Spurring Student Success

On the latest episode of Future U., Jeff and I dug into how student success efforts on college campuses have changed since the pandemic. It’s an important topic given that, according to the National Student Clearinghouse, the share of students who earn a college credential within six years of enrolling stalled at the same rate for a third straight year.

About 62% of students who started college in 2017 have since earned a degree or certificate. And as the Clearinghouse noted, students aren't just taking longer to complete college. They’re just leaving. Of the nearly 2.5 million students who started college in 2017, nearly one-third left without a credential.

So how do you engage learners in the post-pandemic age? Carrie Bartek, from Wake Technical Community College, and Randi Harris, from Portland State University, joined us to break down the question and all of its dimensions in the episode.

One of my observations in the second half of the show emerged from the conversation around dual enrollment—high school students taking so-called college courses. As long-time subscribers know, dual enrollment is an area about which I’ve had significant skepticism. But here I shared what I see as some of the potential upside of dual enrollment in rethinking and redesigning high schools:

“It seems undeniable, particularly when the economy is good, that it almost feels like we're undergoing this structural shift perhaps in the country whereby grades 11 and grades 12 are almost like the new grade 13, if you will. As in, dual enrollment in community colleges becomes so pervasive in grades 11 and 12, which is definitely a trend that maybe we even should start talking about it as the new start of college.

And if that's the case, how do we think about all that when that enrollment is still taking place in our nation's high schools? And then I think what's exciting, Jeff, is we can ask some big questions. What else can we do with that time? For example, could more students take the community college classes but also pair that with internships and externships to gain working experience and knowledge about careers and build purpose? One of your favorite topics.

Could we pair that with the clubs and sports and other activities and rites of passage like prom and really still keep the core of the high school experience, but make it more interesting and exciting to students? No more senior year burnout. And then maybe that further unbundles high school and we actually see more students doing a—and I'm going to use this reference because we're speaking to people focused on higher ed—but sort of a Tim Tebow type move, hybrid homeschooling. That's a trend that is on the rise right now in K–12 education.

But I kind of wonder if rather than take the college courses taught by high school teachers as many of these dual enrollment programs are currently structured, maybe they take the online courses taught by the college faculty themselves. And anyway, we could stretch this a little bit further, but you get the idea. It seems like if we're intentional about using this shift to innovate more, we could create a lot more opportunities and knowledge for students in grades 11 and 12, but it's obviously going to have massive downstream implications for how we start thinking about measuring student success, Jeff.”

That reflection caused Jeff to ponder about what more intentional innovation might look like.

Then, as we wrapped up the episode, Jeff asked me: “In an era of limited resources, where do you as a university put those resources? Do you put them in recruitment, in student success, in changing perceptions? In many ways, it seems like a game of whack-a-mole, right? Because every time I put resources somewhere, the issues somewhere else just don't improve, which hurt where I just put my resources.”

Here was my answer:

Historically colleges have put those resources at the top of the funnel because their incentives have been around enrollment, and so they just wanted to get more students into the funnel, if you will. But what you've just captured is the downward spiral that I think we're in right now, and in my mind that the first rule of getting out of holes is to stop digging them.

And to me, in an era focused on value and ROI and outcomes where policy may move in that direction as well, I think that means you just don't keep following the same old playbook and filling the top of the funnel. Instead, you fix the ROI, the value part of the equation. You show students and society that the education that you're offering is relevant. You show that the degree, and more importantly I would argue, the knowledge and the skills and the network that you get from it will result in something positive and tangible.

And if you build that sense of contribution, but also launch students to a place where they can act on it and do so at a cost that they can afford. I think students and families will stop asking some of the questions that they have been of is college really worth it? Now, that also implies, Jeff, I think getting out of some of the games of politics that we've talked about in past shows, and it really means focusing on the questions of cost and business model and value proposition.

And I don't mean tuition when I say those things. I mean the underlying spending that an institution does. If you get your cost structure in line and launch programs with lower underlying cost structures that actually result in value, I think you can start to answer these questions, stop digging the hole and become the place that's differentiated and other students want to start coming to.

Listen to the full episode, Student Success 2.0, here.

Pennsylvania Gov. Proposes Higher Ed Restructuring

Some of you may have seen headlines that Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro announced plans to consolidate the governance of all of the state’s 15 community colleges and 10 regional public universities (which are presently part of the PASSHE system) into one governing body as part of an “initiative focused on workforce development and boosting college access.” Inside Higher Ed has the article here and a quote (and some context) from me:

As higher education systems and institutions across the country experience declining enrollments and demographic shifts, they’re also under increasing pressure by state and federal lawmakers to meet workforce demands and ensure they provide students a return on investment. At the same time, college costs and institutional spending are often outpacing inflation, even as tuition is on the rise.

Michael Horn, a co-founder of the Clayton Christensen Institute for Disruptive Innovation, a nonpartisan think tank, and a specialist in consolidation, said these challenges create a “perfect storm” and raise “a sustainability question” for Pennsylvania and many other states.

“In industries hit by disruption, you typically do see consolidation. That is typically the first move you see … trying to figure out how to get cost structures in line with demand,” Horn said. “So my sense is … they’re trying to address those very real challenges and create a reset.”

Now that I’ve seen that this initiative won’t actually consolidate the institutions themselves—they’ll all remain independent—I have a somewhat different take. I’m curious to see just how much power this governing entity would have. It doesn’t seem like the initiative will eliminate extraneous spending by the colleges and universities unless the entity has the power to stop them from offering duplicative programs. It does seem that this proposal might just be about more government spending, in which case that’s not lowering the fundamental cost structure of college. If I’m right, the new performance-based funding formula will also matter a lot: what are the incentives? Do they really prioritize meaningful student success? And what does this mean for the agreement that Pennsylvania’s community colleges signed with Southern New Hampshire University in 2020? We may have to wait and see, but this plan doesn’t strike me as clearly “bold” given the context. If others have different takes, I would welcome them.

As always, thanks for reading, writing, and listening.