NEW EXPERIMENTAL STUDY SUGGESTS FINANCIAL AID ENHANCES COLLEGE SUCCESS AMONG THE MOST UNLIKELY GRADUATES

The following is a press release issued by UW-Madison this morning

Results from an ongoing random assignment study of a private grant program in Wisconsin indicate that low-income students who receive Pell Grants and are unlikely to finish college get a sizeable boost in college persistence from additional financial aid. The findings suggest that directing aid to serve the neediest students may be the most equitable and cost-effective approach.

Researchers with the Wisconsin Scholars Longitudinal Study (WSLS) at the University of Wisconsin–Madison have been examining the impact of the Fund for Wisconsin Scholars (FFWS) need-based grant program on the educational attainment of its recipients since 2008. FFWS provides $3,500 per year to full-time, federal Pell Grant recipients enrolled at University of Wisconsin System institutions. WSLS researchers have collected survey and interview data on 1,500 students, including 600 grant recipients and a random sample of 900 eligible non-recipients who serve as a control group.

“Our findings suggest that making college more affordable for students who were initially unlikely to succeed in college increased their college persistence rates over the first three years of college by about 17 percentage points,” says Sara Goldrick-Rab, WSLS co-director and associate professor of educational policy studies and sociology.

However, since financial aid programs usually do not explicitly target this particular group of students, prior research has found that the average effects of need-based grants are often modest. “It’s common to focus only on the average effects of financial aid programs, but it’s clear that often policies work better for some people than others,” says Goldrick-Rab. “In this case, the Wisconsin grant really helped some students, didn’t help others, and may even have had adverse consequences for another group.”

While policy discussions about targeting financial aid often focus on financial need, the WSLS researchers also considered challenges faced by first-generation students and those with inadequate academic preparation. According to the study, students without college-educated parents and those with lower test scores were initially much less likely to persist in college, while students with high test scores and whose parents held bachelor’s degrees began with a high probability of finishing. The effects of the additional financial aid provided by the Wisconsin grant were very different for those two groups.

Initial findings indicate the program has a moderate positive impact, on average, on the educational attainment of grant recipients. “Enrollment rates didn’t improve much over three years. But the good news is that some students who were awarded the grant were 28 percent more likely to finish 60 credits over two years, increasing the chances that they will earn a bachelor’s degree on time,” says Doug Harris, WSLS co-director and associate professor of educational policy studies and public affairs.

Given the WSLS is the first random assignment study of a program with a similar structure to the federal Pell Grant, it may have important implications for that program, one of the nation’s largest in the education sector. According to Michael McPherson, President of the Spencer Foundation and noted scholar of higher education policy, “This study is the result of an extraordinary opportunity to bring high-quality experimental research to a vitally important question: the effect of changes in need-based grant aid on outcomes for students already enrolled in college."

Goldrick-Rab, Harris, and co-authors James Benson and Robert Kelchen present and discuss additional findings in a working paper issued by the Institute for Research on Poverty entitled “Conditional Cash Transfers and College Persistence: Evidence from a Randomized Need-Based Grant Program.” It can be downloaded, along with an executive summary, here.

The authors will discuss their results at 8 a.m. on Friday, July 8 in room 159 of the Education Building of the University of Wisconsin-Madison as part of a WSLS-sponsored conference entitled “Affordability and College Attainment in Wisconsin Public Higher Education.” More information is available here.

The WSLS is a collaborative effort among the University of Wisconsin System, the Wisconsin Technical College System, and the Wisconsin Higher Educational Aids Board. The study is also supported by UW-Madison's Wisconsin Center for Educational Research, Wisconsin Center for the Advancement of Postsecondary Education, and Institute for Research on Poverty. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the William T. Grant Foundation, and the Spencer Foundation provided funding for the research.

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For more on this story please see coverage in Inside Higher Ed and the Chronicle of Higher Education, as well as the Wisconsin State Journal

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Busy As a Bee

You may have noticed the recent near radio silence from Sara on our blog. No, she isn't on a secret mission and hasn't left academia to join the NSA. She, however, has been busy as a bee this past year, starting with giving birth to our daughter, being named a W.T. Grant Scholar, and engaging in important academic research.

My pride in her commitment to, excellence in and passion for issues of educational and social inequality is coupled with a recognition of her unwillingness to see academic research relegated to dusty and sometimes impenetrable academic journals. Sara has been aggressive and public with her research and committed to engaging in and communicating her work in a policy relevant manner. That fits a critical need in public policy conversations.

That's why I was quite pleased to see Sara's name mentioned among the ranks of the most prominent academics in the nation in the "EduScholar" rankings issued by the American Enterprise Institute's Rick Hess. And Sara isn't even yet a senior scholar nor is she an economist (who are overrepresented). Hess says:

The academy today does a passable job of recognizing good disciplinary scholarship but a pretty mediocre job of recognizing scholars with the full range of skills that enables them to really contribute to the policy debate. Today, there are substantial professional rewards for scholars who do hyper-sophisticated, narrowly conceived research, but little institutional recognition, acknowledgment, or support for scholars who carry their efforts into the public discourse. One result is that the public square is filled by impassioned advocates, while silence reigns among those who may be more versed on the research or more likely to recognize complexities and hard truths.

I think these kinds of metrics are relevant because I believe it's the scholars who do these kinds of things "who can cross boundaries, foster crucial collaborations, and bring research into the world of policy in smart and useful ways."

Jay Greene -- seeking to give credit to more junior scholars who have had a great impact on contemporary public policy conversations and to move beyond rankings based on a single year (2010) of performance -- perfected the Hess rubric, causing Sara's ranking to increase by about 30 points to #39.

Hotshot researchers like Roland Fryer, Jacob Vigdor, Susanna Loeb, Matthew Springer, Brian Jacob, Jonah Rockoff, and Sara Goldrick-Rab are having a large impact on current education policy discussions even though their careers have not been long enough to accumulate a longer list of books and articles. The original ranking shortchanged these scholars in measuring their current “public presence.”

I agree. As I mentioned in this recent post, advocates who too often simply echo one another's opinions are too influential in policy debates. There is an important void to be filled by the likes of academic researchers as well as classroom teachers.

Congrats, Sara! Keep up the great work!

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College for "Some"

Richard Vedder and my wife, Sara Goldrick-Rab, squared off yesterday on Patt Morrison's radio program on Southern California Public Radio yesterday. They addressed the question, "Who needs college?"

Vedder, the founder of the Center for College Affordability and Productivity in Washington DC, recently announced a joint proposal suggesting that some kids shouldn't go to college at all (as recently described in this New York Times article). At Sherman Dorn notes, making such distinctions is tricky and generally involves suggestions that "the type of people who don't benefit from college" are "other people's kids." In fact, on the radio program, Vedder acknowledged that he would not counsel his own kids from attending college. Of course. As my wife noted in the radio program, many unprepared rich kids attend college, but many better prepared lower-income students cannot, due to affordability and other constraints. And she's got good research to back that up. Between such evidence and these exclusionary advocates up on their soapbox, one's equity radar begins to ping.

Check it out for yourself.

And here are some other recent contributions on this topic:

Thoughts On Education Policy (Corey Bunje Bower)
Public School Insights - The Purposes of College (Claus von Zastrow)
Public School Insights - Should We Give Up on College? (Claus von Zastrow)

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Congratulations!

Congratulations to my wife, Sara Goldrick-Rab, who was one of only four academics named yesterday as a 2010 William T. Grant Scholar!

UPDATE: University of Wisconsin-Madison press release.

The W. T. Grant Scholars Program supports promising early-career researchers from diverse disciplines, who have demonstrated success in conducting high-quality research and are seeking to further develop and broaden their expertise. Candidates are nominated by a supporting institution and must submit five-year research plans that demonstrate creativity, intellectual rigor, and a commitment to continued professional development. Every year, four to six Scholars are selected and each receives $350,000 distributed over a five-year period.

The four new William T. Grant Scholars and their research projects are:

Elizabeth Oltmans Ananat, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, School of Public Policy, Duke University --
“Economic and Social Determinants of the Educational, Occupational, and Residential Choices of Young Adults”

Phillip Atiba Goff, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles -- “Broken Windows, Broken Youth: The Effect of Law Enforcement on Non-White Males’ Development”

Sara Goldrick-Rab, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Educational Policy Studies Department, University of Wisconsin-Madison -- “Rethinking College Choice in America”

Patrick Sharkey, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Sociology Department, New York University -- “The Impact of Acute Violence and Other Environmental Stressors on Cognitive Functioning and School Performance”

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UW-Madison: Researchers launch landmark study of financial aid

Sara has been busy. Don't believe me?

Check out this press release that went out earlier this week from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. And check out the study's web site.

A team of University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers is conducting a groundbreaking study of the long-term effects of financial aid on college students. Christopher Jencks, professor of social policy at Harvard University, calls the Wisconsin Scholars Longitudinal Study (WSLS) a "landmark study of financial aid."

Participants include nearly 6,000 Wisconsin residents receiving a federal Pell grant while enrolled at each of the 42 public colleges statewide. Many are also grantees of the Fund for Wisconsin Scholars (FFWS), a foundation established by UW-Madison alumni John and Tashia Morgridge. FFWS uses random assignment to select recipients.

"It's often very difficult to isolate effects of aid, since low-income students are at the greatest risk of not finishing college, and they get the most aid. By studying a program that chooses its recipients at random, we have the chance to learn exactly how and why financial aid matters," says Sara Goldrick-Rab, assistant professor of educational policy studies and sociology. "In these economic times, producing this kind of information is more essential than ever."

The researchers expect to have preliminary results within the next year on how and why aid affects college coursework and persistence. But they have designed the WSLS to go even further, tracking participants for a decade or more. As a result, they will be able to examine effects on college completion, employment, earnings, and later outcomes. They are also conducting interviews with students to learn more about how money is affecting their college experiences.

"This study is very important because it will inform both potential private donors and government agencies about the role of financial assistance in college and how aid policies can be improved to expand degree completion," says FFWS Executive Director Mary Gulbrandsen.

Goldrick-Rab is co-directing the study with Douglas N. Harris, an economist and assistant professor of educational policy studies. In addition, Christopher Taber, professor of economics, and Aaron Brower, vice provost for teaching and learning and professor of social work, are co-investigators.

The WSLS is a collaborative effort among the University of Wisconsin System, the Wisconsin Technical College System, and the Wisconsin Higher Educational Aids Board. The study is also supported by UW-Madison's Wisconsin Center for Educational Research, Wisconsin Center for the Advancement of Postsecondary Education, and Institute for Research on Poverty.

Nearly $800,000 in financial support has been provided by three foundations, including the Spencer Foundation and the William T. Grant Foundation.

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I'm Not the Only One

Yesterday Kevin Carey considered the NY Times piece, and what he knows of me, and concluded that "that the liberal professoriate is alive and well."

I think he's completely correct, and want to highlight some fine examples of my junior colleagues who also prove his point (for the record, my senior colleagues confirm his impression too). I am-- by far-- not the only academic focused on issues of inequality and striving to use rigorous methods to examine them.

For starters, one only needs to look across the hall from my office, next door to my esteemed colleague Mike Olneck, where you can find Doug Harris, Nancy Kendall, Adam Nelson, and Tricia Burch. All in the throes of early careers, all making outstanding contributions to the study of educational policy by choosing their topics and approaches with an eye towards clear identification of both problems and solutions.

Adam is an historian whose painstaking attention to detail and beautiful writing increases our awareness of the broader and longstanding social issues which shape current policy debates. For an example, see his well-reviewed book, The Elusive Ideal: Equal Educational Opportunity and the Federal Role in Boston's Public Schools, 1950–1985. Adam brings just as much of his energy to his teaching, conveying an affinity and talent for undergraduate education that most parents just dream their kids will get exposure to,

Doug Harris, far more well-known than I, burst on the academic scene fresh from the Economic Policy Institute, and quickly established himself as a thoughtful leader of the movement to measure teacher quality in an objective, comprehensive, yet accessible way. He is a jack of all trades, as many of the best economists are, even daring to collaborate with me (poor boy!) on a ridiculously large study of financial aid. His approach could never be considered partisan, and as a result he has fans on both the right and the left. I certainly count myself among them.

Tricia Burch somehow (how? How???) manages to be an outstanding teacher and mentor (according to every student I've met) while also generating careful conceptual and empirical work on educational policy and practice. And, to top it all off, she is a departmental leader of the movement to value one's family, as well as one's academic life. She has a forthcoming book, as well as two gorgeous children and a very happy marriage. Most impressive.

Finally, there is Nancy Kendall, our most recent hire. Better than almost anyone, Nancy simultaneously represents the old guard and the new, with her deep commitment to questioning normative conceptions of equity and her extremely sensitive and thorough ethnographic approach to understanding the lives of children in the most vulnerable situations. Nancy and her beautiful baby and husband will spend the next year in Mozambique, as part of a Fulbright fellowship.

Colleagues like these promise that the academy going forward will never leave behind the past, but will at the same time find new ways to work and teach that should hopefully demonstrate to more Americans that higher education need not be considered the domain of the elite.

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I Never Knew I Was (A) Moderate

I've been accused of many things-- being outspoken, outrageous, even out of my mind. But never, never, had I been called (a) moderate. Until yesterday, when Patti Cohen labeled me as such on the front page of the New York Times .

I'm still getting used to this publicity thing. I've been told it's all good. Even a bad picture is worth printing. So, I really can't complain. And in the spirit of the whole-truth and nothing-but, I kinda knew this was coming. Patti and I spoke numerous times over the last 3 or 4 months, and I had a sense that the complexity of what I was describing to her was going to (have to?) get boiled down.

So the readers missed a big part of the story: The intense pressures to publish or perish constantly, to get grants to support not only ourselves but our students, the ramping up of statistical standards, and the enormous benefits (and costs) of "specializing" very early in school. I declared my college major in the first semester of freshman year, and took nearly nothing but sociology courses for the next 6 years. Where did it get me? A BA in 3.5 years, and a PhD within 5 years after that. And I did learn a lot along the way-- but it was far from a classical experience. And the current reward structure provides little space for political activism -- indeed it leaves no time whatsoever for any real activism, if one wants to also have a family.

Equally important, the story missed my wonderful relationship with Mike Olneck, my friend and mentor at Wisconsin. Mike is one of the reasons I came here, and a prime reason why I stay. His departure this winter will be nothing less than depressing.

Now, enough complaining, since the front page of the Times is the freakin' front page of the TIMES! Tres cool. I've gotten some incredible emails from folks sharing their stories of injustice and inequality, and I plan to share some of them, gradually, over the next couple of days (in between selling my house and planning my move into a new one, plus finishing 2 long-delayed papers, and trying to celebrate this holiday with my kid & husband). So, stay tuned...

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