Dear Commons Community,

Anthony Rini passed on to me this piece in Inside Higher Education which comments on an evaluation of CUNY’s Accelerated Study in Associate Programs (ASAP).  Anthony did his dissertation a couple of years ago on this program and came to a similar conclusion that is, if you put enough resources and enrich an associate degree program, graduation rates will improve. Here is a summary of the article:

“Fans of Accelerated Study in Associate Programs (ASAP) like its comprehensive approach to dismantling the hurdles low-income students face. And the results are compelling.

Students in the program are almost twice as likely to earn a degree, according to a new study from MDRC, a nonprofit research group. The research found that 40 percent of those students earned an associate degree in three years, easily topping the 22 percent rate of their peers in a control group who completed, and far surpassing typical community college graduation rates.

“The figures are terrific,” said Barbara Bowen, president of the Professional Staff Congress, CUNY’s faculty union. “If you invest more per student, you get a better result.”

So far 8,672 students have enrolled in ASAP, according to CUNY, at 7 of the system’s colleges (see list below). But the new study suggests that the program could be expanded, perhaps even broadly, without getting too expensive.

That might be surprising, given the wide range of supports participating students receive, including free tuition, textbooks and public transportation, as well as regular (and mandatory) access to an adviser with a relatively small caseload.

That all adds up to annual cost of $4,700 per student, on top of the roughly $8,000 CUNY spends each year to educate a full-time student. To help pay for the program, which began in 2007, the city kicked in $35 million.

Yet ASAP is cost-effective, at least per degree produced, which is an increasingly popular way for lawmakers to look at return on investment in higher education.

“The cost per graduate is less because we’re graduating twice as many students,” said Donna Linderman, CUNY’s university dean for student success initiatives.

The total cost to CUNY for a degree earned by a student in the tuition-free program was $105,000, according to MDRC, compared to $118,000 in the control group. The study’s sample included 451 ASAP students and 445 students in the control group.

The expense is dropping, too, as the program expands and up-front spending pays off. ASAP will cost an extra $3,900 per student this year, according to the system.”

Congratulations CUNY and all those involved with ASAP.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Hundreds of union members in hard hats and work boots waved signs under falling snow, denouncing Gov. Scott Walker and his fellow Republican lawmakers outside the Capitol building yesterday. As reported in the New York Times:

“As Mr. Walker builds a presidential run on his effort to take on unions four years ago, he is poised to deliver a second walloping blow to labor. After saying for months that an effort to advance so-called right-to-work legislation would be “a distraction” from dealing with larger issues like the state’s economy and job growth, Mr. Walker is now preparing to sign a measure — being fast-tracked through the Republican-held State Legislature — that would bar unions from requiring workers to pay the equivalent of dues.

The State Senate passed the bill, 17 to 15, mostly along party lines, Wednesday night after about eight hours of debate. As the results were announced and senators left the chamber, protesters chanted “Shame” from the balcony. The State Assembly is expected to take up the measure next week. Where Mr. Walker’s earlier high-profile strike against labor cut collective bargaining rights for most public-sector unions, this one is aimed at workers in the private sector. And where Mr. Walker led the drive in 2011, he has taken a far less publicly forceful role this time, saying only that he will sign a bill. Yet the political effect will be the same, burnishing Mr. Walker’s record as an unafraid foe of Big Labor, who has been able to prevail in a state where Democrats have won presidential elections.”

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

With help from anti-debt activists, the fifteen Corinthian College students are challenging the U.S. Department of Education and Arnie Duncan over lackluster supervision of the chain of for-profit colleges. In refusing to make payments, the group alleges the Department allowed Corinthian to lure students into taking out loans backed by taxpayers that were used to pay a company that lied about the quality of education students would receive.   As reported in The Huffington Post:

“Corinthian, once one of the nation’s largest for-profit college chains with more than 110,000 students, is effectively shutting down under the weight of numerous state and federal probes that allege it cheated students by lying to them about job placement and graduation rates. Though the chain has previously disputed allegations from state and federal authorities that it defrauded students, it recently sold more than 50 campuses under pressure from the U.S. Department of Education, and Canadian authorities last week forced another 14 into bankruptcy.

A contingent of former students, backed by prominent student advocates, the Massachusetts attorney general and more than a dozen Senate Democrats, has demanded the Education Department forgive federal student loans that thousands of people took out to attend Corinthian’s schools. The department has the authority to cancel loans in instances where students demonstrate that schools defrauded them. Lawyers from the Department of Justice have argued that Education Secretary Arne Duncan has “complete discretion” when it comes to canceling loans for all students at a particular institution if he determines it defrauded students, even absent a formal application from individual borrowers…

Experts in higher education have previously assailed the Education Department for its spotty track record in protecting students from unscrupulous colleges. Some have said the department views colleges as its partners, rather than as regulated entities. Others have said the department puts the needs of colleges over those of students.

After a multi-year investigation, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the federal agency charged with protecting borrowers from unscrupulous lenders, accused Corinthian in September of inflating its job placement rates by creating fake companies, defining a “career” as a job that lasted one day with the promise of a second, and by paying employers to temporarily hire its graduates.”

This is a sad state of affairs and one that could have been avoided if the U.S. Department of Education had done more to regulate digital diploma mills such as Corinthian.  Unfortunately, the for-profit college industry has provided substantial sums of money for lobbyists in Washington, D.C. and have a good deal of influence among many of our politicians.

Tony