Tag: California community colleges

Video: Higher Education & Our Economic Future

“The world is radically changed,” Gavin Newsom, California’s lieutenant governor, told a Sacramento audience this week.

“We’re competing against billions and billions of people, not just competing against cheap labor now, but against cheap genius,” he continued.

Newsom—who is also a University of California regent and California State University trustee—spoke in a conversation with Mark Baldassare, PPIC president and CEO. PPIC’s new report Will California Run Out of College Graduates? provided the context for the discussion. The report concludes that California will fall 1.1 million college graduates short of economic demand by 2030, if current trends persist.

Newsom said that “there is not a major industrialized nation in the world that is not focusing with intention on radically transforming their education system. One of the remarkable things about California is that we do not have a plan.”

He summed up: “We need goals. And we need to be able to measure those goals. And those goals must emanate from the state itself.”

Newsom was not the only speaker at the PPIC event to use words like “radical” and “revolution” to describe changes needed in higher education.

At a subsequent panel discussion, state assemblymember Catharine Baker said she is concerned that the state is falling short of the workforce needed even now. She noted that there is bipartisan agreement in the legislature that higher education is important but not about the need for major change. “There is a lot more focus on issues around the margins, that is, on how many students are we admitting, what few changes we can make in the community college system.”

Eloy Ortiz Oakley, superintendent-president of the Long Beach Community College District, said, “We almost need a revolution in our system. We started to get there when we were in crisis mode.”

“During the recession, we saw more creativity than ever before in the community college system and we began to focus,” he said. “I fear that post-recession that focus will start to dissipate.”

Hans Johnson, coauthor of the PPIC report and PPIC senior fellow, said the big challenge for the state is replacing the retiring baby boom generation with young, well-educated workers.

“I think there is a very clear path to closing that skills gap,” he said. “We need to have more students going to colleges—especially four-year colleges. We need improve completion rates—that opens up room for more students. We need to improve transfer rates from community colleges to the four-year colleges. And if we do all of those things—and these are all decisions we can make, as policymakers and higher education officials—we can actually close that skills gap.”

Timothy White, California State University chancellor, said CSU can do its part to fill the workforce skills gap—with the help of its educational and funding partners. He called the PPIC report “a very sobering clarion call that is of crisis proportion— not for the CSU or for the University of California, or the community colleges, but rather for California. And I hope we take it with the seriousness that it deserves.”

What the New College Scorecard Can—and Can’t—Tell You

Last month, as high school seniors were beginning to apply for college, the US Department of Education released its yearly scorecard to help students and their parents make informed choices. In addition to information on graduation rates, access, net price, this year’s scorecard includes earnings data for former students. The earnings profiles will be especially helpful—until now, students, parents, and the public lacked access to official information about earnings nationwide. They may also help hold colleges accountable for student outcomes.

The new earnings data is exciting—but not perfect—so it is important to determine what it actually tells us. The US Department of Education—which administers financial aid, mostly in the form of Pell Grants and federal student loans—generates the earnings profiles by linking its data on college students who get federal aid with earnings data from the US Department of the Treasury. This covers about 70 percent of students nationwide. Of course, the shares of students receiving federal aid vary across colleges—at some postsecondary institutions, fewer than half receive it. But the scorecard’s explanation of its methodology suggests that, aside from family income, college students who receive federal aid are similar to those who do not.

Another caveat is that the earnings measure for each institution represents all students receiving federal aid who started there—including those who didn’t graduate and those who transferred to other schools or pursued post-graduate degrees.

Still, it is instructive to compare the earnings of former students across institutional sectors. The table shows what you would see if you looked up earnings profiles for different types of California colleges. We chose colleges with median earnings that were closest to the median of each sector.

The median student who started at UC Davis earns about $8,000 more than a student from Azusa Pacific University, about $10,000 more than a student from Sacramento State. The differences among the sectors align with what we know from prior research: earnings of former students of colleges that grant bachelor’s degrees are, on average, higher than those of former students of colleges that grant only associate degrees or certificates. Moreover, research has found that students at private for-profit institutions end up with lower earnings than those of comparable students from public or private non-profit four-year universities.

What the scorecards don’t show is that the difference between colleges is far smaller than the difference within colleges. The figure shows the variation in earnings at the same campuses included in the table above. First, note the tremendous overlap: many students who start at community college end up earning more than some students who started at UC and CSU. The difference in median earnings between the typical CSU and the typical UC is approximately $10,000. But the difference between the 25th percentiles and the 75th percentile of UC Davis student earnings is almost $50,000.

Looking at these differences alone is not enough to judge the quality of an institution. The differences that we observe across colleges might reflect differences in the type of students who enroll in different institutions, or variations in completion rates. They may also have to do with differences in the fields of study that attract large numbers of students. For example, some colleges have high concentrations of students enrolled in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) fields—these students traditionally go into higher-paying jobs. Other colleges may have a high concentration in less remunerative majors. Similarly, the dispersion that we observe in student earnings within institutions is likely tied to a number of factors, including fields of study and rates of completion.

PPIC research has found that a worker’s wages vary tremendously depending on his or her college major. At the high end, those with engineering degrees earn a median annual wage of $96,000. At the low end, those with degrees in education administration and teaching have a median annual wage of $57,000. The Department of Education plans to include earnings by area of study in future versions of the scorecard, and we think this will make the scorecards much more valuable to students and families.

Californians will find the federal scorecard particularly useful, since the state currently lacks a student tracking system. Many other states have maintained more robust and inclusive student tracking systems for years. These systems allow calculation of more precise earnings information by major and degree for all graduates in a state—and some states are collaborating to track outcomes and earnings of former students who move from one state to another.

In California, only the community college system provides salary information for its graduates. At a time when state and national leaders are urging that colleges and universities be held accountable, the state’s parents, students, and taxpayers would benefit from more and better information about student outcomes.

College Readiness and the New State Exams

Last week, California released the results of the new statewide tests aligned with the Common Core State Standards for students in grades 3-8 and grade 11. The 11th-grade test—from the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC)—is designed to measure whether students are on track to be ready for college and careers after graduation. In fact, the CSU and community colleges can use scores from the test to determine if students are ready for college level courses. The results show that about half of 11th-grade students are at least conditionally ready for college level courses in English and less than a third are ready for college level math courses.

The fact that most 11th-grade students are not yet ready for college is not necessarily news for California. Since 2004, California students have been able to participate in California’s Early Assessment Program (EAP), which used an optional statewide test to determine college readiness levels of 11th-grade students. The college readiness identification component of the new tests is based on the EAP and informs 11th grade students whether they are ready, conditionally ready, or not ready for college.

We cannot directly compare the test results to see if students have improved, as the EAP was optional for all students and the math section was only offered to students in advanced math courses, meaning a large portion of students were untested by the EAP. But the two tests are similar in that they show that a majority of high school juniors are likely not ready for college in both English and math. The new test data does show that a large majority of students are now tested in English and math, meaning more students now know whether they are ready for college level work.

But there is also some good news here for California. For students, new ratings regarding college readiness come early enough for the information to help before they enroll in their 12th-grade classes. Prior research on the EAP suggests that the optional testing helped lower the likelihood that a student would need remediation. Now, because the SBAC test is mandatory, almost all students in California will know whether they are ready for college or need to make improvements during their senior year.

This year, over 90,000 more students than last year were given a rating of “conditionally ready” in English. This will give them an opportunity to avoid remediation in college, by taking a prescribed 12th-grade English class and receiving at least a C grade.

And while it might seem that informing almost 200,000 more math students that they are not ready for college would be discouraging, prior research on the EAP suggests that a “not-ready” rating did not discourage students from enrolling at a CSU. Finally, the SBAC can serve as one of multiple ways for students to demonstrate college readiness. Research suggests that using multiple measures—rather than relying solely on a placement exam—can keep students from being misdirected into remediation.

For the state, the new test provides a benchmark by which to measure future progress and a way to compare across states. Of the eight states that have released test scores, California is 4th and 5th in the proportion of students who are at least conditionally ready for English and math, respectively. As more states release their scores, California will have a clearer picture of how well it is preparing high school students for college on a national scale.

Chart notes: Data from the EAP and CDE websites. The number of students in each category of the SBAC are estimated from the total numbers tested and the percentages given by CDE.

Expanding Education, Reducing Recidivism

This month, the Obama administration unveiled a pilot program to allow access to Pell Grants to those incarcerated in state or federal prison. In addition to expanding access to higher education, this program presents a new opportunity to leverage federal dollars to improve public safety and generate savings in the form of reduced correctional costs.

The federal program complements a bill passed last fall by the California Legislature aimed at increasing educational programming to prison inmates. Authored by State Senator Loni Hancock (D-Berkeley), SB 1391 allocates $2 million to create and fund higher education programs for inmates in four pilot sites, under the leadership of the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office and the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR).

These federal and state policy initiatives come in response to mounting evidence that education—particularly at the post-secondary level—reduces recidivism and related correctional costs. Inmates who participated in education programs had 43% lower odds of reoffending after being released into the community, according to a 2013 RAND report funded by the U.S. Department of Justice. This reduction in recidivism translates to $5 in direct correctional cost savings for every $1 spent on educational programming. Efforts to take advantage of these potential returns are in line with other recent initiatives, such as California’s public safety realignment, that emphasize the use of evidence-based practices to address the state’s historically high rates of recidivism.

However, past efforts to provide educational services to inmates in California—and elsewhere—have not always been successful. Numerous studies have documented the growth of private companies that have profited from providing a range of correctional services—including secondary education, GED classes, and vocational training—with little oversight or evaluation to ensure that public money is well spent. As the federal government makes additional funds available for higher education in prison, some of these service providers will likely seek to expand into post-secondary programming. At the same time, new players, both public and private, attracted by a promising new revenue stream may well enter the field. This means it is critical to ensure that the institutions receiving Pell Grants for inmate education have sufficient and appropriate training, staff, and capacity to offer high-quality college classes and student support services. A 2015 report from UC Berkeley’s Warren Institute and Stanford’s Criminal Justice Center outlines key recommendations for improving and ensuring the quality of inmate education programs, including an emphasis on face-to-face instruction inside prison and transitional programs on the outside for students.

Given their experience in providing a range of educational services, the California Community College (CCC) and California State University (CSU) systems stand out as promising candidates to lead efforts to increase post-secondary education among inmates. The map below shows the close proximity of these educational institutions to prisons across the state.

California currently supports community college education for all low-income students, including inmates, through fee waivers. However, these waivers are not available for students who wish to pursue four-year degrees. These students rely on other forms of aid, including federal Pell Grants. The Pell Grant pilot program presents an opportunity for CSU to begin working with CDCR to leverage federal dollars to expand access to high-quality, onsite higher education for inmates in state prison.

The security and operational constraints of correctional facilities pose unique challenges to service providers. It is likely that even organizations with experience providing quality education programs, such as well-performing state universities and community colleges, may find that they have a steep learning curve when it comes to operating within a prison. Careful planning, detailed oversight, and rigorous evaluation therefore will be critical to ensuring that SB 1391 and the Pell Grant pilot achieve their goals.

Chart Source: California Post-Secondary Education Commission and California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

Online Learning and College Costs

As the price of attending college has risen and access to higher education has declined, policymakers are looking to online learning as a way to better serve student needs, increase access—and lower the costs of higher education. In California, the state’s community colleges have taken the lead in online learning, with total course enrollment reaching about one million. We have been able to study the impact of online education on hundreds of thousands of students at the state’s community colleges. What we found points to important issues in the discussion of higher education access and costs.

It is easy to understand why online education is being championed as a cost-saver. Online courses do not require classroom space, and the cost of developing courses can be amortized over time. Savings could come through economies of scale, including centralization of online student services. If faculty members do not have to invest as much time designing, facilitating, and seeking approval for individual online courses, the colleges’ overall labor costs could drop.

But at this point, these savings are theoretical. So far, there is no empirical evidence that online learning is less expensive than face-to-face learning. In fact, research shows that preparing an online course is usually more time consuming—and therefore expensive—than preparing a traditional class.

And there are other drawbacks to online education as it’s currently practiced. In California’s community colleges, online student success rates are lower than success rates in traditional courses. Success rates for African American and Hispanic students are significantly worse. If these gaps persist and online enrollment continues to increase, then community colleges will be less equitable. The result will be increased costs to students and the state—and a failure to realize the promise of online education.

Despite these drawbacks, certain online courses are highly successful. Our analysis of these courses led us to recommend that the colleges move away from the current model, which relies on an individual faculty member to design and deliver an online course, and adopt a more systematic approach to creating online courses. A team that supports faculty members—including administrators, media developers, and information technology experts—would be better able to maximize the potential of the online learning environment.

However, it is unclear how moving to a team model would affect costs. Incorporating specialists in course design would raise upfront costs. Regularly updating software and updating course material could quickly exceed any savings from economies of scale. Providing essential student support services, such as technical support, online tutoring, and counseling, might also significantly raise costs.

But online learning is an important tool for improving access to higher education in California, even if it does not cost less. Online classes are increasingly popular in the community colleges—which are the higher education institutions most likely to serve nontraditional students. Incorporating best practices into these courses would improve the colleges’ ability to serve the state’s diverse students.

The community college system’s Online Education Initiative is an important step in the effort to accommodate demand for online learning and improve student outcomes. If it is successful, it can serve as a model for other online learning programs in higher education.

Improving Online College Courses

Not all online college courses are alike. In fact, students in California community colleges are more likely to be successful in courses that have been designed recently than ones that are much older. And success varies by course topic, but not always in ways you might expect.

Hans Johnson, PPIC senior and Bren fellow, identified some elements important to a successful online course at a briefing in Sacramento last week. The research suggests that courses designed by a team—including media developers and information technology experts, as well as instructors—are better able than a single faculty member to take advantage of the online medium.

Online learning is an important topic throughout higher education. The report—Successful Online Courses in California Community Colleges—points out the increasing popularity of online offerings at the community colleges. Online learning reaches students who aren’t able to attend classes in traditional settings, Johnson said, and improving it is key to improving student success.

Increasing Transfer Students at UC

The University of California has agreed to bring in more transfer students as part of its budget agreement with the governor. Specifically, UC has committed to enrolling one new transfer student for every two new freshman. This means that one third (33%) of entering students will be transfers system-wide and at each campus (except Merced) by 2017. It also means that unless there is funding to increase enrollment, there may be fewer places for entering freshman.

Three campuses—Davis, Los Angeles, and San Diego—met the transfer enrollment goal in the fall of 2014. The other five campuses have a long way to go: they would have needed to enroll between 500 and 950 more transfer students each to reach the 33% target last fall, given their freshmen enrollment levels.

In total, the five campuses would have had to enroll 3,776 more transfer students to meet the ratio last year. Are there enough qualified transfers to make up that ground? Some campuses have plenty of applicants. Berkeley, Irvine, and Santa Barbara admit fewer than half of their transfer applicants, and each campus denied more than 7,000 applicants in 2014. Riverside and Santa Cruz, however, could have more trouble finding students to fill the spots. Those campuses already admit almost 60% of their transfer applicants, and though they denied enrollment to about 3,600 students in 2014, many of these students could be ineligible for transfer to the university or specific major to which they are applying.

UC hopes to increase the size and strength of the pool of transfer applicants, as the UC President’s Transfer Action Team suggests in a recent report. The report recommends actions to increase outreach at the community colleges, streamline some of the transfer processes, and support transfer students once they arrive at a UC.

There is evidence that transfer students are successful at UC. Transfer students and students who enroll as freshmen have similar graduation rates. About 60% of freshmen graduate in four years and 83% graduate by their sixth year; 53% of transfer students graduate two years after transferring to a UC and 86% graduate by their fourth year after transferring.

UC’s recent budget agreement with the governor did not allocate any state funds for enrollment increases. That can change, depending on action taken by the legislature and governor.

Placing more community college transfers in UCs could help California close the gap between the number of college graduates the public higher education system is producing and the projected demand for college graduates by 2025. But at a time when UC is already turning away qualified high school graduates, the tradeoff between admitting transfer students and freshmen could be painful. Finding space for more eligible students in both categories would most benefit the state in the long run.

Chart source: Author calculations from University of California Office of the President Data.
Note: “Additional transfers needed” assumes a desired 2 to 1 freshmen to transfer ratio and that the enrollment of freshmen does not change. *Merced is not required to maintain a 2 to 1 ratio of freshmen to transfers.

Testimony: Improving the Cal Grant Program

PPIC researchers Hans Johnson and Kevin Cook testified before the California Student Aid Commission last week at a hearing to provide information about improving the Cal Grant program. The program provides about $1.5 billion in grants to college students in California each year and is administered by the commission. The program provides grants to state residents attending approved institutions and is the largest source of state aid to California students. Here is a summary of the testimony.

 

Rapidly increasing costs to students, low completion rates, and lack of access to four-year colleges are key challenges facing the state and the Cal Grant program. Given relatively high rates of poverty among high school graduates, grant and scholarship aid is more important than ever in making college possible for many Californians. Currently, California ranks 47th among all states in the share of high school graduates that go to four-year colleges. Only about half of California State University (CSU) students earn a bachelor’s degree within six years, and less than half of community college students earn an associate degree or vocational certificate or transfer to a four-year college.

To improve outcomes, the California Student Aid Commission should invest in what works, taking into account both efficiency and equity. One possibility would be to provide incentives for completion by providing more funding for students taking a full course load of 15 units. Students who take only 12 units per semester are currently considered full-time students but will not acquire enough units to graduate in four years. Of course, making this change might require increasing the size of grants so that students would be able to cut back on the number of hours they work at jobs.

Student outcomes might also be improved by using Cal Grants to encourage enrollment at four-year colleges. One way to achieve this would be to provide tuition, as well as a living stipend, for students eligible for the University of California and CSU. Currently, some awards for the students with the lowest incomes provide a living stipend for four years but tuition support for only three years.

More and better data is necessary to properly evaluate these and other proposals for improving student outcomes. The best way to identify effective and equitable delivery of Cal Grant aid would be to develop a statewide longitudinal data base that follows students from high school through college and into the workforce. Such a database, already developed in many other states, would allow the commission to answer additional questions that would help them understand what works—and doesn’t—to effectively target grant aid in California.

View the presentation slides

 

Locking Students Out of Our Colleges a Losing Strategy

This commentary was published on Sunday, April 12, 2015, in the San Francisco Chronicle.

High school seniors across the state are just now hearing if they will be accepted into the college of their choice. Most of those students have applied to one or more of the state’s public four-year universities and, despite meeting eligibility criteria, many will be disappointed. While this is certainly distressing for individual students and their families, this problem points to larger, troubling issues of access to and student success in California’s higher education system. The state’s public universities are not able to accommodate all of the qualified students who apply.

(Continue reading on sfchronicle.com)

Delivering on the Promise of Online Education

Zócalo Public Square, which combines live events and journalism, asked PPIC senior fellow Hans Johnson and other experts to answer this question: How will technology—from massive open online courses and web-based textbooks to big data collection—change universities? Here is his response. Visit Zocalopublicsquare.org to read what others had to say.

A popular prediction is that new technology will revolutionize higher education, making traditional brick and mortar colleges obsolete. Certainly, new technology offers tremendous potential—democratizing access to college, enhancing instruction, and improving graduation rates, to name a few. But before we jump on the bandwagon of declaring a new era in higher education, we should assess the degree to which new technology can address fundamental challenges in higher education.

Perhaps the greatest challenge of all is to ensure that higher education serves as a ladder for economic and social mobility rather than simply reinforcing economic and class divides. By that standard, we can dismiss most Massive Online Open Courses offered in conjunction with the nation’s elite universities. Most of those courses are taken by people who already have a college degree, and the vast majority of students who enroll in such courses never finish them.

A different experiment in online learning, and one that serves hundreds of thousands of students who come from disadvantaged backgrounds, is taking place at California’s community colleges. With over one million course enrollments, California’s community colleges are the largest public provider of online education in the country. They are the gateways to higher education for low-income and nontraditional students—those with jobs and family obligations.

At the Public Policy Institute of California, we examined student success in online courses in the state’s community colleges. In our study, we found that course completion and passage rates are substantially lower in online courses than in traditional ones, even though students in online courses tend to be more advantaged and academically prepared. Moreover, gaps in academic performance that we see among demographic groups in real-life classrooms are exacerbated in the online setting.

What these early findings demonstrate is not failure, but the need to improve both technology and the way it is used in instruction. If we can get it right at the community colleges, we can deliver on the promise of online education.