A Little Information Could Go A Long Way

THIS GUEST POST COMES FROM ROBERT KELCHEN, DOCTORAL CANDIDATE IN EDUCATIONAL POLICY STUDIES AT UW-MADISON.

In a new report, Filling in the Blanks: How Information Can Affect Choice in Higher Education, Andrew Kelly and Mark Schneider of the American Enterprise Institute examine the role that information can play in the college choice process. One thousand parents in five states were asked which of two similar colleges they would recommend to their high school-age child. Half of the parents were given information about the colleges’ six-year graduation rates, while half were not. The researchers found that parents who were provided information about graduation rates were fifteen percentage points more likely to recommend the college with the higher graduation rate to their child, with larger differentials for parents who reported having less information about colleges and who had lower levels of education.

The intervention shows the importance of providing salient information to the parents of high school students. However, because parents in the study were making a theoretical decision instead of an actual decision that would affect their child, they had less of an incentive to think as carefully about their choice. This might result in effects that are larger than in real life, especially where parents have evenmore information about the two colleges being compared. A logical next step would be to repeat this experiment with high school students to see if the results significantly differ. Encouraging or requiring colleges to publicize their graduation rates may lead parents and students to choose colleges at which the student is more likely to graduate, as they take this information into account. In any case, even a small effect of additional information can make this low-cost intervention sound public policy.

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The Closed-Door Community College

My skin can't stop tingling since I read in the Chronicle this morning that the 11% budget cut faced by the California Community College System will result in an enrollment reduction of 250,000 students.

That's a population nearly the size of Madison, Wisconsin. It's larger than the entire UC system combined.

Come fall students will show up to register for classes and find them full or otherwise unavailable. Those who sign up early-- and make no mistake, these are the most savvy and well-off among community college-goers-- will likely be fine. The rest will not. Where else are they supposed to go?

I spoke about the collision of high demand and low support for two-year colleges at Brookings a few weeks ago. I tried to impress upon the audience the severity of the problem. Well, folks, here we are...

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A Class Gap in the "Gap Year"

Thanks to Joanne Jacobs's blog for alerting me to yet another story on the trend of high school graduates taking a so-called "gap year" before entering college. I was especially happy to see that she pointed to blogger Donald Douglas's post that points out the gap year is the privilege of students who can afford to take one.

So true, so true. In fact, as I wrote in a paper given at AERA in 2006, there is a "class gap" in the gap year. Using national longitudinal data (NELS), my graduate student Seong Won Han and I found that students from poor socioeconomic backgrounds are nearly six times as likely as students from more advantaged families to delay college between high school graduation and college entry. We examined two explanations for those differential rates of delay: academic coursetaking and family formation. Poor students are less likely than wealthy students to take a core lab science in high school, and they are more likely to become parents before college entry. We find that these differences, along with family background, educational expectations, and high school preparation, explain nearly one-fifth of the unconditional socioeconomic gap in delay.

There are consequences to delaying college. In a 2005 paper, Robert Bozick and Stefanie DeLuca found that each additional month of delay between high school and college entry decreases the odds of bachelor’s degree completion by 6.5 percent. That effect does not operate entirely via an increase in the time-to-degree or a delay in completion; rather, it acts to independently reduce the likelihood of eventual completion.

In sum, if middle and upper-class kids are increasingly exercising their ability to take some time off before college to gain interesting life experiences they can later bring to the classroom, while low-income kids only delay when required to earn money for school or raise a child, the socioeconomic gap in college completion rates is likely to only get worse....

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