College persistence rates hold steady

A recent U.S. Department of Education study provides good news about student persistence. Despite the challenges of increasing enrollments and greater socioeconomic diversity, institutions are managing to serve and retain students at the same or better rates than they did a decade ago.

“College Persistence on the Rise? Changes in 5-Year Degree Completion and Postsecondary Persistence Rates Between 1994 and 2000” compares the degree completion and persistence rates of postsecondary students who started college in 1989-90 versus those starting in 1995-96. It shows that more students now are staying in school through the fifth year, as opposed to giving up and dropping out.

One reason for the perseverance, the report suggests, is greater access to financial aid. During their years in college, nearly half the 1995-96 enrolled students borrowed money, compared with a third of students who enrolled six years earlier.

Another phenomenon the report documents, says John Lee, a college finance policy analyst, is students moderating the high cost of college by stringing out their college-going years. “Students are working more hours and borrowing money while they’re in college,” he says. Stretching four years of college into five reduces the cost on an annual basis, he notes.

Lee, who helped prepare the AFT report, “Student Persistence in College: More than Counting Caps and Gowns,” notes other factors that influence persistence rates. More 18-year-olds are going straight to postsecondary education after high school, and these traditional students tend to finish their degrees. Also, with some of the education reforms of the recent past, high school graduates are better prepared to do college-level work. Students also are looking at college offerings from a more pragmatic perspective, he says, and are shunning the theoretical courses of study for the practical. This mindset might affect persistence rates as well.

Current borrowing practices have a downside, however. Increasing debt burden upon graduation might be discouraging some students who would most benefit from higher education: middle- to low-income students, a group that the AFT has historically fought to protect during budget cutbacks. As tuitions continue to increase and state support declines, the issue of how financial aid is awarded to achieve broad access to higher education grows more pressing. This is why the AFT advocates three policies to affect student persistence: restoring the purchasing power of Pell Grants, reducing the rising debt burden on students, and improving support for nontraditional students.

In the challenge of reauthorizing the Higher Education Act with little money available for discretionary spending, Congress and the Bush administration have talked about funding mechanisms that link aid to accountability measures, such as persistence. This report suggests that persistence is not posing a problem that warrants government intervention. On the other hand, warns Lee, “all schools need to make investments in how to make high-risk students succeed, so that when Congress asks, ‘What are you doing?’ you’re in a better position not to have programs imposed from the outside.”

To see the U.S. Department of Education report, go to http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2005/2005156 AFT’s report can be downloaded at www.aft.org/pubs-reports/higher_ed/student_persistence.pdf.

U.S. teens’ math skills come up short

The lackluster performance of U.S. 15-year-olds on an international assessment of math knowledge and problem-solving skills signals that more must be done to address educational inequities in this country, says the AFT.

Results of the 2003 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), released Dec. 6 by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, show that U.S. students scored below the international average in overall math literacy. Among 29 industrialized nations, the U.S. ranked below 20 countries and above five nations, with scores comparable to students in Poland, Hungary and Spain. Among all the 39 countries reporting scores, the U.S. ranked below 23 other nations. The results for the U.S. also showed that while white students scored above the OECD average, Hispanic and black students scored below the average.

The assessment “underscores that we have a lot of work to do,” said the AFT in a statement. The test measured not just computation skills but the practical application of math. The top performer in the assessment, given every three years to measure math, reading and science literacy for 15-year-olds, was Finland, followed by Korea, the Netherlands, Japan, Canada, Belgium, Switzerland and New Zealand. The emphasis this time was on math, and in 2006 it will be on science.

Among the findings of PISA was that students from more advantaged households, where family income and education were higher, did significantly better in all countries, although some countries did a better job of overcoming socioeconomic disadvantages among students, including Australia and Canada.

Among the OECD nations, America’s poor and disadvantaged students experience some of the greatest educational inequities, says the AFT statement. “All American students deserve the best possible educational opportunities and too many are not receiving them. Our nation’s strong link between socioeconomic background and performance calls for immediate and thoughtful action. As a first step, we should dig deeper into data such as those provided by the PISA and examine and learn from the educational structures of other nations.”