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Delivering a Promise: American Innovations for Promoting College Access and Success. TRAVIS REINDL, JOBS FOR THE FUTURE (USA) FORUM ON HIGHER EDUCATION AND SOCIAL INCLUSION MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA 16 JULY 2008. Context. Finance
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Delivering a Promise: American Innovations for Promoting College Access and Success TRAVIS REINDL, JOBS FOR THE FUTURE (USA) FORUM ON HIGHER EDUCATION AND SOCIAL INCLUSION MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA 16 JULY 2008
Context • Finance • Institutional: public subsidies based primarily on enrollment (input), as opposed to persistence and completion (throughput) • Student: evolution of grant aid (need merit need/merit); rise of loans • Programming • Student success focus driven by: • Changing demographics • K-12 reform movement (pipeline ruptures) • Rise of graduation rate as an accountability metric • Programs developed as add-ons, funded by shifting combination of primarily federal and philanthropic investments
Forces for Change: Political • US Rankings on the World Stage: • 1st: spending per student (more than 2x OECD average) • 19th: college completion (tied for last in OECD) • 10th: percentage of 25-34 year olds with AA+
New Approaches • Finance • Institutional: movement toward persistence and completion incentives in public subsidy • Indiana • Ohio • Tennessee • Texas • Student: emergence of “covenant” programs targeting low-income secondary students • Indiana 21st Century Scholars • Oklahoma’s Promise • Programming • Early College High Schools (five-year program for acquiring high school diploma, postsecondary credits up to AA) • Expansion of dual high school-college enrollment programs (to low SES schools and students) • Redesign of “gatekeeper” courses (National Center for Academic Transformation)
Insights • The power of unintended consequences • Need to develop policies that do not provide implicit incentives for recruiting and retaining only the best and brightest • The need to confront conventional wisdom • At-risk students often need challenge over remediation, student success programs can be cost-effective, larger classes do not have to mean higher levels of attrition • The importance of scalability and sustainability • Doing things differently has not really been the problem; challenge has been doing things differently at scale and through political and fiscal cycles