Informing Students about Their College Options: A Proposal for Broadening the Expanding College Opportunities Project

Most high-achieving, low-income students do not even apply to selective colleges despite being highly qualified for admission and success at these institutions. Because they do not apply, these students forgo the generous academic resources, increased financial aid, and better collegiate and career opportunities that selective schools offer. To increase opportunities and improve outcomes for these students, we propose building on the success of an innovative intervention, the Expanding College Opportunities (ECO) Project. At a relatively low cost of about $6 per student contacted, ECO sent the following to high-achieving, low-income students: targeted and personalized information on their college options, information on the process for applying, and details of the financial information relevant to their situations. The intervention had a profound effect on their college application behavior, leading to a substantial increase in their propensity to apply to more-selective colleges commensurate with their academic achievements. Not only did students apply to more-selective schools, but they were accepted and matriculated at such schools in greater numbers, and early evidence points to their academic success in these programs. The promising results of this low-cost program suggest that ECO should be expanded. This paper proposes steps to expand and improve ECO to reach more low-income, high-achieving students across the country by partnering with respected third-party organizations such as the College Board and ACT. ECO can also serve as a model for designing and applying this type of intervention to other populations of students. The success of the ECO Project highlights the importance of researchers being able to access relevant government data to design targeted and effective programs and polici

Cohort Crowding: How Resources Affect Collegiate Attainment

Analyses of college attainment typically focus on factors affecting enrollment demand, including the financial attractiveness of a college education and the availability of financial aid, while implicitly assuming that resources available per student on the supply side of the market are elastically supplied. The higher education market in the United States is dominated by public and non-profit production, and colleges and universities receive considerable subsidies from state, federal, and private sources. Because consumers pay only a fraction of the cost of production, changes in demand are unlikely to be accommodated fully by colleges and universities without commensurate increases in non-tuition revenue. For this reason, public investment in higher education plays a crucial role in determining the degrees produced and the supply of college-educated workers to the labor market. Using data covering the last half of the twentieth century, we find strong evidence that large cohorts within states have relatively low undergraduate degree attainment, reflecting less than perfect elasticity of supply in the higher education market. That large cohorts receive lower public subsidies per student in higher education explains this result, indicating that resources have large effects on degree production. Our results suggest that reduced resources per student following from rising cohort size and lower state expenditures are likely to have significant negative effects on the supply of college-educated workers entering the labor market.

Legacies in Black and White: The Racial Composition of the Legacy Pool

Selective universities regularly employ policies that favor children of alumni (known as legacies') in undergraduate admissions. Since alumni from selective colleges and universities have, historically, been disproportionately white, admissions policies that favor legacies have disproportionately benefited white students. For this reason, legacy policies lead to additional costs in terms of reductions in racial diversity. As larger numbers of minority students graduate from colleges and universities and have children, however, the potential pool of legacy applicants will change markedly in racial composition. This analysis begins with a review of the history and objectives of the preference for children of alumni in undergraduate admissions. We then consider the specific case of the University of Virginia and employ demographic techniques to predict the racial composition of the pool of potential legacy applicants to the University. Significant changes in the racial composition of classes that graduated from the University of Virginia from the late 1960s through the 1970s foreshadow similar changes in the characteristics of alumni children maturing through the next two decades.

The Primary Dilemma: Determining And Overcoming Barriers To A Focus On Prekindergarten Through Grade 3

In 2017, reporters of national data in regard to reading ability among American, fourth grade students indicated low proficiency and achievement gaps. These results were also consistent within the state and district under study. There is a need to increase the focus on prekindergarten and primary grade education taking place prior to the grades in which federally mandated, accountability assessments for student learning take place. The purpose of this study is to determine the potential barriers to a paradigm shift at the state and district levels from a focus on state-assessed grade levels to prekindergarten and primary grade levels. The context of this study is a large public school district, the state in which it is located, and the federal education law under which both entities operate. My study demonstrates the gap in priorities between the state and local education leaders in regard to which grade levels should receive the majority of focus on an elementary school campus. I suggest the addition of quality measures for public prekindergarten and primary grade classrooms in order to improve professional development efforts and increase administrative focus

Closing the Gap or Widening the Divide: The Effects of the G.I. Bill and World War II on the Educational Outcomes of Black Americans

The effects of the G.I. Bill on collegiate attainment may have differed for black and white Americans owing to differential returns to education and differences in opportunities at colleges and universities, with men in the South facing explicitly segregated colleges. The empirical evidence suggests that World War II and the availability of G.I. benefits had a substantial and positive impact on the educational attainment of white men and black men born outside the South. However, for those black veterans likely to be limited to the South in their educational choices, the G.I. Bill had little effect on collegiate outcomes, resulting in the exacerbation of the educational differences between black and white men from southern states.

Race, Income and College in 25 Years: The Continuing Legacy of Segregation and Discrimination

The rate at which racial gaps in pre-collegiate academic achievement can plausibly be expected to erode is a matter of great interest and much uncertainty. In her opinion in Grutter v. Bollinger, Supreme Court Justice O’Connor took a firm stand: “We expect that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary . . .” We evaluate the plausibility of Justice O’Connor’s forecast, by projecting the racial composition and SAT distribution of the elite college applicant pool 25 years from now. We focus on two important margins: First, changes in the black-white relative distribution of income, and second, narrowing of the test score gap between black and white students within family income groups. Other things equal, progress on each margin can be expected to reduce the racial gap in qualifications among students pursuing admission to the most selective colleges. Under plausible assumptions, however, projected economic progress will not yield nearly as much racial diversity as is currently obtained with race-sensitive admissions. Simulations that assume additional increases in black students’ test scores, beyond those deriving from changes in family income, yield more optimistic estimates. In this scenario, race-blind rules approach the black representation among admitted students seen today at moderately selective institutions, but continue to fall short at the most selective schools. Maintaining a critical mass of African American students at the most selective institutions would require policies at the elementary and secondary levels or changes in parenting practices that deliver unprecedented success in narrowing the test score gap in the next quarter century.

Race, Income, and College in 25 Years: The Continuing Legacy of Segregation and Discrimination

The rate at which racial gaps in pre-collegiate academic achievement can plausibly be expected to erode is a matter of great interest and much uncertainty. In her opinion in Grutter v. Bollinger, Supreme Court Justice O'Connor took a firm stand: "We expect that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary . . ." We evaluate the plausibility of Justice O'Connor's forecast, by projecting the racial composition and SAT distribution of the elite college applicant pool 25 years from now. We focus on two important margins: First, changes in the black-white relative distribution of income, and second, narrowing of the test score gap between black and white students within family income groups. Other things equal, progress on each margin can be expected to reduce the racial gap in qualifications among students pursuing admission to the most selective colleges. Under plausible assumptions, however, projected economic progress will not yield nearly as much racial diversity as is currently obtained with race-sensitive admissions. Simulations that assume additional increases in black students' test scores, beyond those deriving from changes in family income, yield more optimistic estimates. In this scenario, race-blind rules approach the black representation among admitted students seen today at moderately selective institutions, but continue to fall short at the most selective schools. Maintaining a critical mass of African American students at the most selective institutions would require policies at the elementary and secondary levels or changes in parenting practices that deliver unprecedented success in narrowing the test score gap in the next quarter century.