Kenneth E. Redd

Tracked the downside of discounting

Biography: Kenneth E. Redd Articles: A Look at Higher Education's Next Generation of Thinkers Marlene L. Garcia uses research to help shape California legislation J. Douglas Toma measures the cost of keeping up with the Joneses Mikyung Ryu grades the states on higher education Jennifer Delahunty Britz speaks up for student-friendly admissions Marc Goulden crunches numbers on academics' family lives Bridget Terry Long blends an economist's methods with practical insights Joel Vargas helps 'near miss kids' land in college Peter J. Stokes paddles the white water of higher-education data Sarah E. Turner and Brian Pusser watch the wind in for-profit colleges' sails Printer friendly E-mail article Subscribe Order reprints

By STEPHEN BURD

Colleges spend tens of millions of dollars each year on high-priced consultants to advise them on how best to use their financial-aid dollars to attract top students. But according to Kenneth E. Redd, much of that money is being thrown away.

Mr. Redd took on the enrollment-management frenzy in a much-cited report, "Discounting Toward Disaster." Analyzing data on institutional financial aid from the National Association of College and University Business Officers and on enrollment trends from the U.S. Education Department, Mr. Redd found that many private colleges were providing deep discounts to students and their families at an enormous cost without achieving their aims.

"The rapid increases in discounting have resulted in losses in net revenue, have not improved retention or graduation rates, and have caused institutions to decrease spending on instruction and other vital services to students," he wrote.

Soon after the report came out, Mr. Redd became director of research and policy analysis at the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators. In that post, his focus has shifted from institutional to federal student-aid policy.

He is currently working on a project to make the formula the government uses to determine need for financial aid more fair to students who are financially independent of their parents.

Mr. Redd's colleagues credit him with reinvigorating the research work of the financial-aid-administrators group, both by beefing up the association's competitive grants to researchers and by producing high-quality work himself.

Mr. Redd never intended to become a higher-education expert. After earning his master's at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, he had planned to focus on foreign policy or health-care policy. But that summer he was offered an internship at the Congressional Research Service, and the only slot open was in higher-education policy.

"I said, 'OK, it's a summer. Why not? It's worth a shot,'" he says. "So I decided to do that on a whim more than anything else."

He doesn't regret that decision.

"My goal in terms of doing research, and all that, ultimately is to try to get more people to realize the opportunities that are available to them by going on to college and that financial aid is available to help them pay for it," he says. "Too many people look at the sticker price and think that college is out of reach for them. And that just isn't true."