One idea for improving the nation's college-completion rate sounds simple enough: Find former students who have already earned enough credits to receive a degree, or need just a few more classes to do so, and encourage them to graduate.
Advocates of a newly expanded program, Project Win-Win, estimate that colleges could award thousands of diplomas that way, propelling the United States closer to President Obama's aim of being atop the world again by 2020 in the proportion of residents with postsecondary degrees or certificates. One in five Americans ages 25 to 64 have attended college but not earned degrees, and getting some of those 37 million people back into, and through, college will be necessary if the nation is to have any chance of meeting the president's goal.
But the reality of identifying, tracking down, and persuading former students to return is complicated, not to mention time-consuming.
One of the first responses from many former students reached by college officials involved with Project Win-Win is whether the invitation to re-enroll is a joke. Some are befuddled, having thought for years that they had already earned a degree. Others are indifferent, assuming that the communication will lead to a plea for money.
If colleges can get their dropouts to the next step of the conversation, of entertaining the idea of returning, there are still challenges. Sometimes cost is a worry; sometimes curricula have been updated so that certain credits no longer count toward a particular degree.
The project, a joint program of the Institute for Higher Education Policy, State Higher Education Executive Officers, and the Lumina Foundation for Education, began last year with nine colleges and in August was expanded to 35 community colleges and four-year institutions in six states. Lumina has set a goal similar to the president's, of having 60 percent of adults with college degrees or credentials by 2025.
Putting more degrees into people's hands certainly contributes to the tally of Americans who hold them, although it does little to increase the nation's educational capital. The project's leaders, though, say their aim for the program is narrower: to capture the small portion of the population that could easily be counted among degree holders but is not.
The three-year, $1.3-million project joins a number of endeavors with similar goals, including "academic forgiveness" programs at Camden County College, in New Jersey, and Bucks County Community College, in Pennsylvania, that allow former students to reset their grade-point averages and start over.
These programs are finding some success, offering stories of individuals who have eagerly embraced the opportunity to receive a retroactively awarded degree.
McNeese State University, in Louisiana, points to a student who dropped out of college two years ago, when she was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's disease. She had planned to earn a four-year degree in teaching but was recently awarded an associate degree because she had enough credits for that.
College officials said the student wept after learning that she would receive a college degree, an achievement she thought was no longer possible.
Hard Work
In seven months, colleges participating in the Project Win-Win pilot have so far awarded nearly 600 associate degrees and identified almost 1,600 potential degree recipients. Over all, about 14,000 associate degrees are expected to be awarded through the pilot project and the expanded program, which are designed to reach students who were enrolled in 2003 or later.
Project officials acknowledge the challenges that participating institutions face. In fact, the Institute for Higher Education Policy is sponsoring a conference next month to help colleges navigate hurdles. Despite the labor-intensive work involved, Michelle Asha Cooper, the institute's president, says the project is worthwhile.
"We have this national goal related to college completion," she says. "It's important that we help students get to the finish line."
The project's successes are hard won, requiring diligence, persistence, and persuasion, and the complications of the effort suggest that the promise of these programs to bring widespread change is limited.
Success requires scouring databases, and in some cases adjusting them, to locate students who fit the criteria for graduation. Countless hours are spent tracking down students via letters, phone calls, and e-mails. The work is a drain on college staff members, who usually juggle those duties with their regular workloads. And it is all occurring at a precarious time, especially for community colleges, where surging enrollment collides with dwindling resources.
Sometimes the hard work leads nowhere. A year after her institution joined Project Win-Win, Marilyn S. Jones, vice president for learning support and vice provost at Lakeland Community College, in Ohio, is no closer to putting a diploma in the hands of a former college student.
Of the 128 former students who met the criteria for graduation through the project, Ms. Jones reached only 45. None were interested in receiving an associate degree. Most had left the college to pursue a bachelor's degree instead.
Because it takes an average of six years to complete a four-year degree, Ms. Jones tried to persuade students to get an associate degree—which is also a credential of value— while they continued to pursue a bachelor's degree. She said students could use an associate degree as leverage to obtain a higher salary or a better job. In 2009, full-time workers with some college experience but no degree earned an average of $36,300 per year, compared with $39,500 for those with an associate degree, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
In the end, the students just deemed it unnecessary, Ms. Jones said.
"It was very disappointing, but we are going to continue with the effort," she says. "Hopefully we'll get different results next time."
Tracking Down Students
To participate in Project Win-Win, Southeastern Louisiana University had to make changes in its degree audit system so that it could recognize former students who had accrued enough credits to earn associate degrees. (The university awards both two- and four-year degrees.) Before the change, the system recognized only students actively enrolled.
"Nothing is straightforward and easy," says Lori Fairburn, the enrollment-services director. "There are a lot of people involved in this process and a lot of questions that need to be answered before moving forward."
But Southeastern Louisiana's efforts seem to be gaining results. A few weeks ago, the university sent 270 letters to former students who had enough credits to earn associate degrees. The university had received 61 responses as of early last week, with the figure changing daily. All of the students who responded indicated that they wanted the degrees, university officials said.
At Delgado Community College, in Louisiana, one of the original colleges in the pilot program, officials are still compiling a list of eligible students. Deborah Lea, vice chancellor for learning and student development, says the college is methodically reviewing student transcripts and matching them with curriculum requirements. That is being done manually, she said.
The work, which requires a lot of hours, is being done by staff members who continue to handle their day-to-day responsibilities on top of this special project.
When Northwestern State University, in Louisiana, sent out 768 letters to eligible former students who had accrued enough credits to earn an associate degree, or only needed to take a few courses to do so, a staggering 300 letters came back as undeliverable.
Undeterred, the university began e-mailing those students, and when that didn't work, college officials started making phone calls. They cast a wider net by promoting the program on the university's Facebook page.
Soon local newspaper and television stations picked up the story, and former students whom the university had had trouble locating began calling to find out how they could earn their degrees.
For some students, the letter or phone call is a surprise, because they thought they had already graduated. Instead they learn that because they had neglected to fill out some paperwork, they are not college graduates after all. Most of these former students fill out the paperwork so they can finally get their degrees, and some even don caps and gowns and attend graduation. Others just shrug off the idea as unnecessary.
Still others are suspicious. That describes the reaction of Don Schleisman, 43, when he received a letter in 2003 from the University of New Mexico inviting him to return and finish his bachelor's degree. The university is not associated with Project Win-Win. When it started its graduation effort in 1997, it was one of the earliest universities to do so.
Mr. Schleisman had attended New Mexico on and off for about a decade, starting in 1985, before finally dropping out completely to pursue a music-industry career that never really took off. He ended up waiting tables and bartending.
"I thought the school wanted my money," he says with a laugh. "I thought it was too good to be true."
After realizing that the offer was legitimate, he re-enrolled. Two semesters later, in 2004, he graduated with a bachelor's degree in economics. He now works as a policy analyst for the New Mexico Department of Education.
Another concern of participants in the programs that seek to graduate former students is ensuring the integrity of the associate degree. That's why some institutions are in no hurry to award degrees. They want to make sure that only deserving students are applying and receiving degrees.
To preserve program integrity, colleges participating in Project Win-Win have established several criteria. Besides excluding people who were enrolled before 2003, a grade-point average of at least 2.0 is required to obtain a degree.
Ms. Fairburn remembers one call from the daughter of a woman who attended Southeastern Louisiana back in the 1930s. She called inquiring if her mother could receive her associate degree. The university declined the request because the mother's coursework would not match the current curriculum requirements.
"Those sentimental calls are hard," said Ms. Fairburn. "We want to maintain the integrity of the degree but at the same time serve the students. It's a balance."
Making It Work
For over a decade, the University of New Mexico has worked methodically to remove barriers that stand in the way of adults who might otherwise return to college to complete their degrees. Its efforts illustrate that obstacles facing former students and their colleges can be surmounted, but that it takes a campus working together to make it happen.
The university's Graduation Project identifies former students who had senior standing and were within a few courses of completing a bachelor's degree. They also needed to have left with at least a 2.0 grade-point average to participate.
To date, 2,816 students have come back to the university. Of those, about 2,000 have already graduated, a 71-percent graduation rate. That compares with New Mexico's six-year graduation rate of 43 percent.
The project's success has a lot to do with its "cut through the red tape" approach, according to university officials. "We basically act as the middleman," said Vanessa Shields, the program's manager.
Former students reapply using a special, short application form, and tuition assistance is offered to those with financial need. The university provides students with reports that outline the classes they need to graduate and works with them when their transcripts don't match well with current degree requirements.
Because many students attended college long ago, the courses they took may no longer count toward a degree. In those cases, Ms. Shields says, her office encourages students to petition the academic department for a waiver. A lot of students are surprised to learn that they can do that, she says, and most who apply are granted exceptions.
Beth Pinkerton, 49, saw how effective the project's staff members can be. Eager to return to college after leaving almost three decades ago, Ms. Pinkerton immediately faced a hurdle. She had contacted the university, seeking to re-enroll, after learning about the Graduation Project on the university's Web site. But according to New Mexico's computer system, she had not earned the 98 credits required to participate, even though her paper transcript showed that she had more than 100 credits.
It turned out that her credits were so old that they weren't showing up in the database. After the project's staff members got involved, the registrar's office eventually located its own paper copy of Ms. Pinkerton's college transcript, showing that she did indeed meet the eligibility requirement.
Then, when Ms. Pinkerton had difficulty enrolling in upper-level courses, which had filled up by the time she tried to register, staff members intervened again by making a call to the registrar's office and getting her a spot in the classes. After starting college in the 1980s, Ms. Pinkerton finally received her bachelor's degree, in psychology, in May.
"Just knowing that I had someone to go to and who would be responsive to my request really made all the difference in getting my degree," says Ms. Pinkerton, who is a public-health program manager in the New Mexico Department of Health.
When the university began its graduation effort, it seemed to have underestimated the scope of the task ahead. When Ms. Shields started her job, she was told that it would be a short-term project. Administrators figured that the university would eventually catch up with all the students who had dropped out, and the program would naturally dwindle.
What they didn't count on was the volume of new dropouts being added to the database each year. Last year Ms. Shields mailed out letters to about 200 newly dropped out students.
"It's an endless cycle," she says. "But as long as they come back and finish, that is what's important."
Comments
1. 11167997 - October 26, 2010 at 08:35 am
As the designer and director of Win-Win, I find Jennifer's achievement in this article incredibly helpful, particularly as all participants will be gathering next week to walk through the process together, identifying the kinds of problems that arise,
coming to some conclusions about solving those problems, and to understandings about both the potential and limitations of their efforts. The 9 institutions that participated in the 7-month pilot of this project last year have been true pioneers, and will continue for another year. They are joined by 26 others, and in 6 different configurations. We have community colleges and interstate community college districts (which present some unique challenges), community colleges focusing solely on the one 4-year school which they feed in high volume, a 4-year college focusing on one of its feeder community colleges, 4-year colleges authorized to award associate's degrees, branch campuses of state universities, and 4-year colleges that have rarely used their powers to grant associate's degrees. And while nearly all these institutions are public, we also have one private college and one for-profit (both in Missouri, whose Department of Higher Education has them in its data base). They all know how much work this is, and, as Jennifer's examples demonstrate, how difficult locating our geomobile students can be--both for those students whose records qualify them for degree awards and those who are 9 or fewer credits short (the ceiling adopted by the original institutional participants). Too many of us believe that degrees just happen. They don't, particularly when students attend 3 or 4 schools. The state policy issues that arise are both noteworthy and challenging. But when one looks at the national transcript-based data, it appears that there are about 65,000 unawarded associate's walking around now, and, when all else is accounted for, an estimated 250k. Win-Win is just a beginning; other institutions and state systems have expressed more than passing interest in the comparatively low-handing fruit.
Put it all together, and one will find a considerable down-payment on completion data at a degree level at which (compared with the bachelor's) we do not do very well. Thanks to the Lumina Foundation are in order for funding not only this project, but other related projects as well.
Cliff Adelman, Institute for Higher Education Policy
2. mvclibrary - October 26, 2010 at 09:13 am
Is it April Fool's Day already???? Nope - just checked the calendar and it's not... Sure, let's cajole non-degree finishers back, reset their GPA's and forgive their academic sins. Other than boosting colleges' completion rates, what will be accomplished by watering down the 4-year degree even further?
3. diehl - October 26, 2010 at 10:09 am
I'm not as cynical as mvclibrary but I think greater effort should be given to retain students. 25% leave the first year. Why? What things can we control? Quality of instruction is one factor that is controllable. Faculty, all faculty should be required to take pedagogical classes as part of their professional development. 50% of incoming science freshman leave because of poor instruction. No, not because they can't 'cut it' because these 'non-persisters' have the same GPAs and standardized test scores as persisters. The quality of instruction is POOR. This is why students leave.
Why does increasing graduation rates mean 'lowering standards?' When I want to finish a product, I work harder. I don't cut corners and scrimp on quality. My end project looks great. It is not a 'water-down version' of which I am capable.
Let's put energy in at the front-end by providing freshman and all of our students with high quality instruction and access to FT committed faculty members. It costs a lot to get a student (time, energy and $). Once we get them, let's keep them.
4. marcintosh - October 26, 2010 at 10:43 am
Why is this news? For-profits do this routinely. Some for-profits have persons dedicated to this task.
It's usually done between semesters or quarters.
It's an odious business. It only serves the colleges stats with the government and does nothing for the student or the class as a whole.
5. laker - October 26, 2010 at 11:30 am
Go back to Peter Smith's "The Quiet Crisis" and an argument can be made that it is not just "poor instruction" it is poor pedagogy that results in higher losses of first year students, particularly those from traditionally underserved populations. That said, how can we compel faculty to fundamentally change teaching to make success viable? Too many respondents here hold to a "I made and you can too, you just aren't trying.." mentality. I have worked with many intelligent adults who were uncredentialed because the WAY they were taught did not work, not their inability to learn.
I applaud this effort as a start, the idea that the 1930s Mom could not be accommodated is pretty silly when we can develop interdisciplinary degrees and take into account a lot of incidental and lifelong learning she has done. Why couldn't Southeatern Louisiana award an AA?
6. mvclibrary - October 26, 2010 at 01:14 pm
I'm all for improving pedagogy, but too many colleges admit every warm body (MVC included) and too many students expect the type of hand-holding they've gotten used to in K-12.
7. 11236504 - October 26, 2010 at 02:28 pm
The key piece of this when I was doing it at a small liberal arts college about 10 years ago now, was reaching those students who thought they had completed but had not. As registrar, I found that office to be ideally situated to find students, explain the matter with sensitivity, and work toward the degree completion. In that type of environment it was much better to be proactive about it both for the students and the institution - definitely win-win. But this is not a task to assign to any position, with any skill set. It requires a personality who enjoys interacting with students and has a firm understanding of most graduation issues. And it can be a heavy work load. Having the right staff can be as difficult as finding the students who walked away!
8. jaysanderson - October 26, 2010 at 03:28 pm
So tens of thousands of students in this country really finished college and just absent-mindedly wandered off before they picked up their degree? It sounds like this is more about holding a BIG EDUCATION BLOWOUT SALE to inflate actual graduation rates.
I do applaud the first commentor who applauds the article that applauds his own effort to applaud himself for inventing the plan.
9. rpoulin - October 26, 2010 at 04:29 pm
The cynicism in the article and in some of the comments is fairly appalling. I've worked with WICHE's Non-Traditional No More project, which has goals similar to those of WIN-WIN. In the states the project assisted, it was common for them to find large numbers of students who left in good standing. They left because of a death in the family, loss of work, a spouse moved, away or other life-changing situations.
I recommend a more hopeful article that highlights the stories of two adults who overcame the barriers of going to college in their 40's: http://www.inforum.com/event/article/id/295626/
From what I've seen, this is not an education blow-out sale. It is time to re-engage with those who did not get to accomplish their goals.
10. josephofoley - October 26, 2010 at 05:00 pm
Years ago, as Director of Admissions at a regional state university that had rather suddenly erected some barriers to new student enrollment, I felt the need to encourage dropouts to return to prop up our enrollment numbers. Knowing that many students quit attending because of frustration about being regularly closed out of required courses, I made a deal with other nervous university officials who allowed me to invite back former students whose gpa exceeded 2.0 with the offer of registration in the admissions office weeks in advance of regular registration. It may not have been fair to all, but it worked well enough to lure back several hundred former students. At the same time, it illustrated our institution's insensitivity to the problems of our students. A few extra sections of required courses over the years would have eased much suffering and generated many extra graduates.
11. pwherry - October 26, 2010 at 05:57 pm
As someone who worked at a large midwestern public university in a degree completion more than 20 years ago and who worked to get an academic fresh start policy in place about 18 years ago, I agree with the question "why is this news?" Not because the for-profits are doing it but because such programs have been in place at many "traditional" institutions for a long long time. As rpoulin points out, students leave school for many valid reasons: illness, family emergency, financial problems, etc. And even some academic "sins" are sins of omission--I remember the advisee who had a semester's worth of F's on an otherwise strong transcript: "I was in love, I was planning a wedding--it just never occurred to me to think about my academic record." Why shouldn't that person, now older and wiser, not have a realistic shot at completing a degree just because she was once young and foolish?
I do think, as some commentators have pointed out, that we can and should do more to retain freshmen. But inviting people back to complete credentials that are within their grasp is not totally cynical. Look at the New Mexico student who went from waiting tables to being a policy analyst. Besides poor teaching, our institutions throw up many other barriers: careless or uninformed advising, "we've always done it this way" class scheduling, impenetrable academic procedures--the list can go on.
As one of those people who tried to help students navigate the way back in, I'm glad some institutions are trying to make that way smoother, despite the cynicism from critics.
12. cbwright - October 27, 2010 at 01:38 pm
Why not dispense with all degree programs and just award degrees to anyone with enough credits and sufficient GPA, regardless of whether there is focus within the set of courses taken. ROFLMAO.
Seriously, our institution is not part of this project but has begun this process. The problem is determining what constitutes a degree program. How random must the credit hours earned be (assuming sufficient GPA) in order to be deemed not sufficient for a degree? Further, what benefit does society gain by having more 'degree holding citizens'?
I am an O'bama supporter but I just don't get it. Do college degrees have any value now? Will they if this becomes the norm? What is to stop overly zealous administrators from using this to make 'short term graduation' rates look good at the expense of institutional reputation and long term fundraising ability?
13. chemistryprofessor - October 27, 2010 at 06:51 pm
“50% of incoming science freshman leave because of poor instruction. No, not because they can't 'cut it' because these 'non-persisters' have the same GPAs and standardized test scores as persisters. The quality of instruction is POOR. This is why students leave.”
It is my opinion that most students in America do poorly in math and science due to the American joke that math and science are incredibly difficult and it is OK for anyone/everyone to have troubles with them. In other words we set up our entire society to be math and science phoebes. So what does this mean to me? Well it means that the majority of students in any introductory (Chemistry) class that I teach can be expected to 1) have little or no skill with the tools of science (specifically math) and 2) expect the class to be by far the hardest they will have ever taken (these students end up being their own worst enemy as they expect to fail and then self fulfill their prophecy).
14. chemistryprofessor - October 27, 2010 at 06:54 pm
Does this mean that once I show students that they can indeed do math and science that the problems will go away? Certainly not and here is the reason: Most students believe that memorizing the material is the same as understanding and knowing it. This is most likely is due to the way students are being taught in public schools where memorization is emphasized (and perhaps this goes on successfully in other college courses as well but not in science).
15. chemistryprofessor - October 27, 2010 at 06:57 pm
If the material is memorized instead of understood then as soon as we move on to new material the past material is lost or forgotten. Let me give a specific example:
16. chemistryprofessor - October 27, 2010 at 06:58 pm
Right before my first exam this semester my classes impressed me with how well they did on average on the daily quizzes and then most performed well on the first exam.
17. chemistryprofessor - October 27, 2010 at 07:05 pm
But then for the next quiz the majority of my students could no longer solve a simple metric problem or name a simple compound (exam one material), and
18. chemistryprofessor - October 27, 2010 at 07:05 pm
continued to be unable to solve any metric or naming problem even though there was one of each on every quiz for the next 4 weeks. It is worth noting that one week I gave the exact same quiz twice in a row, and there was no significant improvement in scores on the second one.
19. chemistryprofessor - October 27, 2010 at 07:08 pm
I share with my students that it is all about the way that you study and be aware that memorization gives you a sense of false knowledge. But of course it is WAYYYY easier to just memorize what is expected to be on the exam than to actually learn anything.
20. chemistryprofessor - October 27, 2010 at 07:09 pm
But then comes along exam two and half of the class does poorly due to not having really learned anything about the material for exam one (and unfortunately some think that this is due to the poor instruction these persisters of other courses receive).
21. chemistryprofessor - October 27, 2010 at 07:13 pm
If I could do it all for them I would, but I have every reason to believe that they need to be on board for this transfer of knowledge to be effective.
[Sorry about having to break my post up but it would not accept it all at once.]
22. unclibrary - October 28, 2010 at 12:35 pm
I'm sorry, but isn't part of the getting a college degree or certificate developing the ability to persevere through the challenges of school? If people want to complete their schooling after a long absence they can simply reenroll, have their previous school and GPA assessed and work to completion. Academic forgiveness slaps the face of those that had the will to complete there schooling, regardless of the challenges or the time it took. I started college at 40 as a single Dad and made it through the undergrad, grad, and soon post grad levels. My mom went back to school at 45 for three years to earn her nursing degree with 6 kids still at home, still working full time, and my Dad working 2nd shift at his factory job. The only thing necessary for her (and I) to finish was the decision to do it and stick it out.
Another part of the equation is what are 60% of the population with degrees or certifications going to do? Class of 2009 has already been told by America that they weren't needed. There are already Americans with advanced degrees that are under-employed. Besides looking good on paper, I fail to see how more under-employed Americans is going to be an better for the country than a feather in someone's cap.