-year degrees.

In Sacramento this past Tuesday, PPIC researcher Shannon McConville outlined findings from a new report that identifies stackable credential pathways in several disciplines and looks at whether programs with well-defined pathways facilitate stacking. Building on previous PPIC work on stackable credentials in health care, this new report focuses on several other fields—including business, information technology, and engineering.

Nearly 40% of community college students in career education programs start with short-term certificates, which can be earned relatively quickly. Most return to college after earning a short-term award, but fewer than one in four obtain an additional credential. Making it easier for these students to move along a stackable credential pathway could help them get better jobs and earn higher wages.

PPIC’s analysis of existing programs across the community college system suggests that well-defined pathways with clearly mapped course sequences and multiple exit and reentry points do increase the odds of students stacking credentials. It also indicates that few programs have course and credential sequences that are designed to be stackable. Expanding the number of programs with clearly designated stackable features could go a long way toward strengthening the links between career education and long-term employment opportunities.

Standardized Testing and College Eligibility

In California and across the nation, there has been a growing focus on increasing college access by improving college readiness for high school students and encouraging more eligible students to attend college. To this end, many states and educational institutions have changed how they use college entrance exams like the SAT and ACT.

One approach has been to have more students take the SAT or ACT in hopes of identifying those who are eligible for college but might not have taken a college entrance exam on their own. As of 2016–17, 25 states use the SAT or ACT as their standardized test for 11th graders.

Assemblymember O’Donnell (D-Long Beach) has proposed AB 1951, which would give districts the option to use the SAT or ACT in place of California’s 11th-grade standardized test. Though Governor Brown vetoed the bill at the end of the 2017–18 legislative session, O’Donnell promised to bring it back in the next session, when California has a new governor.

But even as many states are administering the SAT or ACT to all students, a growing number of colleges and universities are dropping these tests as an entrance requirement. Citing concerns about biases in the exams, as well as the extra financial or time constraints for students, liberal arts colleges like Mills College in California and prominent universities such as the University of Chicago have made submitting test scores optional. Currently, California State University (CSU) does not require students to submit an SAT score (though most still do) if they meet the high school GPA threshold of 3.0 or higher. Despite this trend, most four-year colleges continue to use college entrance exams in their admissions decisions and a growing share of high school graduates take either the SAT or ACT.

In his veto message, the governor suggested another possible way to expand eligibility. California universities could consider using the state’s standardized test (SBAC) as an eligibility measure. All California 11th graders in public schools take the SBAC, which is aligned with the Common Core State Standards and is already used as an early diagnostic of college readiness at CSU and many community colleges. New evidence suggests that the SBAC does as well as the SAT in predicting first-year performance at California’s public universities.

Any of these strategies could increase the number of students eligible for California’s universities—but not all of them would work well together. For example, the University of California and CSU are further scrutinizing the role of the SAT in the admissions process. If the systems decide to drop the SAT requirement, then AB 1951 might have less of an impact. Looking forward, as state policymakers and districts continue to craft policies to improve college access, they should first consider how California’s universities are using—or not using—standardized tests.

College Rankings and Social Mobility

As high school seniors decide where to apply, numerous websites, magazines, and organizations are releasing lists of the “best colleges.” These rankings try to evaluate a college’s quality or highlight a particular factor, such as best value. Most rankings use similar data sources and variables, but each weighs factors differently in order to define and evaluate quality. Popular categories include student outcomes (graduation rate, earnings after college), measures of institutional quality (faculty quality, monetary value of resources for students), and affordability (net cost, institutional aid). Improving a college’s rank generally involves doing better in one or more of those areas relative to other institutions.

Recently, many rankings have started to consider social mobility—a school’s ability to move students up the ladder of economic opportunity. But the importance of social mobility in overall rankings varies widely. Just this year, US News World Report—a longtime leader in college rankings—removed acceptance rates from its methodology and instead factored in graduation rates for students who receive Pell Grants (these students are from the lowest-income families in the nation). Even so, the US News and World Report rankings do not give much weight to that measure. In contrast, Washington Monthly, another well publicized ranking, bases one third of its ranking scores on social mobility, including new data on graduation rate gaps between students who receive Pell Grants and those who do not. At the other end of the spectrum, the relatively new CollegeNet Social Mobility Index (established in 2014) focuses exclusively on elements of social mobility.

Research by the Equality of Opportunity Project shows that California’s public colleges do relatively well in promoting social mobility, particularly in moving students from the lowest to the highest quartile of income. The figure below shows the number of California’s public universities the top 50 according to each of three rankings; the greater the importance of social mobility, the higher California public universities rank relative to both private and public schools in other states.

Colleges pay attention to rankings, and highly rated schools publicize their ranks and use them in recruitment literature. A closer link between higher rankings and improved social mobility can be a win for California, its colleges, and its students.

California Community Colleges Are Transforming Developmental Education

With the passage of AB 705 in October 2017, California community colleges are in the midst of a major transformation of developmental education. The new law requires that community colleges restructure developmental education to maximize the likelihood that students will enter and complete transfer-level coursework in English and mathematics/quantitative reasoning in a one-year time frame.

Full implementation of AB 705 is expected no later than fall 2019. As colleges replace standardized test scores with high school records as their primary placement criteria, it is likely that the majority of entering students will enroll in transfer-level courses. To improve the likelihood of success, especially among students with the lowest high school performance levels, colleges are being encouraged to implement curricular reforms as well. Co-requisite remediation is an essential component of these reforms: it allows students who would otherwise be deemed underprepared to enroll directly in transfer-level math or English courses with concurrent remedial support.

While the vast majority of the state’s 114 community colleges have not yet implemented co-requisite models, a few colleges began experimenting with co-requisites and other reforms before the passage of AB 705. According to a recent PPIC report that looks at the efforts of these “early implementers,” co-requisites in English are more common than those in math. Nine California community colleges provided co-requisite courses in English to about 3,000 students in 2016–17 (the latest year of available data), and at least seven additional colleges began offering English co-requisite models in 2017–18.

Early implementer colleges have seen dramatic gains in the completion of transfer-level English courses. Results for the fall 2016 cohort show that 78% of all co-requisite students completed a college composition course within a year; this metric, known as throughput rate, will be used to measure success under AB 705. The throughput rate of co-requisite students is 50 percentage points higher than the throughput rate of students who started in traditional remedial courses (27%); it is 36 percentage points higher than the throughput rate of students who took one-term accelerated developmental English courses (42%), and similar to the throughput rate of students who enrolled in transfer-level English without co-requisite support.

Throughput rates ranged from 67% to 96% across this group of colleges; rigorous research is needed to understand which factors are driving this variation. However, this early evidence—while not causal—does shed light on what we can expect to see in terms of student outcomes as more colleges move toward compliance with AB 705 requirements.

Career Technical Education: Funding & New State Oversight

President Donald Trump recently signed the Strengthening Career and Technical Education for the 21st Century Act, or Perkins V, which reauthorized $1.2 billion dollars in federal funds for career and technical educational (CTE) programs. The new law gives states more flexibility to set their own goals for CTE programs, along with reporting progress toward those goals. Who might benefit from these changes, and what new challenges do they present to the state?

Perkins V supports programs that integrate career skills and prepare students at the secondary, postsecondary, and adult education level for the workforce—for such careers as IT technician, accountant, or nurse. Funding is based on student enrollment, and each year California receives more than $110 million in Perkins dollars, the vast majority (85%) of which go to CTE programs in high schools and community colleges. During the 2017–18 school year, close to 780,000 (40%) high school students and 420,000 (35%) full-time community college students participated in CTE.

California’s CTE students generally reflect the demographics of the overall student population, though Asian American, Latino, and female students are slightly underrepresented. Over time, the overall number of students participating in CTE has decreased, but the percentage of low-income students who do so has increased. Today, low-income students account for more than half of CTE participants. Benefits associated with CTE programs include decreased high school dropout rates (for low-income students in particular), increased high school graduation rates, and higher wage returns (particularly in health fields).

Although the new law provides states with greater flexibility, some of the provisions may present a challenge for those hoping to measure the impact of Perkins dollars in California. For example, under the new requirements performance indicators follow only students deemed to be “concentrators,” or those who complete a substantial number of courses in a single CTE program of study. Currently, concentrators account for less than half of CTE participants, so the indicators may not capture the outcomes of all who are served by Perkins funding. In addition, some of the core indicators—such as student placement in postsecondary CTE education—require the use of a comprehensive longitudinal database on student outcomes, a tool that California does not yet have. Furthermore, performance indicators are not broken down by industry sector, which makes it difficult to evaluate state-specific sectors, such as fashion and interior design or energy and utilities, which are unique to California’s economy.

Going forward, the Perkins reauthorization ushers in a new form of CTE program accountability at the state level. If California wants to continue to close the gap of 1.5 million workers with “some” college education, it needs to make inroads on designing, improving, and scaling up effective CTE programs—and on improving the quality of data on CTE programs and students.

Video: Remedial Education Reform in Community College

Since the passage of Assembly Bill (AB) 705, California community colleges have been transforming their approach to remedial—or developmental—education. AB 705 requires community colleges to maximize the probability of their students completing transfer-level courses in the one-year time frame. To comply with AB 705, colleges are revising the way they assess student readiness for college-level courses—giving priority to high school GPA rather than tests. They are also changing course offerings and classroom approaches. How will the reforms affect student outcomes, and how are colleges dealing with the challenges of implementation?

At an event in Sacramento last week, PPIC researcher Marisol Cuellar Mejia outlined the findings of a new report that sheds light on AB 705’s potential impact by looking at the efforts of “early implementers”—colleges that began experimenting with reforms before AB 705 was signed into law. A panel of experts then offered a range of perspectives on AB 705 implementation.

Roanna Bennie, interim president of Las Positas College—an early implementer—noted that only a small fraction of students who start at the beginning of a traditional, multi-course math remediation pathway end up taking transfer-level courses. “It’s the data that’s been really influencing our campus to take measures,” she added. But she also said that her college is wrestling with full-scale implementation. The challenges include covering the cost of additional courses, getting input from faculty and other staff across campus, and helping students adjust to the changes.

Laura Metune, vice chancellor for external relations in the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office, emphasized the importance of professional development for both faculty and staff: “Everybody needs to understand what these changes are that we’re asking for, the research behind them, and what their individual roles are in helping them be successful.”

What comes next? As Katie Hern, an English instructor at Chabot College who co-founded the California Acceleration Project, put it: “The debate up until now has been whether to make these changes. That debate is over—the legislature settled that one. Now we have to make these changes and now we get to really study how to do it as effectively as possible.”

Is the Decline in the Humanities Overstated?

While there has been a strong increase in STEM degrees awarded at California colleges and universities over the past 16 years, many have noted a decline in student interest in the humanities. Colleges have adjusted their offerings to reflect changes in student demand, and some observers have questioned whether liberal arts colleges can sustain their enrollments in the face of diminishing student interest.

In California, the real story is not one of outright declines in humanities majors but a lack of growth compared to other majors. The number of students earning a bachelor’s degree in the humanities in California increased from just over 26,000 in 2000 to almost 38,000 in 2006. It has since declined—but only slightly—to 35,000. This pattern is widespread, with the University of California (UC), the California State University (CSU), and the state’s private nonprofits all experiencing sharp increases from 2000 to 2006 and slight declines since that time. Because other degrees have continued to increase, the share of degrees awarded to humanities majors has declined noticeably—from 27% in 2006 to 19% in 2016.

Humanities majors make up a larger share of students at private nonprofit colleges and CSU than at UC, but there is wide variation across campuses. At Cal Tech (the California Institute of Technology) only 0.8% of bachelor’s degrees were awarded in the humanities in 2016, whereas at Biola and Chapman Universities humanities degrees made up almost 40%. At CSU only 9% of degrees at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo were in the humanities (just 1% at Cal Maritime were), compared to 28% at Cal State Channel Islands. And at UC only 4% of UC Merced students earned a humanities degree, compared to 22% at UC Santa Barbara.

These patterns and trends suggest that the decline of the humanities is overstated, at least for now. But there are indications that these trends will persist. Economic returns tend to be higher for students in STEM than in the humanities, and students are increasingly citing job prospects as the primary reason they enroll in college. The College Board reports that among the newest college-bound students in California, only 9% expressed an interest in majoring in the humanities. Going forward, colleges and universities that emphasize the humanities will need to make the case (and it can be made) for the value of those degrees.