Topic: Affordability
Blog Post
November 20, 2017
Will Devoting Funds to Excelsior Help Students?
Free tuition at all public institutions in a state sounds great. Such a message could encourage students to attend college who would otherwise think it unaffordable, and/or could help students to stay in college. However, given the particular policies associated with New York’s Excelsior Scholarship, what the future holds for Excelsior Scholarship recipients may not be all positive. Due to these potential negative consequences, New York State’s funds for this program could be better spent expanding existing services…
Blog Post
November 20, 2017
Re-Thinking the Case for Free College
I’m all about college opportunity and success and love the idea of swinging the doors wide open. At first I was taken aback, to put it mildly, by the notion of “free college,” but my thoughts are evolving. The idea may be worthwhile for what it’s doing to galvanize public attention to higher education finance. Whether it is viable public policy, from a practical political standpoint or a social equity perspective, however, depends on our willingness to look at the…
Blog Post
November 13, 2017
How Research Can Fuel Action to Address Food and Housing Insecurity on American College Campuses
Editor’s note: We asked Sara Goldrick-Rab, a panelist for our Higher Ed Insights Survey, to contribute this blog post based on her open-ended comments on the 2017 survey. It’s been nearly a decade since my team first started studying food and housing insecurity among college students. To be honest, it wasn’t part of the plan. We were in the midst of a study on the impacts of a private financial aid program in Wisconsin. We expected to learn…
Blog Post
November 13, 2017
How Policymakers Can Help Institutions Support Financially Insecure Students
Editor’s note: We asked Rachel Dykstra Boon, a panelist for our Higher Ed Insights Survey, to contribute this blog post based on her open-ended comments on the 2017 survey. Ask any teacher (pre-school through graduate school) for an example of a student with food, housing or financial struggles affecting the learning experience and heart-breaking stories will follow. Quantitative and qualitative research over the past several years has pointed to the growth in this demographic of college students as the country…
Blog Post
October 31, 2017
In New Survey, Higher Ed Insiders Share Concerns about Impact of Federal Policy Changes under President Trump
In May and June of 2017, we surveyed the Ithaka S+R Higher Ed Insights panel—164 senior leaders and experts at colleges and universities, associations, research groups, and philanthropies—about the state of higher education and the likely impact of recent events and trends. (You can learn more about our Higher Ed Insights Project here.) Today, in “Higher Ed Insights: Results of the Spring 2017 Survey,” Rayane Alamuddin, Daniel Rossman, and I report the findings of that survey. While respondents…
Blog Post
August 30, 2016
Can Financial Aid for Non-Traditional Education Programs Help Low-Income Students?
Last October, the federal Department of Education announced the launch of Educational Quality through Innovative Partnerships (EQUIP), a pilot program inviting partnerships between non-traditional education providers and accredited institutions of higher education. A key component of the program is its target population: low- and moderate-income students. Under a provision of the Higher Education Act, accredited institutions are ineligible to receive federal financial aid for programs in which 50 percent or more of the content and instruction is provided by…
Blog Post
July 14, 2016
Does Financial Aid Help Those Who Need it Most?
As tuition and fees at public and private not-for-profit four-year institutions continue to rise, so does the role of financial assistance, particularly for low- and moderate-income students. Yet, recent reports show that the distribution of financial aid is far from equitable. Last month, an Atlantic article highlighted an array of college-affordability efforts–including private and employer grants, the federal work-study program, and federal tax credits–that often fail to provide financial assistance to those that need it most. For instance,…
Blog Post
June 9, 2016
Optimizing for the Adult Learner
Roughly 70 percent of today’s college students are “nontraditional students,” meaning that they are over the age of 24, commute to campus, work part or full-time, are financially independent, or have children. Some enter college with only a GED, while others are reentry students with previously earned credits from multiple institutions. Many of these students are low-income, the first in their families to attend college, or come from underrepresented racial and ethnic groups. Despite this new majority, most institutions…
Blog Post
May 18, 2016
Will Easing the Financial Burden of Dual Enrollment Improve College Outcomes for Low-Income Students?
As I’ve noted previously, the percentage of low-income (family income in the bottom 20 percent) high school graduates that have enrolled in two- and four-year institutions declined from 55.9 percent in 2008 to 45.5 percent in 2013. Studies examining dual enrollment programs—in which students take courses for college credit while still in high school—have found that participating in such programs increases the likelihood of college degree attainment, especially for low-income students. Yet low-income students tend to have…
Blog Post
April 4, 2016
Trends in College Net Price for Low-Income Students
Last week, New America’s Stephen Burd published a report showing that low-income students who receive Pell grants still face a substantial financial burden to attend college, especially at private not-for-profit institutions. Looking at the average net price—“the average amount of money that students and their families have to pay after all grant and scholarship aid is deducted from the listed price”—of low-income students attending 1,400 four-year institutions, Burd found that 94 percent of the private not-for-profit institutions he studied…
Blog Post
March 7, 2016
Helping Students Save Money With Open Educational Resources
Reducing the cost of a college education is a frequent topic in higher education circles, but often the focus is on capping the cost of tuition, or, occasionally, reducing the cost of tuition for students and their families. Some colleges and universities have been trying to find other ways to reduce costs, as well, such as offering online courses during the summer or a regular academic term, for a reduced fee, or using open educational resources (OERs) as an alternative…
Blog Post
February 22, 2016
New Survey of Higher Ed Experts Finds Promise in Guided Pathways, Adaptive Learning
In fall 2015, Ithaka S+R invited a select group of higher education administrators and experts to join a panel of advisors. One activity of the panel, which consists of 110 members with diverse backgrounds and perspectives, is to take part in semi-annual surveys on issues of national importance in higher education. The results of these surveys will help guide Ithaka S+R’s research agenda. In addition, we will publish the results to inform the broader higher education community about the panel’s…
Blog Post
May 14, 2015
How is Income Related to the Community College to Bachelor’s Degree Pathway?
Last week, we explored what the data behind “The Effects of Rising Student Costs in Higher Education: Evidence from Public Institutions in Virginia” tell us about degree-attainment rates at community colleges. We noted that eight years after students started at a community college, only 20% of those on track to earn a bachelor’s degree had earned one, and only 14% of students in the lowest income quintile had earned one. (See the blog post from May 7,…
Blog Post
March 4, 2015
When State Funding for Higher Education Dries Up, the Poorest Students Suffer the Most
That’s the key finding of Ithaka S+R’s new report, “The Effects of Rising Student Costs in Higher Education: Evidence from Public Institutions in Virginia.” Taking advantage of a uniquely comprehensive and detailed dataset managed by the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia (SCHEV), authors Christine Mulhern, Richard R. Spies, Matthew P. Staiger, and D. Derek Wu analyze trends in state aid, what students pay to attend, and student outcomes. Their work has yielded some of the strongest statistical…
Research Report
March 4, 2015
The Effects of Rising Student Costs in Higher Education
Evidence from Public Institutions in Virginia
In Virginia and elsewhere, higher education faces an unstable future. Demographic, economic and technological changes are driving transformation in all that we do. Higher education – access to it, knowledge created and disseminated through it, and outcomes produced by it – will be the key to innovation and prosperity. At the same time, public higher education faces an unprecedentedly challenging landscape as it seeks to fulfill its public purposes and responsibilities. Its transformative potential for our nation is at risk. The risk…
Blog Post
October 13, 2014
Technology: Its Potential Impact on the National Need to Improve Educational Outcomes and Control Costs
On Monday, October 13, 2014, William G. Bowen delivered the opening address at Rice University’s De Lange Conference, “Technology: Its Potential Impact On The National Need To Improve Educational Outcomes And Control Costs.” We are pleased to publish it here as an Ithaka S+R issue brief. Bowen, who is president emeritus of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and also president emeritus of Princeton University, was the founding chairman of JSTOR/ITHAKA and continues to serve on ITHAKA’s board. The paper explores…