Access and Finance Issues: The University of Alabama’s Education Policy Center

Recently Published Dissertations on Community and Junior Colleges

Objective: Increasing rural community college degree attainment is very important to foster rural areas’ economic and social well-being. Rural community colleges differ greatly from their suburban and urban counterparts in financial aid patterns and student bodies. However, existing literature is vacant with respect to student financial aid and degree attainment in rural community colleges. The objective of this study was to examine the relationship between financial aid and associate degree attainment for rural community college students and compare the financing patterns of the three locales. Method: Using data from Beginning Postsecondary Students Longitudinal Study (BPS:04/09), we performed a series of logistic regression models that include financial aid variables and control variables from psychological, sociological, organizational, and internationalist perspectives. Results: We found rural community college students exceeded other locales in degree attainment. Logistic regression results reveal insignificant roles of Pell Grants and Federal Subsidized Loans, and negative role of Federal Unsubsidized Loans in associate degree attainment for rural community college students. Contributions: The results suggest that public subsidies, such as Pell Grants, were not sufficient to cover rural students’ unmet need for financing degree attainment, and that rural students are more cost-conscious in borrowing and spending than their suburban and urban counterparts.

This article uses the 2005 Basic Classifications of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching as a framing device through which to examine patterns of student financial aid at America's rural community colleges, which represent 64% of all U.S. community colleges. Rural community colleges serve more first-time, full-time students than suburban and urban community colleges, and their 3.2 million students have different patterns of student financial aid. Rural small and medium colleges have the most aided students, receive more Pell Grants and institutional aid, and have more students incurring loan indebtedness than do other types of community colleges. The article offers recommendations for future research, as well as for policy development and practice.

Single Nucleus Transcriptomics: Apical Resection in Newborn Pigs Extends the Time Window of Cardiomyocyte Proliferation and Myocardial Regeneration.

The article presents the implementation and findings of a successful collaborative effort with the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education (OSRHE), Tulsa Community College (TCC), and two local public school districts, Tulsa Public Schools (TPS) and Union Public Schools (UPS). Known as EXCELerate, it's a five-semester dual enrollment pilot program that received state policy exceptions for juniors and seniors to enroll in dual enrollment courses and supportive resources from the participating agencies. Whereas the traditional dual enrollment student is White and college-going, the program's intent was to increase the number of high school students who may be first-generation, lower-socioeconomic, ethnic or non-ethnic. The article identifies three major barriers to successful dual enrollment and completion: state policy, financial issues, and transportation. It also examines how these barriers were eliminated through a collaborative effort. The results demonstrate that over 87% of the juniors and seniors persisted over the semesters, and enrollment tripled among African American and Latino students. The article is constructed to benefit further research and practical application for urban and rural community colleges.

The successful implementation by a large public university health service of a satellite clinic involves a number of processes and funding issues. The authors discuss the development of such a program at a small community college in Appalachia. The first 4 years' experience in operating the satellite clinic created a number of valuable management lessons that they believe could assist others with similar goals for extending their services.

Who should take college-level courses? impact findings from an evaluation of a multiple measures assessment strategy

This study compares the impact of timing of registration on the student learning outcomes of students taking courses at three rural community colleges in the southeastern U.S. during the school years 2001–2003. Findings from this study indicate that early registration has a positive influence on students' grades and course completion rates. Also contributing to differences in student outcomes were student race, Pell Grant status, gender, program of study, and age.

A certain “mythology” appears to exists within higher education that residence halls do not exist at community colleges. The reality is that residence halls do exist at community colleges, and they play an integral role in the fabric of the institutions that have them. This article identifies the number of rural-serving community colleges, and it reports selected results of the first national study on residence halls at community colleges in the United States. Focusing on rural-serving public community colleges, the motivation for community college involvement in operating on-campus housing is examined. Recommendations for future areas of needed research are discussed.

After years of emphasizing college access in the US, lawmakers have become more concerned with college completion, this is because there has been a decline in the completion rate. Although there are other reasons, college affordability is one of the reasons why some students may start college but not complete it. Student loans are often justified on the grounds that higher education has economic benefits such as, it leads to higher salaries and improved employment prospects. Research has shown that grant aid increases the probability of enrollment in postsecondary education. Thus, grant aid is important to students’ postsecondary opportunities and success. This study uses Pearson correlation, t-test and linear regression to evaluate the data and establish the relationship between Pell grants and Federal Student Loans. It seeks to find if a statistically significant relationship exists between Pell Grant and Student Loan. Keywords: Student Loan, Pell Grant, Four-Year Public Institutions, Louisiana, Financial Aid, Federal Student Loan DOI: 10.7176/JEP/11-9-04 Publication date: March 31 st 2020

This article reviews recent literature on student financial aid as a retention tool at community colleges. Enrollment and tuition data from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), and federal direct grant student aid data from the IPEDS Student Financial Aid Survey are used to analyze changes from 2000–01 to 2005–06. The new 2005 Carnegie Basic Classification of Associate's Colleges is used to reveal differences among rural, suburban, and urban community college types, and the Grapevine definition is used to reveal differences among states with local funding and those without significant local funding. A key finding is that the 40% increase in tuition and the 2.2 million new students enrolled in the past five years overwhelmed the very modest increases in federal direct grant student aid (Pell and Supplemental Education Opportunity Grants) over the same period, lessening the ability of student aid to positively impact retention at America's community colleges.

The Pell Grant program is the largest means-tested financial assistance available to postsecondary students across the United States, yet researchers have only limited evidence on the causal effects of these grants. This paper examines the effect of Pell grants on student persistence after the first year. The paper uses unique, student-level data from all public colleges in Ohio. The data include detailed financial data which allow me to identify small discontinuities in the Pell grant formula. I exploit these discontinuities to identify the causal effects of the voucher. The results based on discontinuity approaches suggest that Pell grants reduce college drop-out behavior. The results in this paper support other evidence that find a relationship between need-based aid and college completion (e.g. Dynarski 2002, Turner and Bound 2002).

Reviewed by: Paying the Price: College Costs, Financial Aid, and the Betrayal of the American Dream by Sara Goldrick-Rab Abdul B. Abad Sara Goldrick-Rab. Paying the Price: College Costs, Financial Aid, and the Betrayal of the American Dream. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2016. 368 pp. Cloth: $27.50. ISBN: 9780226404349 In Paying the Price: College Costs, Financial Aid, and the Betrayal of the American Dream, author Sara Goldrick-Rab explores the college affordability crisis and the new economics of higher education. More specifically, Goldrick-Rab rejects the assumption that if a young person works hard enough, they will be able to get a college degree and become upwardly mobile (“move up the socioeconomic ladder”). Popular explanations of why students do not finish college assume it is to due personal failure such as a lack of resilience, time management, and intelligence. Goldrick-Rab attempts to show that the reason that low-income students do not complete college is because college is too expensive even with various forms of financial aid. The author utilizes a mixed-methods longitudinal study of 3,000 students over six years and includes data collection activities such as lengthy surveys with payments for participation, legal agreements to collect administrative data from public colleges and universities, and fifty in-depth in-person interviews. The book closely follows the experience of six students. Goldrick-Rab begins her argument in Chapter 1 by historically framing college affordability (specifically how states spend less on public higher education and how the price of college rose), the Pell Grant, and federal accountability. The author notes that colleges that charge $60,000 or $8,000 a year can both receive Pell Grants (p. 16). The original intention of the Pell Grant was for students to not have to take out loans, yet the maximum Pell Grant amount for 2016 is $5,815, which is a small fraction of a $60,000 college cost. In Chapter 2, Goldrick-Rab discusses contributing factors to the cost and price of a college education.. Moreover, what is not included in the federal calculation is basic expenses incurred by family and money they miss in the short term (p. 40). Tuition and fees are not the biggest drivers of college costs, but living costs, transportation, books and supplies, and personal expenses are important. Even if tuition costs are frozen, says Goldrick-Rab, these living costs are not. Hence, freezing tuition and fees costs do not succeed in solving the issue. A strength of Goldrick-Rab’s work is that she uses historical data, quantitative data from the unprecedented study, and the stories of six students to make her points. In other words, it is tough to imagine how compelling this argument might be for public audiences [End Page E-7] without the combination of mixed-methods. Quantitative data can be convincing, but they do not give the same in-depth human perspective one gets from interviews. Chapter 3 investigates how the concern of over borrowing from financial aid sources rests on the hypothesis that actual costs reported are less than the stated cost of attendance, but this is inaccurate because of rising living costs. What the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) does best is sort between the wealthy and middle class instead of between the lower-middle class and working class (p. 46). On the student end, it can be difficult to understand exactly where the money comes from. Since money moves through financial aid offices to a complicated funding package, Pell recipients often refer to grants as “free.” Goldrick-Rab points out that “for taxpayers’ grants are not free” (p. 60). In Chapter 3, Chapter 4, and Chapter 5, I am reminded of Matthew Desmond’s (2016) Evicted, which explores the complex lives of Milwaukee’s poor and how seemingly insignificant actions could result in a cycle of poverty and eviction. Goldrick-Rab’s book gives us a glimpse into the lives of low-income students to support the claim that “[t]he study of financial aid in isolation, therefore, cannot tell us how money and scarcity shape the college experience. Only research on money as it is actually possessed and used...

Since the initiation of performance funding in Tennessee in the late 1970s, approximately 30 states have, at some point, attempted a funding model that includes performance on a set of indicators. The purpose of the present study was to capture the current status of performance funding in public statewide community college systems and to assess which performance indicators were collected at the state level. Data were obtained through the 2012 Survey of Finance and Access Issues conducted by the Education Policy Center at the University of Alabama. The survey was administered to the National Council of State Directors of Community Colleges, and 50 responses were obtained from 49 states. Not every survey respondent answered each survey item. Findings showed that 19 states used performance funding for community colleges, with six of those states allocating at least 10% of state funds based on performance. An analysis of indicators captured at the state level (not exclusively for performance funding) showed a decline of emphasis on process indicators and greater emphasis on outputs. The performance-based distribution of base funding and the inclusion of output measures that capture intermediate indicators of success are consistent with the principles of Performance Funding 2.0, a new form of performance funding recently discussed in the literature. Future research should include tracking the current findings over time and expanding the existing literature on whether performance funding influences outcomes.

It has been a busy time for the Association of Education Finance and Policy (AEFP). Over the past few years the association has acquired a new name, a new journal, and many new members. The 2012 annual conference, convened in Boston last March, proved to be the largest conference in the association’s thirty-seven-year history, with 556 members in attendance. The theme, selected by incoming president Deborah Cunningham, was “Education Finance, Policy, and Practice: The Role of Evidence in a Dynamic World,” which underscores the contemporary challenge to the association: how to apply an increasing abundance of information and sophisticated analytical tools to produce the evidence needed to guide decision making by educational policy makers and practitioners. The Boston meeting was notable not only for the number in attendance. The unique qualities and strengths of the association were in clear display: papers of unusual methodological rigor; an interdisciplinary mix of academics from the social sciences, public policy schools, and colleges of education; educational finance professionals, policy analysts, and practitioners, a mix rarely found in the same place; and sessions addressing today’s hot topics as well as issues that have endured over the years. Having said this, all indications are that AEFP is what it has always been: a small, diverse group of people tackling some really big problems. Of particular note was a trend that has been growing for years but has clearly come into full flower: the large