The National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education has issued a Policy Alert on "Affordability and Transfer," two issues in the perennial domain of community and technical colleges. There will be plentiful commentary as the publication gains media attention. See a recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education by Jennifer Gonzalez (subscription).
Here's the study. Here's more information on the organization.
Readers are urged to examine the comparative data especially.
First, the obvious. Texas has a very high percentage of students enrolled in two-year colleges compared to other states.
From the narrative:
Community colleges account for approximately 40 percent of all enrollments in American higher education. The proportion of students enrolled in community colleges varies from one state to another. Table 1 shows the proportion of enrollment accounted for by community colleges in selected states and in the nation. States like California, Arizona, Texas, and Illinois account for a large part of all students enrolled in higher education. These states also have among the highest levels of participation in the community colleges.
When it comes to affordability, Texas seems to be in the middle. And, not surprisingly, projections indicate dramatic growth in the student population, especially among ethnic minorities. See Tables Two and Three.
Unless you follow such matters, the table that jumps out is Number Four (scroll down toward the end), where Texas sits near the bottom in two-year college completion and transfers to universities.
First, let's remind ourselves that our state consistently occupies a similar position in a host of educational "success" categories, from pre-school on up. A cursory perusal of the report confirms that states with high poverty rates and low educational levels (such as the South and Indiana—a state devastated economically in the last generation) don't perform well. On the other hand, Mississippi looks better than Texas on the chart. There are other counter-intuitive numbers in the report. Please have a look.
According to the narrative, the type of financial aid is important:
Need-based financial aid, targeted to low-income students, plays a critical role. Financial aid should be available for students who transfer, to enable them to attend full-time; aid should also be available for those students who enroll part-time due to the need to work and support their families. However, student financial aid by itself will not effectively address the affordability issue if tuition increases consistently exceed the growth of family income.
A new Texas law targeting financial aid toward those who have demonstrated previous academic accomplishment will be interesting to follow over the next few years.
By way of context, here are the "Institutional Resumes" published by the Coordinating Board, as announced in earlier posts.
Inevitably such reports generate disputes over methodology. "Apples-to-apples" is, and should be, a constant focus of discussion. If aggregate statistics are wrong for verifiable reasons, policy makers need to hear about it. When it comes to comparing states, this would seem to be a basic question: Are the Texas figures misleading in ways that don't apply to other states also?
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