Currently, there are 101 HBCUs in the United States, including public and private institutions. Of these HBCUs, 51 are public universities, and the remaining 50 are private institutions. These universities are spread across 19 states, primarily in the southern and eastern regions of the country.

The first HBCU in the United States was Cheyney University, founded in 1837. Since then, these institutions have played a significant role in educating African American students and promoting social justice in the United States.

In addition to providing educational opportunities for African American students, HBCUs play a crucial role in supporting low-income and first-generation students. They also serve as a safe and inclusive environment for students who may not feel as welcome at predominantly white institutions.

HBCUs offer a wide range of degree programs, from undergraduate to graduate level, and include fields such as business, law, medicine, education, and engineering. These institutions also provide various resources and support services for their students, such as tutoring, mentoring, and internships.

Although HBCUs have faced challenges in recent years, such as declining enrollment and financial struggles, these institutions are still essential in promoting diversity and equality in higher education. They continue to play a crucial role in ensuring that African American students have access to quality education and the tools they need to succeed.

In conclusion, there are currently 101 HBCUs in the United States, providing educational opportunities for African American students and promoting social justice in the country. These institutions are essential in promoting diversity and equality in higher education and are crucial to ensuring that all students have access to quality education. 

The post How many HBCUs are there? appeared first on The Edvocate.

Environmental racism is the practice of situating toxic waste sites, landfills, and other environmental hazards in low-income communities and communities of color. This practice is rooted in social, economic, and racial inequality, and it has devastating effects on the health and well-being of affected communities.

HBCUs, which are predominantly attended by people of color, often find themselves situated in areas that are disproportionately affected by environmental racism. These institutions are usually located in low-income areas where pollution levels are high, and access to clean air and water is limited. As a result, HBCUs are feeling the brunt of environmental racism in several ways.

One of the critical ways that environmental racism affects HBCUs is the impact on the health of their students and faculty. For example, many HBCUs are located near industrial plants that emit dangerous toxins into the air and water. These pollutants can damage organs, compromise immunity, and lead to chronic illnesses such as asthma and cancer. Such health impacts can lead to health risks and even death, especially for vulnerable populations, including the elderly, the children, pregnant women, and people with underlying health issues.

Moreover, the air pollution resulting from environmental racism not only affects the health of individuals but also has adverse effects on the environment. HBCUs are known for their significant contributions to environmental education and research. But, their efforts to advance environmental stewardship are frequently impeded by hazardous waste, contaminated air, and water, a situation that precludes them from providing a healthy and safe academic life.

Lastly, environmental racism has also had a significant impact on the operations and finances of HBCUs. As a result of environmental contamination, affected schools need to spend significant amounts of their resources on environmental remediation, cleanup, and mitigation measures. Such costs can put a strain on the financial resources that these schools need to meet their core obligations, including paying for educational programs and funding student scholarships.

In conclusion, environmental racism is an insidious and destructive force that is impacting HBCUs and their communities. The students, faculty, and leadership at these institutions are among the many casualties of environmental injustice. Therefore, addressing environmental racism needs to be a priority for both policymakers and individuals alike. It is only by creating awareness and taking concerted steps to fight environmental racism that we can begin to secure the future of HBCUs and the communities they serve.   

The post Environmental Racism’s Affect on HBCUs appeared first on The Edvocate.

Creating Job Opportunities

HBCUs are major employers in their local communities, creating jobs for thousands of people. These jobs range from administrative positions to maintenance and security staff, teaching and research faculty, and support staff such as librarians, cafeteria workers, and custodians. According to a recent study by the National Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education, HBCUs provide direct and indirect employment to over 137,000 individuals and generate over $14.8 billion in total economic impact.

Attracting Investment

HBCUs help to attract investment to their surrounding areas by providing a skilled and educated workforce that can meet the needs of businesses and industries. Graduate and undergraduate students who attend HBCUs often establish ties with local business and civic leaders as they participate in internships, service learning projects, and community service events. They serve as ambassadors for their institutions and contribute to the positive image of their communities. This can help to attract outside investment and business partnerships that can create jobs and stimulate economic growth.

Increasing Local Revenue

HBCUs also contribute significantly to the local economy by generating revenue from student tuition and fees, research projects, grants, and contracts. Students and faculty members also spend money in the local communities, supporting businesses such as restaurants, hotels, and shops. This increased economic activity leads to an increase in local tax revenue, which can be used to fund vital community services such as schools, hospitals, and public safety.

Providing Entrepreneurial Opportunities

HBCUs help to develop and support entrepreneurship by providing students and alumni with the tools and resources to start and sustain their own businesses. According to a report by the HBCU Entrepreneurship Ecosystem Initiative, HBCUs have produced over 50,000 entrepreneurs who have created thousands of jobs in their communities. These entrepreneurs have started businesses in various sectors, including technology, health care, finance, and education.

Conclusion

HBCUs are not only valuable educational institutions but also economic engines that contribute greatly to their local communities, states, and the nation as a whole. They provide job opportunities, attract investment, increase local revenue, and support entrepreneurship. As we continue to address income inequality, racial disparities, and economic development, HBCUs will undoubtedly play an integral role in ensuring that all individuals have access to quality education and economic opportunities.     

The post The Economic Impact of HBCUs appeared first on The Edvocate.

The post The Edvocate Podcast, Episode 6: 8 Ways That Digital Age Teachers Avoid Burning Out appeared first on The Edvocate.

The post The Edvocate Podcast, Episode 5: The Archetype of a Great Teacher appeared first on The Edvocate.

Colleges and universities are supposed to be places where freedom of expression flourishes. Sadly, that is not the case. At a recent debate on the Yale University campus, 66 percent of the attendees supported a proposition that “free speech is threatened.”

Places of higher learning seem more interested in “safe spaces” rather than in freedom of expression. Several incidents across campuses illustrate this. Recently, at Emory, students complained after they found chalk messages scrawled around campus voicing support for Donald J. Trump.

Last year at the University of Ottawa, a yoga class designed for handicapped people was suspended because the student federation thought it was a form of “cultural appropriation.” And at Smith College a student sit-in blocked media from entering unless reporters agreed to explicitly state support for the movement in their coverage.

Illustrating how contentious the debates have become, two of the most respected American comedians, Chris Rock and Jerry Seinfeld, said that colleges are eager “not to offend anybody.” Some students at a private Ivy League school even signed a petition to repeal the First Amendment.

Ideally, colleges and universities would foster an exchange of competing and controversial ideas. The reality is much different. Some colleges and universities limit discourse by silencing speech that might offend others through so-called speech codes and free speech zones.

In studying free expression issues for more than 20 years, I strongly believe such polices have led to a chilling effect on speech. They also have led to a mentality where students do not wish or want to face an opposing viewpoint.

So, what are these policies?

Combating hateful speech

First, let’s look at speech codes on campuses. A speech code refers to a set of provisions or regulations that limit certain types of offensive or harassing speech.

Colleges and universities usually don’t call their regulations speech codes. Instead, they refer to them as anti-harassment policies.

It was in the 1980s and 1990s that more than 300 colleges passed these policies to combat hateful speech. Schools tried to address harassment of gays and lesbians, women and members of other ethnic groups. The policies were further enforced when white students wore blackface for sorority and fraternity parties. Many schools were trying to achieve more diversity in their student bodies.

The intent was good. Many of these policies sought to prohibit speech or conduct that created an intimidating or harassing environment on the basis of race, sex, religion, or other criteria.

However, the results were not good for the First Amendment and freedom of speech.
Policies at the University of Michigan and the University of Wisconsin were invalidated on First Amendment free speech grounds.

At the University of Wisconsin, speech codes were adopted following racial incidents. JanetandPhil, CC BY-NC-ND

At the University of Wisconsin, for example, university officials adopted the speech code after several racially insensitive displays at fraternities. For example, one fraternity held a “slave auction.” A student newspaper and several others challenged the policy on the ground that the policies infringed on academic freedom and stifled some legitimate speech. In UWM Post v. Board of Regents of University of Wisconsin (1991), a federal district court struck down the policy, writing:

The suppression of speech, even where the speech’s content appears to have little value and great costs, amounts to governmental thought control.

Similar problems occurred at Michigan, which had its share of disturbing racially charged incidents. At Michigan, a student disc jockey allowed racist jokes to be aired. University officials reacted with a speech code. The problem was that officials applied the policy to chill the speech of students engaged in classroom discussion or academic research.

A federal district court judge invalidated the policy in Doe v. University of Michigan (1989), writing:

While the Court is sympathetic to the University’s obligation to ensure equal educational opportunities for all of its students, such efforts must not be at the expense of free speech.

The problem was that these codes were not drafted with sufficient precision. Courts ruled that these polices were either too broad or too vague.

Overbreadth and vagueness problems

A policy is too broad if it prohibits speech that ought to be protected in addition to speech that can be prohibited. In legal terms, this is called “overbreadth”. For example, a policy that prohibits “offensive and annoying” speech sweeps too broadly and prohibits lawful expression.

A policy is too vague if a person has to guess at its meaning. Vagueness is rooted in the notion that it is fundamentally unfair to punish someone when they did not know that their speech violated the policy.

For example, the University of Michigan had a policy that prohibited “stigmatizing or victimizing” individuals or groups on the basis of race, ethnicity, religion, sex, sexual orientation, creed, national origin, ancestry, age, marital status, handicap or Vietnam-era veteran status.

In Doe v. University of Michigan, a federal district court judge ruled the policy too vague, writing:

Students of common understanding were necessarily forced to guess at whether a comment about a controversial issue would later be found to be sanctionable under the Policy.

Controversies still abound over speech codes at colleges and universities. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) regularly challenges policies that it believes run afoul of the First Amendment.

In its annual report, the group contends that nearly half of the speech codes at 440 colleges infringe on First Amendment free speech rights. FIRE contends in its report that “any speech code in force at a public university is extremely vulnerable to a constitutional challenge.”

Restricting where students can have free speech

In addition, many colleges and universities have free speech zones. Under these policies, people can speak at places of higher learning in only certain, specific locations or zones.

Free speech zones limit expression to a few places on campus. Penn State, CC BY-NC

While there are remnants of these policies from the 1960s, they grew in number in the late 1990s and early 2000s as a way for administrators to deal with controversial expression.

These policies may have a seductive appeal for administrators, as they claim to advance the cause of free speech. But, free speech zones often limit speech by relegating expression to just a few locations. For example, some colleges began by having only two or three free speech zones on campus.

The idea of zoning speech is not unique to colleges and universities. Government officials have sought to diminish the impact of different types of expression by zoning adult-oriented expression, antiabortion protestors and political demonstrators outside political conventions.

In a particularly egregious example, a student at Modesto Junior College in California named Robert Van Tuinen was prohibited from handing out copies of the United States Constitution on September 17, 2013 – the anniversary of the signing of the Constitution.

Van Tuinen was informed that he could get permission to distribute the Constitution if he preregistered for time in the “free speech zone.” But later,
Van Tuinen was told by an administrator that he would have to wait, possibly until the next month.

In the words of First Amendment expert Charles Haynes, “the entire campus should be a free speech zone.” In other words, the default position of school administrators should be to allow speech, not limit it.

Zoning speech is troubling, particularly when it reduces the overall amount of speech on campus. And many free speech experts view the idea of a free speech zone as “moronic and oxymoronic.”

College or university campuses should be a place where free speech not only survives but thrives.

David Hudson, Adjunct Professor of Law, Vanderbilt University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

The post Explainer: how campus policies limit free speech appeared first on The Edvocate.

August is here, and many families are preparing their children for the next academic challenge – a college education.

By and large, a college degree is viewed as an important credential for gainful employment and professional success. At the same time, college is costly, and college financing strategies are complex.

Students and their families use multiple sources to finance college expenses. Most students borrow for their education. Three out of five college students depend on student loans to fund their education.

But, do students know the ABCs of financial literacy?

College finance options

The college process begins with estimating the full cost of college attendance. This includes tuition, housing and living expenses, such as food, books, cellphone plans and transportation.

The next step is to identify all resources available to pay college expenses, including the expected family contribution, scholarships and grants, college savings and wages from employment – if students plan to work.

Once college costs and available resources are carefully estimated, any shortfall in resources informs the need for borrowing. Scholarships and grants are awarded without strings attached. However, student loans come with an obligation to repay the borrowed amount once the recipient is no longer enrolled full-time.

Guidelines for responsible student loan use recommend minimizing the loan amount in order to have less debt to be repaid.

Decisions made by college students and their families regarding loans have direct and significant consequences during adulthood.

The inability to manage student loan repayment along with other financial obligations (i.e., housing, food, utilities, transportation) has been shown to impact career choice, home ownership, marriage, additional education, financial health and overall quality of life.

So, how do students decide the amount to borrow? What rules of thumb or strategies are used? How is use of these strategies related to financial knowledge?

How students make borrowing decisions

We lead the Study on Collegiate Financial Wellness (SCFW), which surveys a random sample of undergraduate students in order to understand their financial behaviors, decisions and wellness. Data from our study provide insights to these questions.

The 2014 SCFW study, with the most recent information from nearly 19,000 college students studying at 51 public and private four-year and two-year institutions, found that the majority of college students with student loans use one or more strategies to minimize the amount borrowed.

How are students making borrowing decisions? Application image via www.shutterstock.com

For example, data from our study showed over half of student loan users tried to borrow as little as possible (52 percent).

Additionally, 38 percent considered the total amount of debt that they expected to graduate with. Thirty-three percent considered the amount that had borrowed in the past when deciding how much to borrow for the school year.

But about 28 percent, almost three out of 10 students, reported borrowing the maximum amount available in their package. And about 17 percent of student loan users borrowed the maximum available without also employing a strategy to minimize overall borrowing.

Low financial knowledge

The next question is, how well are students prepared to make these important decisions?

The SCFW included two financial knowledge questions to test whether respondents could understand the concepts of interest and inflation and had basic financial numeracy. These questions assess basic concepts of financial literacy – the knowledge and skill needed to manage financial resources effectively.

Nearly 80 percent of the college student respondents answered the interest rate question correctly. But only 59 percent answered the inflation question correctly. Just over half of the college students (53 percent) answered both questions correctly.

Students who answered the interest rate question incorrectly don’t understand that interest is earned not only on money deposited in a savings account, but also on previously earned interest – a feature known as compounding – while students who answered the inflation question incorrectly don’t understand that rising inflation reduces the buying power of money. Interest and inflation both influence how much our hard-earned money can buy.

These results are similar to previous research conducted in 2007-08 with 23-28 years old young adults.

In that study, the percentage of young adults answering correctly was 79 percent for the interest rate question, 54 percent for the inflation question, and 46 percent for both questions.

Knowledge influences borrowing

Some colleges provide either workshops or longer term courses on financial education, but the percentage of college students who receive financial education remains low.

When students know more, they save more. 401(K) 2012, CC BY-SA

Only one-quarter of the SCFW respondents completed a financial education course in college. Those that did were significantly more likely to answer both financial knowledge questions correctly (58 percent vs 51 percent). This difference is too large to attribute to chance alone, and suggests that financial education increases financial knowledge.

Using data from the SCFW on 7,180 students at four-year colleges, we wanted to see if financial knowledge and financial education were associated with strategies used to make borrowing decisions.

We controlled for many factors known to affect student loan borrowing, including student age, sex, race/ethnicity and socioeconomic status. We found that with higher financial knowledge, students were more likely to borrow what they believed they needed.

We found they budgeted and borrowed as little as possible, when they had financial knowledge.

Knowledge is power

While a college degree certainly pays off in the long run, the payoff can take longer if students have loans to repay.

This fall as students enter or return to college, it is important that they make thoughtful decisions about financing their education. Families making decisions about paying for college may also want to have discussions about how much students understand about finances or look for opportunities to take financial education workshops.

As the saying goes, knowledge is power, even when it comes to finances.

Catherine Montalto, Associate Professor of Consumer Sciences, The Ohio State University and Anne McDaniel, Senior Associate Director, The Ohio State University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

The post Most students borrow for college, but are they financially literate? appeared first on The Edvocate.

We may think that a simple age cutoff – such as 18 – should make us feel like adults. And why not? After all, crossing an age threshold can bestow certain rights, such as voting, military enlistment, purchase of certain substances as well as adult images or videos.

From our perspective as researchers who study the transition from adolescence to adulthood, these legally defined age markers are hardly a good indicator of when we feel like adults. They can be subject to change and have no universal or even national standard.

For example, the minimum age for purchase for alcohol and recreational marijuana is 21. But the purchase of recreational marijuana is not legally permitted in all states. While tobacco purchase age is typically 18, two states and several cities recently moved the tobacco purchase age up to 21.

In addition, often times, individuals may not always “feel” like an adult simply because they passed an age marker.

So, when do we “feel” like adults?

Path to adulthood

Our idea of “adult” is bound closely to both our objective attainment of certain roles as well as our subjective evaluation of the timing of those roles.

Scholars working in this area have identified five important role transitions marking adulthood: finishing school, leaving home, acquiring stable work, marrying and parenting.

Although each of these adult roles has been considered alone or in pairs, little is known about how people traverse all the roles simultaneously and how achieving these markers of adulthood affects considering one’s self an “adult.”

People may feel “on time” or “off time,” depending on whether they achieve adult roles at the “right time.“ In other words, feeling like an adult may be tied to achieving multiple roles marking adult life rather than any single one and doing so in a timely manner compared to peers.

Pathway to adult life? Elizabeth Donoghue, CC BY-NC-ND

A typical pathway was laid out in the early and mid-20th century: exit school, get a job, move out of the parental home, get married, and have children.

While this might be considered the “normal” pathway even today, these transitions do not occur in such a neat and predictable order for many contemporary young people. Furthermore, the time to complete them has become longer.

It is commonplace today for young people to return to school after beginning work, move back in with parents (or never leave), have children prior to marriage, or work in less secure part-time jobs.

Different transition paths

Given the myriad possible paths through these roles, our research seeks to find frequent patterns or commonalities in the ways roles marking adulthood are traversed from ages 17 to 30 and what they mean for considering oneself an adult.

The study is based on a sample of 1,010 freshmen of St. Paul Public Schools, a school district of Minnesota. The survey started in 1988 and continued near annually through 2011. Over 20 years, this study has examined the consequences of work and other formative experiences in adolescence for the transition to adulthood.

Using a method that could identify distinct patterns in the timing and sequencing of adult roles, we found that the traditional school-to-work transition followed by “family formation” (that is, getting married and having children – around age 25) described above still exists.

However, only about 17 percent of young people follow that path today. Rather, most youth take four other pathways to adulthood.

Two of those paths involve a traditional school-to-work transition in one’s early twenties. But they are different in when they choose to form a family: one group delayed forming a family until their late twenties (20 percent); another did not do so by age 30 (27 percent).

The two remaining paths were distinguished by their low likelihood of attending college and early marriage and kids. Each member of this group had children by age 22.

But even these two paths defined by early parenting differed from one another: One group of early parents married and acquired full-time work (15 percent). The other, however, had much lower chances of achieving those roles (20 percent).

In other words, there were several objective ways to traverse the transition to adulthood.

Marriage, parenthood are critical

The question remains, do the members of these groups feel like an adult when they reach their mid-twenties? Have they acquired an adult identity? Do they think they are on or off time in achieving the five markers of adulthood?

Given the social acceptance of the traditional pathway of school-work-marriage- kids, individuals following that were more inclined to view themselves “entirely” as an adult. They considered themselves “on time” with regards to marriage and financial independence, relative to their peers.

Early parents who married and acquired full-time work also felt entirely like adults, although they considered themselves “very early” in traversing those markers.

Truly feeling like an adult is tied to forming one’s own family. Kim Davies, CC BY-NC-ND

By contrast, the early parents who did not get married or acquired stable work, felt “very early” on parenthood, but “very late” on other markers like marriage, cohabitation, and financial independence.

The other two groups who took the traditional school-to-work transition but delayed or did not get married and had kids felt “not entirely” like an adult. They believed that they were “very late” on parenthood.

While they achieved several traditional markers of adulthood, including finishing school, getting a job, and moving out on their own, they still did not feel like adults without marriage and parenthood.

It would appear that truly feeling like one has become an adult is tied to forming one’s own family via marriage and parenthood.

When do we “feel” adult?

Our research shows that there are many pathways that young people take in transitioning to adulthood. Adulthood is a subjective process that no one marker appears to be able to define, though marriage and parenthood are particularly important.

Moving away from the more traditional school-to-work transition allows for a period of exploration, as young people figure out what they want to do in life. Acquiring markers of adulthood is associated with leaving behind deviant behavior, such as heavy partying and even theft, usually committed at younger ages. Furthermore, in ongoing research, we find that early parents without partners have poor objective and subjective health outcomes.

But, to come back to the original question, when do we “feel” like adults, there is no simple answer.

Individuals become adults when they feel like adults, but this feeling is tied to the timely acquisition of certain markers, especially marriage and parenthood. Such subjective assessments are socially constructed.

In time, as the four “non-traditional” pathways become more commonplace, perhaps what is perceived as “on time” adulthood will shift so that individuals following those paths will view themselves as adults earlier in life.

Michael Vuolo, Assistant Professor of Sociology, The Ohio State University and Jeylan T Mortimer, Professor of Sociology, University of Minnesota

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

The post Just graduated? Does it make you feel like a grown up? appeared first on The Edvocate.

Can a few text messages, a timely email or a letter increase college enrollment and student achievement? Such “nudges,” designed carefully using behavioral economics, can be effective.

But when do they work – and when not?

Barriers to success

Consider students who have just graduated high school intending to enroll in college. Even among those who have been accepted to college, 15 percent of low-income students do not enroll by the next fall. For the large share who intend to enroll in community colleges, this number can be as high as 40 percent.

There are a number of possible reasons for this attrition: many families overestimate the cost of college because the sticker price of colleges can be much higher than the net price (the sticker price minus the potentially large amount of aid a low-income student could receive); students may struggle with complex financial aid forms; there may be a lack of support to guide them through the application process. So, even when low-income students who are high-achieving do enroll in college, the majority fail to enroll in a college that is comparable to their level of achievement.

Can a few text messages or a timely email overcome these barriers? My research uses behavioral economics to design low-cost, scalable interventions aimed at improving education outcomes. Behavioral economics suggests several important features to make a nudge effective: simplify complex information, make tasks easier to complete and ensure that support is timely.

So, what makes for an effective nudge?

Improving college enrollment

In 2012, researchers Ben Castleman and Lindsay Page sent 10 text messages to nearly 2,000 college-intending students the summer after high school graduation. These messages provided just-in-time reminders on key financial aid, housing and enrollment deadlines from early July to mid August.

Instead of set meetings with counselors, students could reply to messages and receive on-demand support from college guidance counselors to complete key tasks.

In another intervention – the Expanding College Opportunities Project (ECO) – researchers Caroline Hoxby and Sarah Turner worked to help high-achieving, low-income students enroll in colleges on par with their achievement. The intervention arrived to students as a packet in the mail.

What happens when an intervention arrives in a mail? Mail image via www.shutterstock.com

The mailer simplified information by providing a list of colleges tailored to each student’s location along with information about net costs, graduation rates, and application deadlines. Moreover, the mailer included easy-to-claim application fee waivers. All these features reduced both the complexity and cost in applying to a wider range of colleges.

In both cases, researchers found that it significantly improved college outcomes. College enrollment went up by 15 percent in the intervention designed to reduce summer melt for community college students. The ECO project increased the likelihood of admission to a selective college by 78 percent.

Getting parents involved

Of course, it’s not just at college enrollment time that nudging can be helpful. Parents also face behavioral barriers while their children are in middle and high school. Many parents underestimate the number of assignments their child has not turned in as well as the number of school days their child has missed. Unfortunately, schools often do a poor job communicating this information to parents in a timely fashion.

I tested an intervention that sent text messages to parents about their child’s missed assignments and grades. The messages were frequent – sent four times more often than report cards – and provided detailed information to parents about their child’s missed assignments and grades. Each message listed page numbers and problems students needed to complete so that parents could track their child’s progress.

The involvement of parents cam motivate children. More Good Foundation, CC BY-NC

Parents responded by communicating with the school more often and motivating their children to do the work: students turned in 25 percent more assignments, which led to significant improvements in grades and evidence of increased math scores.

When there is no impact

While these interventions are promising, there are important caveats.

For instance, our preliminary findings from ongoing research show that information alone may not be enough. We sent emails and letters to more than one hundred thousand college applicants about financial aid and education-related tax benefits. However, we didn’t provide any additional support to help families through the process of claiming these benefits.

In other words, we didn’t provide any support to complete the tasks – no fee waivers, no connection to guidance counselors – just the email and the letter. Without this support to answer questions or help families complete forms to claim the benefits, we found no impact, even when students opened the emails.

More generally, “nudges” often lead to modest impacts and should be considered only a part of the solution. But there’s a dearth of low-cost, scalable interventions in education, and behavioral economics can help.

Identifying the crucial decision points – when applications are due, forms need to be filled out or school choices are made – and supplying the just-in-time support to families is key.

Peter Bergman, Assistant Professor of Economics and Education, Teachers College, Columbia University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

The post Could a tweet or a text increase college enrollment or student achievement? appeared first on The Edvocate.

On July 6, Hillary Clinton took a half-step toward Bernie Sanders’ free public college tuition plan. She proposed partnering with states to zero out tuition by 2020 for families making US$125,000 or less.

We know that American higher education faces serious long-term problems. However, reducing tuition or college debt to zero isn’t the right way to solve them.

We have been studying America’s higher education system and college costs. Our research tells us that the deep problems in American higher education today aren’t due to the fact that students borrow or pay tuition. It is because the schools serving the bulk of America’s underprivileged students are increasingly resource-starved.

So, what should our candidates be worrying about when it comes to higher education? And what policies might make a dent in our real problems?

Inequality in higher education

Let’s first look at how higher education has been split into separate and unequal worlds.

As researchers Caroline Hoxby and Sarah Turner have shown, students who attend a college ranked “most competitive” by Barron’s, a financial magazine, enjoy $27,000 of instructional spending per student. These include schools such as Yale, Duke, Kenyon and the University of Miami. At a “non-selective” four-year university that number drops to $5,000. This group includes many non-flagship state universities and small liberal arts colleges that accept most applicants.

The divide is further deepened as only a small percentage of low-income students are able to attend top universities. Only four percent of the students who attend the institutions rated as “most competitive” are from the bottom quarter of the socioeconomic status distribution. Students from the bottom half of the income distribution cluster at community colleges and non-selective four-year institutions.

Rising income inequality and declining state support for higher education further risks cementing in place this division between first class and steerage class education.

Rising inequality, declining state support

Consider the following facts: Most of the income growth since 1965 has gone to the richest 20 percent of American households. Since 2000, a household at the bottom fifth has lost $3,200, measured in 2014 dollars, or 13 percent of its income. But America’s richest five percent earns an extra $7,000.

U.S. household Income from 1967 to 2013. David Feldman, Author provided

For students from poor and middle-income families, stagnant or declining income is a real barrier to college access unless state or federal subsidies become more liberal.

But most states have cut funding to public universities. Between 2000-01 and 2014-15, annual state spending per full-time student fell by $2,573, measured in 2014 dollars. Over the same time period the annual tuition and fees paid by the average student at a public four-year university have risen by $2,038, also measured in 2014 dollars. Tuition increases have not fully recovered state cuts.

Despite tuition increases, public universities, and especially the less-selective non-flagships that serve the bulk of the population, are increasingly resource-starved.

Our calculations, based on data from the Delta Cost Project,which conducts research on how colleges spend their money, show the following: In 1987, public universities spent 88 cents for every dollar that private nonprofit institutions spent on the wages and salaries that drive instruction. By 1999 the ratio had fallen to 81 cents. And by 2010, it had fallen further, to 73 cents on the dollar.

This has consequences. Economists John Bound, Michael Lovenheim and Sarah Turner have found that falling graduation rates, especially among young men, are concentrated at resource-starved community colleges and less-selective public universities.

These researchers found that increases in the student/faculty ratio were the main culprit in declining graduation rates at public universities. This is driven by lack of resources. At community colleges, weaker student preparation is the problem, and this is a consequence of poverty.

What are candidates saying?

But these are not the issues that worry our candidates most. College debt has grabbed the headlines, so college debt has grabbed their attention.

Donald Trump. Joshua Roberts/Reuters

Donald Trump’s website currently contains nothing about higher education. But his campaign co-chair, Sam Clovis, recently offered the outlines of a Trump position. Among the proposals is that government should get out of the loan business – handing it back to private banks.

What would that mean for high school students, who have no collateral and no credit record? Banks generally will not lend money to 18-year-olds with nebulous plans, absent a guarantee. Clovis suggested the guarantee would come from colleges and universities, who would have to pay for student default. Their “skin” would be in the game.

In fact, Trump’s program would hand private banks a financial windfall, because they would earn the fees and interest, and if a student failed to keep up on payments, someone else would take the hit. In Trump’s world, those would be the schools that currently work with large numbers of “risky” underprivileged students.

Hillary Clinton’s platform contains a $25 billion fund to support private nonprofit colleges that serve underprivileged students. This would be, in our view, a step in the right direction if it could pass through Congress.

What we know about student debt

The substantive proposal in Clinton’s New College Compact is the following:

Every student should have the option to graduate from a public college or university in their state without taking on any student debt.

Our point is there is no good reason why debt should be off the table. Substantial gains go to the students who earn a degree, and reasonable amounts of debt are a good way to finance any long-run investment. Students who borrow near the average levels ($25,000 to $32,000), and who graduate, tend to have little difficulty paying back.

A demonstrator holds up a sign to protest student debt. Andrew Burton/Reuters

As Sandy Baum of the Urban Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, has shown, most of the “extreme” debt is concentrated in two places. The first is graduate students. The returns to their degrees are larger and less uncertain.

A doctor with $160,000 in debt is in much better shape than a dropout who has $14,000 to pay. Most of the dropouts come from under-resourced schools that serve our most at-risk students – this is a problem that worsens inequality.

The second is the for-profit sector. Although for-profits account for only nine percent of degrees awarded, they are responsible for a quarter of the total number of students whose debt exceeds $50,000. For-profits serve a lot of older students and many veterans using GI benefits.

What needs to change

In our view, two reforms could help break the trend toward inequality in the American higher education system.

The first is related to the federal government’s need-based Pell Grants of up to $5,815 per academic year. Pell Grants, which are awarded to low-income, undergraduate students, do not have to be repaid. So, they reduce the price of a year in college.

Ashland CTC, CC BY-NC-ND

In today’s dollars, the current maximum Pell Grant has slightly less purchasing power than it did in 1978.

Yet the cost of services – which includes everything from restaurant meals and haircuts to dental care and higher education – has risen faster than the inflation rate. As a result, a Pell Grant covers a declining portion of the cost of a year in college. The maximum Pell Grant covered 94 percent of the tuition and fees at a public university in 2000-01. By 2015-16 it covered only 61 percent. Congress could set the Pell maximum simply by tying increases to an index of service prices.

The second reform that we suggest is a federal program to encourage states to raise their own investment in public universities. Former Democratic Senator Tom Harkin proposed giving states a federal grant based on how much funding they provided per student at their own public universities.

In Harkin’s proposal, states would qualify for a grant if they spent at least $2,865 per student annually. States that offered more funding of their own could get a bigger grant per student from the federal government.

The advantage of Harkin’s bill was that it did not propose to micromanage how the grant would be used. States could use it to hold down tuition growth, but they could also use it to improve the quality of the programming to help underprivileged students. Those are the students who currently fail in large numbers at underfunded public institutions.

We believe these two ideas alone could be a down payment on a fairer higher education system. These ideas would help funnel more resources into the colleges and universities that educate the vast majority of America’s at-risk student population.

David H. Feldman, Professor of Economics, College of William & Mary and Robert B. Archibald, Professor of Economics, College of William & Mary

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

The post Why debt-free college will not solve the real problems in America’s higher education system appeared first on The Edvocate.