By Rob Anderson
Over the past 50 years, public higher education within the United States witnessed a meteoric rise which led to its status as the best public system in the world. State governments, fueled by the tax revenue of its citizenry, have traditionally shouldered the load of financing public higher education growth and maintenance. Policy concerns have tended to gravitate around the issues of college access and affordability. It was rightly observed in the 1970s that postsecondary training was not equally available to many lower income students due to an inability to pay. Efforts then ensued to provide greater financial assistance to those low income students who qualified to enter a college but could not afford the tuition. As the price of an education continued to rise in the 1980s, there was an increased emphasis on middle class relief through the Middle Income Student Assistance Act. This trend has continued with the rise in state merit programs as well as federal tax credits such as the American Opportunity Credit and the Hope Credit.
More recent attention at both the federal and state level has focused on what happens to these college students once they enter the campus gates. Too many of them drop out somewhere along the path to a college degree. Research has pointed to a number of factors that increase the likelihood of a student dropping out. Two of the dominant issues that attract much of the policy discussion are a continued lack of student financial resources and a lack of academic preparation. Unfortunately, many students who lack financial resources also tend to be less prepared.
A recent report by the Georgetown Public Policy Institute warns that, on our current course, the United States will face a deficit of 3 million workers who possess the necessary training to fill job demand by 2018. The study forecasts that 63 percent of all jobs will require at least some postsecondary training. The shortfall in West Virginia will be the need to provide 20,000 more students with postsecondary advanced skills training above and beyond what the state currently produces. This figure is 33 percent higher than our annual degree production at West Virginia public postsecondary institutions.
This national crisis has led to numerous policy initiatives being put forward by a host of education organizations. The College Board released a recent report highlighting the United States’ fall in world ranking pertaining to educational attainment. Former West Virginia Governor Gaston Caperton describes our current situation as a quiet crisis requiring “all hands on deck” if we are to reverse this trend.
Governor Joe Manchin has also sounded the alarm nationally regarding the need for West Virginia and every state in the nation to bolster the percentage of its work force that has adequate postsecondary training. Further training serves to better the lives of individuals by providing greater work force flexibility and higher income potential as well as meeting state work force needs. As the incoming chairman of the National Governors Association (NGA), Gov. Manchin unveiled his Complete to Compete initiative this summer.
Gov. Manchin’s agenda focuses on issues impacting state policy as well as revamping higher education metrics, allowing states and institutions to more effectively evaluate the progress of its students. Several policy considerations include providing some level of performance funding for campuses aimed at improving graduation rates; reconfiguring remedial education and the process by which underprepared students are better equipped to succeed and removing postsecondary barriers for working adults. West Virginia’s public higher education systems are currently addressing these issues. The West Virginia Community and Technical College System recently revamped its rule which addresses many of the credentialing concerns, and the West Virginia Higher Education Policy Commission is in the midst of a similar process. Both public systems are also partnering within a privately funded grant that seeks to remove barriers for adult learners and to provide these students greater flexibility in returning to and completing a measurable level of postsecondary training.
The issue of re-examining postsecondary completion metrics stems from a growing national concern that current federal data parameters fail to account for the majority of students in our public postsecondary system. The current federal methodology addresses first-time, full-time college students when examining college completion; however, we know that less than 50 percent of students fall within this category. This reality results in huge gaps in our knowledge regarding how all students flow through our state system. Understanding where the gaps are and why they exist will provide informed context for future policy recommendations.
College graduation metrics can also differ greatly from state to state. Some systems only measure students who both started and graduated from their college of origin while others will include graduation from any system school as a success. Still, other states will match their students with a national database in order to include students who graduate at colleges beyond their state’s borders. In looking beyond these overall completion figures, there is also the question of which students graduate. What is the rate of completion for students with higher high school scores versus lesser prepared students? At what rate do high income students graduate compared to lower income students? Do low income students who receive state financial assistance graduate at higher rates than those who don’t?
Some states, including West Virginia, are studying these issues while others lack the data infrastructure or resources to examine these topics in statistically stringent ways. Through his initiative, Gov. Manchin is calling for clear, consistent and transparent measures of both student progress and completion to guide both funding decisions as well as to identify areas of improvement.
I have been privileged to serve as a member of the national working group tasked with re-examining the metrics by which we measure college success. The ideas are many and the debate is robust, but we are in the process of defining measurable outcomes which we believe all states should evaluate in order to determine student success. Among these are an increased emphasis on part-time and adult students, transfer students and the role that socioeconomic status and being a first-generation student have on success. Our future work force will require advanced training. Our governor, state legislature and higher education systems must continue to work together to improve college completion so the needs of our economy and the advancement of our citizenry can be achieved.
