If you like data, then today’s your day. The College Board has released two reports, both full of data pertaining to college completion. The first, “The College Completion Agenda: 2010 Progress Report,” comes from the College Board’s Commission on Access, Admissions and Success in Higher Education, which measures state-by-state progress on 10 recommendations for raising the percentage of adults with an associate degree or higher to 55 percent by 2025.
One of those recommendations is to “clarify and simplify the admission process,” a task that sounds easy but isn’t. What’s simple for one applicant is complicated for another; it all depends on many variables, such as family income, that define admissions know-how.
Technology has helped “streamline” the admissions process, the report says. As of 2008, 73.4 percent of four-year colleges allow students to apply online, up from 38 percent in 2001. In the 2008-9 academic year, 20.4 percent of four-year colleges participated in a “national” application system, such as the Common Application, that allows students to apply to multiple colleges.
“Perhaps the greatest issue is that of access to information and resources,” the report says, “knowing that the above options exist, having the ability to pay application fees or the knowledge to seek fee waivers, and subsequently having access to the technology with which to complete one of the above options.”
The College Board and the National Conference of State Legislatures also released the College Completion Agenda: State Policy Guide on Wednesday.
4 Responses to A National Look at College Completion
quicksilver - July 22, 2010 at 8:17 am
This report contains useful information, but it still posits the flawed notion that “access to information and resources” is still the biggest obstacle for many students. We live in a nation where any student in any school can jump on a computer with the help of a teacher or counselor and have all the access to college information imaginable. We also live in a nation where the federal government will pay for a student’s college, albeit in loan form. Neither of these are realistic barriers. The REAL barrier is that counselors, parents, and teachers tell these same students they have the requisite cognitive ability for college when they do not. They then make 790 on the SAT and are then categorized as having an “access” problem. When will we find the decency to guide these students to a more realistic goal?
22228715 - July 23, 2010 at 9:00 am
Another error in thinking is the assumption that technology streamlines the process, and then equating streamlining with online applications and information. Back up… One might operationalize “streamlining” as a faster, less complicated application process, with the student applying to fewer institutions, paying few application fees, getting “no” letters less often, and being accepted quickly and with appropriate financial aid by the institution for which there is the best fit. (Ultimately leading to a very high chance of graduation within 4-6 years.)I don’t have the statistics, but I bet that over the past couple decades, exactly the opposite has occurred.Twentieth century (nineteenth century?) thinking assumes that access to more information is better. Twenty-first century thinking recognizes that much of that info must be noise or irrelevant, and therefore larger quantities of info can actually be a detriment to good decision-making. The measure is not quantity of info, but quality, sifting tools, density, precision, data that make appropriate proxies for concepts… and all of that is assuming that the decision criteria are sound in the first place.So, it might very well be that online is faster than mailing tree-flake brochures and applications back and forth. I’ll grant that. But that does not translate to “streamlined.”
christophknoess - July 24, 2010 at 1:19 pm
The last thing most institutions want is giving applicants access to relevant information. Hence the quality of the matches between students and institutions is not getting any better. Student failure rates are as high today as they were 10 years ago.Institutions obscure affordability information (i.e., their pricing)by discounting tuition by 40% on average, but trying to get out of each student the maximum they can bear, and they obscure information on student failure rates. They admit students who are likely to fail, and count on their cheerleaders at the College Board to encourage these applicants to enroll and take out loans to pay for an exercise in futility. I wish the Chronicle had the stomach to drop the pom-poms and call out this irresponsible behavior.
sdblogger - July 26, 2010 at 10:44 pm
Admissions processes, resources, and technology are oversimplifications of the complex barriers that are preventing low-income students from college completion. Low-income students need to be better prepared for college – through programs such as universal pre-school, improved college counseling, a K-12 education system that is aligned with college admissions expectations, and improved teacher quality. These recommendations are articulated clearly in the White House Middle Class Task Force on Higher Education (http://www.whitehouse.gov/assets/documents/MCTF_staff_report_barriers_to_college_FINAL.pdf).For more commentary on Student Development, check out my blog at http://www.studentdevelopmentblog.com – the Diary of a Student Development Professional.