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The Academic Graveyard Shift

  • By
  • Andrew Lounder
February 11, 2013
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In 1969, tenure track faculty constituted 78 percent of the academic workforce. Today, less than 25 percent of the academy is on the tenure track (TT). This means that in about forty years, faculty labor has turned completely upside down. Non-tenure track (NTT), contract-contingent faculty—otherwise known by the anesthetized (often pejorative) term adjuncts—now account for the vast majority of faculty appointments in the United States. Further, a recent survey of provosts affirmed that we have every reason to believe this reliance on adjuncts will continue its upward trajectory. While a good deal is known about the growth in NTT labor, very few people seem to realize that the traditional conception of a tenure-track faculty does not, by and large, apply to the modern academy.

Here’s some background on the status of adjunct labor. The community college sector accounted for the lion’s share of NTT growth between 1969 and 1998. Adjunct appointments in two-year colleges grew by more than 800 percent over that span. In the years that followed, data show that although community colleges still accounted for the greatest growth in real numbers, the most dynamic rate of growth in adjunct labor occurred at public and private, nonprofit comprehensive universities (four-year schools providing education through the master’s level). In addition, NTT appointments account for disproportionately high numbers of women and faculty of color.

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Syllabus: Week of February 3

  • By
  • Rachel Fishman
February 8, 2013
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Welcome to the Syllabus, a weekly guide that provides insight into what’s happening in higher education.

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American Council on Education Recommends 5 MOOCs for Credit, Steve Kolowich
The Chronicle of Higher Education

While there has been a lot of buzz about Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) over the past few months, there has been little headway in figuring out a sustainable business model or how to award credit. The credit question just got easier to answer this past Thursday when the American Council on Education (ACE) endorsed five MOOCs. But it will still be up to individual institutions to grant the credit. So far one institution—Excelsior College—has said it will not accept them. The college’s president, John Ebersole, commented, “We would hope that ACE would support a more rigorous process as is the case with other forms of noncredit instruction.”

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NAICU Has Bad Apples Too

  • By
  • Rachel Fishman
February 7, 2013
Rotten Apple

There are bad actors in every sector of higher education. But the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities (NAICU) would like you to believe otherwise. During a panel discussion with Congressional staffers at their annual conference, private college presidents expressed frustration with increased federal scrutiny and regulation. They argued that problems with debt and default are just for-profit problems, not private nonprofit problems. A Republican staffer for the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, Brian Melnyk, agreed in part saying, “There are some bad actors among for-profits,” but he added, “bad actors can be found in every sector of higher education.” This comment was not well received. Several audience members yelled, “Name them.” Melnyk declined. But I won’t.

In October, the Department of Education released the first official 3-year cohort default rates (CDR) for postsecondary institutions, which measure the percentage of students who have defaulted on their federal loans within three years of leaving college. Having a rate above 30 percent starts an institution on the road to federal student aid sanctions. And although institutions with 3-year CDRs over 30 percent are overwhelmingly for-profits (73 percent), private nonprofits still account for 11 percent of the schools. Of that 11 percent, almost half are NAICU members.

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Why Federal Officials Should Require Some Colleges to Match Pell Grants

  • By
  • Stephen Burd
February 5, 2013

Yesterday at Higher Ed Watch, I argued that a federal solution is needed to ensure that colleges use their institutional aid resources to keep higher education affordable for low- and moderate-income students. But why should the federal government get involved?

The reason is simple: the government is already involved, way involved. It spends nearly $40 billion on the Pell Grant program each year to try to remove the financial barriers that prevent low-income students from enrolling in and completing college through the Pell Grant program. Yet colleges are increasingly undercutting the government’s mission by using their institutional aid dollars to try to attract the students they desire rather than to meet the financial need of the low income students they enroll. Worse yet, there is compelling evidence to suggest that schools are capturing a significant share of the Pell Grant funds they receive and using them for other purposes, such as providing non-need-based aid to recruit high achieving and wealthier students. This is one reason why even after historic increases in funding, the program’s impact is so limited: students and families are not receiving the full benefits as intended.

The enormous growth in non-need-based, or “merit” aid, at four-year colleges over the last two decades has come lately at the expense of the neediest students. Low-income students who attend these institutions often face high levels of “unmet need,” defined as the difference between the cost of attendance and the amount of financial aid they receive. Unmet need forces students to take on significant amounts of debt, including risky private student loans. Financially strapped students also frequently engage in activities that lessen their likelihood of completing their degrees, such as working full-time while attending college or dropping out until they can afford to return.

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Making Sure Colleges Remain Engines of Opportunity Not Inequality

  • By
  • Stephen Burd
February 4, 2013

Do colleges still provide a gateway to opportunity for low-income and working class students? Or are they perpetuating inequality in this country by limiting opportunity to only those who are rich enough to be able to afford it?

That question, which came up during a podcast conversation between my colleague Kevin Carey and New York Times journalist and New America Foundation Schwartz fellow Jason DeParle [author of this riveting article on the subject] last week, is central to proposals we have offered that aim to ensure that colleges use their institutional aid resources to keep higher education affordable for low- and moderate-income students.

Unfortunately this is often not the case. Colleges are, in fact, increasingly raising the barriers to higher education for low income students by redirecting their institutional financial aid dollars to wealthier students.

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Syllabus: Week of January 27

  • By
  • Rachel Fishman
January 31, 2013
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Welcome to the Syllabus, a weekly guide that provides insight into what’s happening in higher education.

Discuss:

This week New America’s Education Policy Program published Rebalancing Resources and Incentives in Federal Student Aid. In this policy paper we make more than 30 recommendations on how to improve our complex federal financial aid system so that it works better for students and taxpayers. With this many proposals, there was something for everyone to be happy about or frustrated over—sometimes simultaneously.

Inside Higher Ed, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and ProPublica offer great summaries of our proposal if you haven’t already read it. We also have this one-page explainer that will help get you up to speed.

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An Overview of Our Student Aid Reform Proposals

January 30, 2013

[The New America Foundation’s Education Policy Program on Tuesday released a comprehensive package of policy proposals that would provide an overhaul of federal financial aid. The report, Rebalancing Resources and Incentives in Federal Student Aid, calls for specific changes to grants, loans, tax benefits, college outreach programs and federal regulations to provide more direct aid to the lowest-income students, while strengthening accountability for institutions of higher education to ensure that more students are able to earn affordable, high-quality credentials. Yesterday, we explained why student aid reform is needed. In today's post, we provide an overview of our proposals.]

In Rebalancing Resources and Incentives in Federal Student Aid, we offer more than 30 specific policy recommenda­tions that are designed to create a streamlined federal student aid system that is more understandable, effective, and fair. Taken together, the package of proposals in our report is budget neutral over the 10-year period from federal fiscal years 2013-2022.

Pell Grants

The Pell Grant program is the cornerstone of federal stu­dent aid. In 1972, when the program was created, a Pell Grant covered most if not all college costs for large num­bers of low-income students. But as college prices have soared over the years, the system has become less and less effective. Moreover, the program is now facing a major “funding cliff” in the 2014 fiscal year and each year there­after.

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The Case for Student Aid Reform

January 29, 2013

[The New America Foundation’s Education Policy Program today released a comprehensive package of policy proposals that would provide an overhaul of federal financial aid. The report, Rebalancing Resources and Incentives in Federal Student Aid, calls for specific changes to grants, loans, tax benefits, college outreach programs and federal regulations to provide more direct aid to the lowest-income students, while strengthening accountability for institutions of higher education to ensure that more students are able to earn affordable, high-quality credentials. In today's post, we make our case for why student aid reform is needed.]

When Rhode Island Senator Claiborne Pell helped create the college student aid program that would become his legacy, American higher education looked very different than it does today. In 1972, the typical college student paid the equivalent of $526 per year in tuition and fees, in today’s dollars, to attend a public university in-state. Private college tuition was often affordable, and undergraduate borrow­ing was all but unheard-of. There were no “for-profit” colleges as we know them now. The large majority of all public support for higher education came in the form of direct appropriations to colleges and universities from states.

The world has changed since then. Profound shifts in the structure of the global economy have put a premium on high-skill jobs that require advanced credentials while many well-paying blue-collar jobs have disappeared. Students have flooded onto college campuses, in America and, increasingly, around the world. At the same time, col­leges and universities began a decades-long campaign in the early 1980s of constant price increases that continues, unabated, today. This happened in part because states, eager to cut taxes and facing rising costs for health care and public safety, reduced the portion of their budgets dedicated to higher education. At the same time, colleges competing for students and prestige ramped up spending year after year.

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Syllabus: Week of January 20

  • By
  • Rachel Fishman
January 25, 2013
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Syllabus: Week of January 20

Welcome to the Syllabus, a weekly guide that provides insight into what’s happening in higher education.

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The Curious Birth and Harmful Legacy of the Credit Hour, Amy Laitinen
The Chronicle of Higher Education

Almost all colleges and universities use the credit hour to measure student progression. But these time-based units were never intended to be a measure of student learning. They were developed and widely adopted so that colleges and universities could participate in a free professor pension program administered by the Carnegie Foundation.  New America’s Amy Laitinen explains that the nation can no longer afford to use time to measure learning and instead should move toward assessing competencies. “Measuring time is easy, but measuring learning is hard,” writes Laitinen, “However, that doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t be done.” There are already some promising practices, like the Lumina Foundation’s Degree Qualifications Profile and Tuning process, but changes to federal policy are needed to encourage wide adoption of these efforts by leveraging the government’s ability to use financial aid to pay for learning, not time.

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Syllabus: Week of January 14-18

  • By
  • Rachel Fishman
January 18, 2013
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Welcome to the first edition of the Syllabus, a weekly guide that provides insight into what’s happening in higher education.

Read:

The Next Affirmative Action, Kevin Carey
Washington Monthly

In the January/February issue, Carey, Director of the Education Policy Program here at New America, argues that minority students need a much broader reform agenda. Since most students don’t attend colleges with admissions rates below 50 percent, affirmative action only affects the small percentage of students who are qualified to attend elite schools. Instead, we need to re-balance public resources toward those less-selective institutions that enroll the lion’s share of minority students in higher education. Then we should hold them accountable for student outcomes like graduation rates. “Those who set the national education agenda need to look past the handful of universities that graduate the ruling class,” writes Carey, “And focus on improving the neglected institutions that educate the future minority school teachers, scientists, doctors, and engineers.”

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