Tag: rates

  • As diversity rates at elite colleges hang in the balance, some students still face increased exclusion and barriers

    As diversity rates at elite colleges hang in the balance, some students still face increased exclusion and barriers

    Diversity rates at several elite colleges and universities have plummeted, a little over a year after the Supreme Court’s restriction on race-conscious admissions. It’s a divisive but unsurprising blow to historically underrepresented students seeking educational opportunity and access.

    While demographic data is still forthcoming, the challenges these students face to attend certain colleges continue to build. MIT, Amherst College, and Tufts have already seen sharp declines in the diversity of their student populations.

    But not all is lost. Ethnically diverse students have options to express their full identities, and organizations providing services to them have options to support these students’ overall success through postsecondary pathways.

    While assessing the state of race in higher education admissions, we cannot ignore its historical context in colleges in America. Colleges and universities were built by and explicitly served the educational needs of wealthy white men. For too long, the only people of color on campus were the (often enslaved) servants of white students.

    We should also bear in mind that, at elite universities today, the students who are overlooked in favor of race-neutral policies are not the only ones who miss out — students already on campus lose out on the richness that having a diverse array of educational experiences can provide, with their opportunities to encounter alternative viewpoints limited.

    Related: Interested in innovations in the field of higher education? Subscribe to our free biweekly Higher Education newsletter.

    Oftentimes, first-generation, Black, Hispanic and Native American students experience an inherent and often unspoken isolation on campus at predominantly white institutions.

    As a Black Chicana, I vividly remember being the singular student of color in my freshman-year seminar at Michigan State. My experience was not without the awkwardness of questioning my own merit and if I belonged there in the first place. We traveled to Ireland, and due to the humidity, I put on my silk bonnet to protect my hair. It was met with questions and stares.

    Here we are in 2025, discussing the all-too-familiar concept of racial bias in America, while institutions are bound by new laws that result in restricted access for the students whose right to educational access has historically been systematically denied. So what can we do?

    While it requires creativity, students can still highlight who they are in their applications by foregrounding their lived experiences outside of their grades, test scores and academic histories. For example, students can share the intricacies of being a historically marginalized person in America — from being asked to speak English to being pulled over for driving while Black. They can write about their experiences and identities in personal statements and on their resumes and through discussions of their community involvement. Students owe it to themselves to share their personal moments of overcoming barriers in everyday life.

    Related: What’s a college degree worth? States start to demand colleges share the data

    Institutions can ask essay questions that provoke such responses and allow students to share without prejudice or fear of reprisal. Students’ insightful perspectives should be applauded by educational institutions, and the power of their words should be respected.

    Underrepresented students also have options other than the traditional elite universities. Historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) and Hispanic-serving institutions (HSIs) are an alternative to predominantly white institutions like the ones mentioned above. Students can make the college experience what they want and need, and it is no different at smaller institutions like Lane College, an HBCU, or Colorado State University, Pueblo, an HSI.

    At these schools, a student’s culture and identity are revered and shared. Educational institutions that see the value in diversity should be reconsidered as the best option for ethnically diverse students.

    And, as educational institutions grapple with the effects of the Supreme Court ruling, they should support the students from historically marginalized populations already on their campuses to ensure that they feel welcome, supported and valued. Building robust affinity groups not only provides current students with communities they can co-create and adapt to their needs, but also demonstrates that the institutions are committed to creating spaces for all students.

    Scholarship providers and organizations that support underrepresented students will continue to play a vital role in fostering diversity on college campuses. Mission-driven organizations like the one I work for, the Sachs Foundation, still help Black students who lack the financial capacity or easy access to attend elite schools like MIT and Brown.

    Students deserve to have their whole selves valued, welcomed and supported when applying for higher education.

    Pamela Roberts-Mora is the chief operations officer at the Sachs Foundation, serving Black youth from Colorado through educational and community programs. She was a first-generation college student.

    Contact the opinion editor at [email protected].

    This story about college diversity was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for our higher education newsletter. Listen to our higher education podcast.

    The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.

    Join us today.

    Source link

  • Six-year graduation rates at four-year colleges and universities

    Six-year graduation rates at four-year colleges and universities

    Graduation rates are always a hot topic in higher education, but often for the wrong reason.  To demonstrate, I offer my parents.  Here is a portrait of Agnes and Mark, married May 4, 1946.

    One night while I was talking to my brother, he asked, “Do you think mom was the way she was because dad was the way he was, or do you think dad was the way he was because mom was the way she was?”  To which I replied, “yes.”  My point, of course, is that in complex relationships, it’s always difficult–impossible, actually–to detangle cause and effect.

    And, despite the Student Affairs perspective that graduation rates are a treatment effect, I maintain that they are actually a selection effect.  As I’ve written about before, it’s pretty easy to predict a college’s six-year graduation rate if you know one data point: The mean SAT score of the incoming class.  That’s because the SAT rolls a lot of predictive factors into one index number.  These include academic preparation, parental attainment, ethnicity, and wealth, on the student side, and selectivity, on the college side.

    When a college doesn’t have to–or chooses not to–take many risks in the admissions process, they tend to select those students who are more likely to graduate.  That skews the incoming class wealthier (Asian and Caucasian populations have the highest income levels in America), higher ability (the SAT is a good proxy for some measure of academic achievement, and often measures academic opportunity), and second generation.  And when you combine all those things–or you select so few poor students you can afford to fund them fully–guess what?  Graduation rates go up.

    If this doesn’t make any sense, read the Blueberry Speech.  Or ask yourself this question: If 100 MIT students enrolled at your local community college, what percentage would graduate? 

    But graduation rates are still interesting to look at, once you have that context.  The visualization below contains three views, using the tabs across the top.  You’ll have to make a few clicks to get the information you need.

    The first view (Single Group) starts with a randomly selected institution, Oklahoma State.  Choose your institution of choice by clicking on the box and typing any part of the name, and selecting the institution. 

    On the yellow bars, you see the entering cohorts in yellow, and the number of graduating students on the blue bars.  Note: The blue bars show graduates in the year shown (so, 4,755, which you can see by hovering over the bar) while the yellow bar shows the entering class from six years prior (7,406 in 2019, who entered in 2013).

    The top row shows graduation rates at all institutions nationally, and the second row shows percentages for the selected institution.  You can choose any single ethnicity at the top left, using the filter.

    The second view (Single Institution) shows all ethnicities at a single institution.  The randomly selected demonstration institution is Gustavus Adolphus College in Minnesota, but of course you can choose any institution in the data set.  Highlight a single ethnic group using the highlight function (I know some people are frightened of interacting with these visualizations….you can’t break anything).

    Note: I start with a minimum of 10 students in each year’s cohorts for the sake of clarity.  Small schools in the Northeast, for instance, might enroll one Asian/Pacific Islander in their incoming class, each year, so the graduation rate could swing wildly from 0% to 100%.  You can change this if you want to live dangerously, by pulling the slider downward.

    The final view (Sectors) shows aggregates of institutional types.  It starts with graduation rates for Hispanic/Latino students, but you can change it to any group you want.

    Have fun learning about graduation rates.  Just don’t assume they are mostly driven by what happens at the institution once the admissions office has its say.

    Source link

  • Private college discount rates for first-year students, 2021

    Private college discount rates for first-year students, 2021

    Two quick additions/clarifications to this:  The definition of full-pays is those students who receive no institutional funds.  EM people don’t care where the cash comes from, only the discount.  Second, yes, I know some institutions use endowments to pay for institutional aid.  That percentage is likely very small, although concentrated at a few institutions.

    Before we begin, here is what this post does not do:

    • It will generally not tell you where you can get low tuition, with a very few exceptions.  And when it does, it won’t be at one of “those” colleges.
    • It will not tell you which colleges are likely to close soon, although after the fact, you can probably find a closed college and say, “Aha! Right where I expected it would be!”
    • It will not show you net costs to students.
    • It will not adjust for things like church support, enormous endowments, or the cost of living in that high-priced city where Excellence College or Superior University is located.

    Got it?  Good.

    This will show you the discount rate on first-year students at about 1,000 four-year, private, not-for-profit colleges in 2021-22.  Discount as I define it is the total unfunded institutional financial aid divided by the total charged (gross) tuition and fees.  A university that charges (published tuition and fees times the number of students) $10,000,000 and awards $4,000,000 in aid has a discount rate of 40%.  At most colleges, this discount is simply an accounting transaction, much like a coupon to save a dollar on a sandwich at Subway.  That, of course, is a gross over-simplification of the “what” of discounting, and it doesn’t touch the “why” of discounting at all.  But if you want an explanation, I’ll gladly talk to your trustees for a reasonable fee.

    And there is a difference between discount and net revenue, although at any given tuition charge, the two are perfectly related.  Unfortunately, as  you’ll soon, see, colleges all set their own tuition.  To wit:

    • A college charging $50,000 with a 20% discount has net revenue (the cash you can spend) of $40,000 per student.
    • That same college with a 50% discount has just $25,000 per student.
    • A college charging $30,000 with a 10% discount has $27,000 per student.
    • That same college with a 40% discount has $18,000 per student.

    As a college, you don’t care where the cash comes from: Pell grants, state grants, loans, or the student’s family.  This means, hypothetically, a student with low institutional aid might pay less than one with more aid.  Confused?  Good.

    If you use this with your trustees to explain your own college’s market position, consider supporting my costs of time, hosting and software by buying me a coffee.  Just click here to do so.  If you counsel high school students, or your a parent of a prospective college student, must keep reading and don’t feel any obligation at all.

    Here is the data, in three views.  The first two are box and whisker plots, where half of the colleges fall inside the gray box on each column to show you the middle 50%.

    The first view shows net revenue per freshman student, arrayed by the institution’s Carnegie type.  Use the controls to filter region, highlight region, or highlight an individual college.  To do the latter, type any part of the name in the box, hit enter, and select from the options.  Hover over dots for details; each dot is a college.

    The second view is identical, but it shows discount rate, the number people obsess over while missing the more important net revenue figure.

    The third view shows those two values arrayed, with the same highlighters, allowing you to filter on Carnegie type, or even the percentage of the students who are full-pay (that is, they get no institutional aid at all.)

    You’ll soon see that discount and net revenue don’t seem to be big issues at the big name, strongly endowed institutions.  That’s because, at many of these places, undergraduate education is essentially a sideline business, and only a minor source of revenue.  The money they bring in (or don’t) on this presumably core function of the university is managed to best optimize to reputation or selectivity, or other factors (including, sometimes, mission).

    Note that I’ve done my best to remove some outliers with wild data that throw the charts off.  Many of these are colleges I have never heard of, and they’re tiny.  Others are places with strong religious missions (like Yeshivas or Seminaries) that may be externally funded in ways this can’t account for. 

    Enjoy

    Source link