An Historic Opportunity to Transform Higher Education for Today’s Students
Early on in her astonishing new book The Sum of Us, Heather McGhee makes a powerful connection between increasing enrollments in postsecondary education, particularly among Black and Latinx students, and the subsequent disinvestment in higher education by state legislatures that has occurred over the past three decades. During that time, states reduced their commitments to postsecondary education despite strong evidence that public investments in higher education reap tremendous dividends for the state and national economy. The implication of McGhee’s analysis is that increases in postsecondary enrollments and declines in public investment were not a coincidence. McGhee argues that our efforts to deny opportunities for some of our citizens resulted in reductions in investment in higher education that ultimately harmed all citizens.
The United States Senate’s passage of the $3.5 trillion dollar budget framework and the House of Representatives subsequent adoption of the framework, which includes $726 billion for the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) committee, moves the nation one step closer to reversing this historic trend. New federal investments in free community college tuition, Pell grants, support for minority serving institutions, and student success grants to institutions to implement evidence-based reforms would represent a once in a lifetime opportunity to see successful reforms scaled and dramatic improvements in college completion achieved.
In the coming weeks, the HELP committee will be tasked with crafting specific budgetary recommendations within the $726 billion framework laid out by the Senate. President Biden’s recommendations in the American Families Plan and bills that have been introduced in the House and Senate provide some idea what the final recommendations might be, but it is fair to say that negotiations could result in any number of outcomes.
The centerpiece of the higher education component of the Senate budget framework is the proposal for free tuition at public community colleges. While the framework does not put a price tag on the legislation, President Biden’s budget recommendation asks for $109 billion. Passage of this alone would be a transformational moment for higher education. However, if this investment is not paired with the implementation of evidence-based reforms that have proven to dramatically increase credential completion and more equitable outcomes, it may fall short of achieving the true transformation that is possible.
Fortunately, the authors of two bills in the Senate agree and have included provisions in their bills to tie federal grants to implementation of evidence-based college completion reforms. A brief review of the two bills shows areas of agreement, some important distinctions, but also some omissions that should be remedied in the final legislation.
The Community College Success Act sponsored by Senators Brian Schatz (HI) and Sherrod Brown (OH), with a companion House bill by Representative Grace Meng (NY), is a competitive grant program for community colleges that commit to implementing evidence-based student success programs that are comprehensive and meet the criteria for receiving an expansion grant from the Education Innovation and Research program (EIR). The program elements outlined in the bill are modeled after the highly effective City University of New York Accelerated Study in Associates Program (ASAP). The bill would require institutions to cover the cost of tuition and fees for students who are enrolled full time (defined as 12 credits a semester), implement a community college success program where students meet weekly with a tutor if they have been placed in remedial courses, and meet with a program advisor twice a month during the first semester and as needed in subsequent semesters. The bill also requires that students receive career services and participate in advising that results in students having an academic plan to graduate in three years, complete gateway math and English in the first year and ensuring students achieve their academic goals to include transfer to a four-year institution. In addition, institutions must build robust data systems to track student progress to a degree and offer monthly financial incentives to students who meet program expectations for advising and tutoring. The bill has a companion provision for part-time students enrolled for a minimum of nine credits a semester that has many of the same elements as the section for full-time students.
The America’s College Promise Act of 2021 (ACPA) that is sponsored by Senator Tammy Baldwin (WI) and Representative Andy Levin (MI), would provide a three to one match to state investments for covering the cost of tuition at public community colleges. To be eligible for the federal dollars, institutions must articulate plans to implement evidence-based reforms known to improve transfer and completion rates to include comprehensive academic, career and support services. The reforms should be designed with a particular focus on supporting low-income, first generation, adult students, as well as students from racial groups that have been traditionally underserved by higher education. The bill asks institutions to connect students to additional support services such as housing, child care, emergency financial services, transportation, mental health services, health insurance and nutrition services. In addition, it asks institutions to provide dual/concurrent credit options, to review course scheduling and the awarding of credit in an effort to shorten time to degree. The bill also calls for reforms to developmental education to include use of multiple measures for placement such as high school performance, the offering of career pathways into technical programs, work-based learning opportunities, and transfer pathways that include robust advising for students on transfer and guaranteed transfer into a bachelor’s degree program at a public four-year institution for students who complete an associate degree.
ACPA provides funds to Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Hispanic serving institutions, tribal colleges and other minority serving institutions funds to implement reforms similar to those to be implemented by community colleges.
Finally, ACPA provides funds to states and tribes through a College Success Fund that would support the implementation of various evidence-based student success strategies. The legislation does not outline the types of reforms eligible states and tribal colleges should facilitate implementation of at state and tribal colleges.
It is hard to argue with the strategies outlined in both bills, as they both identify many of the evidence-based reforms that the field is already working toward. It is safe to say that passage of either bill would be a huge step forward for the college completion movement. Having said that, there are some elements that could be improved. The bills have opposite challenges. The Community College Success Act may be too prescriptive and the America’s College Promise Act may not be prescriptive enough.
The Community College Success Act would legislate the full implementation of the CUNY ASAP model and/or implement reforms that meet a very high bar by having to meet the standards of the rigorous EIR grant program. The issue is not that institutions should not be expected to implement the common sense reforms embedded in ASAP, but that the specificity of the reforms outlined in the bill suggest that the reforms from ASAP are the only strategies institutions should employ. There are other reforms that are not part of the ASAP program or referenced in the legislation that have both strong evidence behind them and would be complementary to the ASAP model. One such example is corequisite remediation. Fundamentally redesigning the academic support students receive in gateway math and English courses by enrolling students directly into those courses and providing additional support as a corequisite has resulted in dramatic improvements in student success in gateway courses. Asking institutions to implement corequisite remediation along with the other ASAP reforms would further strengthen the legislation and result in further improvements in student success.
Another issue with the legislation is the requirement that students must be enrolled in an associate degree program, essentially denying access to the program for students enrolled in a technical certificate program. I suspect the reason technical certificates are not included is that the ASAP model has only focused on students completing associate degrees. Students who enroll in certificate programs that lead to employment in high wage, high demand jobs should not be penalized for making that choice.
By being so prescriptive, the Community College Success Act may miss an opportunity to fully scale evidence-based reforms that contribute to student success and provide students access to financial support and support services that will enable them to earn credentials that are highly aligned with local workforce needs.
The America’s Promise Act has the opposite problem to the Community College Success Act. It asks institutions to develop plans to implement evidence-based reforms, but offers few prescriptions on how institutions should design those reforms. Instead, the legislation offers a long list of various reforms in the field with little explanation to why institutions should prioritize them or how they should be implemented. The inclusion of reforms like connecting students to various non-academic supports that reflect the realities of today’s students is important and valuable. But it might have been useful for the legislation to point to models of where these reforms have been effective. The same could be said about the inclusion of dual-credit and other reforms intended to reduce students’ time to degree. Again, this is a worthy area of focus for reform efforts, but the inclusion of examples like Hawaii’s 15 to Finish program or Colorado’s work on dual-credit and credit for prior learning would be useful.
Both pieces of legislation reference the importance of building more effective transfer pathways into bachelor’s degree programs, but offer little guidance on the reforms that should be deployed. Possibly most glaringly, it places most of the burden and resources for effective transfer on the shoulders of community colleges. It seems like allocating resources to four-year institutions and/or providing funding to states for the explicit purpose of building effective transfer pathways would provide a powerful incentive for states and four-year institutions to implement evidence-based reforms that result in higher bachelor’s degree attainment rates among transfer students.
The current Senate budget framework and legislation tied to it could shift the tide toward greater public investments in public higher education that could lead to dramatic improvements in college success, lower student debt and greater social and economic equity. The reforms outlined in the Senate budget framework is an unprecedented opportunity for massive transformation, failure is not an option.
