Texas A&M economist Jonathan Meer kindly pointed me to their recent work on net prices — that is, net tuition and fees after grant aid — for students attending public institutions, including community colleges. It turns out that in 2011–12, “net tuition and fees at public two–year colleges ranged from $0 for students in the lower half of the income distribution to $2,051 for the highest-income group.” That is, net tuition and fees were $0 for students from households earning $60,000 or less while it was $2,051 for students from households earning over $106,000. While I don’t doubt that many households in the $106,000-plus range will welcome not having to pay for their children’s community college education, I’m hard-pressed to see why this initiative will have a “huge” impact, given that we’re presumably most concerned about improving community college access for students from disadvantaged backgrounds.
My comments:
1. Just based on my gut feeling, I think that the vast majority of students attending community college do not have favorable outcomes. (But note this study,pointed to by Tyler Cowen.
Attending a community college increased the probability of earning a bachelors degree within eight years of high school graduation by 23 percentage points for students who would not have attended any college in the absence of reduced tuition.
My guess is that it does not replicate.)
I am not even sure that students in the lower tier of four-year colleges have favorable outcomes. Instead, the true cost, including what the students pay out of pocket plus subsidies plus opportunity cost, exceeds the benefit for many who attend college. In contrast, President Obama seems to endorse the fairy-dust model of college, where you can sprinkle it on anyone to produce affluence.
He said a high school diploma is no longer enough for American workers to compete in the global economy and that a college degree is “the surest ticket to the middle class.”
He describes the U.S. as a place where college is limited to “a privileged few.” I think a more realistic assessment would conclude that the U.S. errs on the side of sending too many young people to college, not too few.
2. At community colleges, most of the favorable outcomes are middle-class students who, if community college were not available, would find some other path to success. (Possibly related: Philip Greenspun writes,
Amanda Pallais of Harvard presented “Leveling Up: Early Results from a Randomized Evaluation of Post-Secondary Aid”, a paper on the Susan Thompson Buff ett Foundation scholarship for lower income Nebraskans who have a high-school GPA of at least 2.5 and maintain a college GPA of at least 2.0. It turns out that people who are going to attend college and graduate will do so even without this grant and people who were marginally attached to academic will become only slightly more attached. The cost of keeping one student in college for an additional semester is $40,000 of foundation funds.
Pointer from Tyler Cowen.
3. For the students that you want community college to help, I think that the case for community college is sort of like the case for last-ditch cancer therapy. Every once in a while it works, and you want to give people hope. But looking at the overall costs and benefits involved, the money is not well spent.
4. Rather than expand community colleges, I suspect the best approach would be to contract them by making them more selective. Try to find the students who are most likely to benefit, and concentrate on those. Robert Lerman, who is far from an anti-opportunity meanie, suggests apprenticeships.
5. If I were President Obama, of course, I would champion universal “free” community college. Worst case, my proposal becomes law. A lot of money gets wasted, but it’s not my money. Best case, the Republicans vote it down and I call them anti-opportunity meanies.
A commenter at PowerLine blog wondered, If indeed something like Obama’s CC proposal were to become law, what the effect would be on standard, four-year type colleges & universities. These institutions apparently pad their enrollment numbers (and revenues) with marginal students who obtain federal, state, private or other grants and loans. But who either drop out after a few years, or meander for years through the education system, in reliance on public support, loans and/or subsidies. We have read for years about the increasing debt load garnered by students who either fail to graduate, or obtain a degree that is virtually useless for obtaining financially-supportive work outside of academia. As well as reading of the increasing time and support given to higher ed students who need remedial coursework (thus the ed cost increases over and above what it might be otherwise), as well as the tuition rates that have been increasing for decades at a far greater rate than inflation.
The commenter speculated that increasing competition for these students would compel the traditional colleges and universities to change (for the better?) their admittance criteria. I suppose it would be too much to hope that competition would bring their costs down, though….
A good test of whether a course of instruction is worthwhile is when an institution (preferably a private company) invests in promising workers and pays for them to take time off and get more education, with the expectation that it will pay off.
Many industrial or technology companies, for example, will identity capable engineers whom they want to send up the ladder, and send them to go get a management or business degree. For example, Boeing sent KU-Engineer Alan Mulally to MIT’s Sloan, and he eventually became CEO, then CEO of Ford, and now he’s on Google’s board.
The real solution is just as you say, “Go work for a profit.” Or even any agency of the government that offers future paid education opportunities.
It seems the trouble with our education system is that we’re really putting the cart before the horse and downgrading the status and dignity of getting a regular job right out of high school, in order to prove oneself, demonstrate and build skills and character, and later making the decision whether more education, and of what types, will make good bets.
Just like with evaluating engineers for potential upper-management material, a lot of the information we need to learn about an individual before we can make rational judgments about educational investments can only be observed by seeing how they perform on the job and not in high school, especially for your marginal student.
But instead, we are telling as many 17 year olds as possible to take that leap without the support of an employing institution with deep experience and aligned incentives, and to make everyone else feel like some kind of loser for whom it is pointless to exert any further efforts.
Yeah, I tend to agree this is more about posturing than policy. The effect is to further insulate students from the actual cost of their education, thus presumably increasing demand. Students and teachers being loyal Democratic Party voting demographics…this is simply a kind of payoff to both groups. “Thank you for your support.”
A member of a FB group I’m in posted this last week. Is something like this not of far greater value to what I call “marginal students” than them spending scarce resources (like time and money) marching through an academic system with little to show at the conclusion other than debt?
“At SLC airport waiting on my flight to Billings, Montana. Tomorrow is the kick-off meeting with the Billings Career Center (Vocational High School) where we map out the Airline Operations curriculum, syllabus and work study program. High School students interested in a career in aviation will get classroom and on-the job experience working for our BIL Airport operations group loading and unloading airplanes, sorting packages, driving/operating airline ramp equipment and earning specialized equipment certifications in a structured environment. These are paid positions so students will earn while they learn. Safety is a priority.”
See here: http://bcc.billings.k12.mt.us/
I think the real answer is because it is so cheap. At the margin, it supports increasing capacity which is the real limitation, not cost.
That is the real reason. But Arnold is right about Obama’s reason.
Nursing. Radiology. Engineers transferring fresh mean pre-reqs to 4 year universities- the real justifications exist. They aren’t political so nobody cares.
The real cost is how much education keeps students and teachers out of the labor market and whether it is a feature or a bug.
We should reduce to the point of elimination all state-induced costs on last-ditch cancer therapy. I wonder how that translates to the analogy to last-ditch education.
Wouldn’t it be nice if politicians told us what it is that they think the target population do not know that if they knew it would improve their lives and then propose the cheapest way to get this knowledge to them.
Never the less I agree with the poster above that if this is enacted it might reduce the number of student years at 4 year colleges and since spending per student year is much lower in CC’s it could actually save money. Saving money is a good goal unlike sending everyone to college.
My kids both went to community college for the first couple of years and then transferred out (one to Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, one to UC Santa Cruz). There were even students from UC Berkeley attending courses at community college since the UCB courses were full. I reckon that is much more cost-effective than spending 4 years (if you are lucky and can get on all the courses you need) at a UC or similar university.
2 issues:
1. As far as I can tell, degrees are somewhere between questionable and stupid financially unless they are in a small category:
(A) If your degree starts with calculus (uses it in other required classes), the degree is likely a positive net-value degree.
(B) If your degree requires that you program computers (for real, not just build a web page), the degree is likely net positive.
(C) If the degree is credentialing (Teacher, Nurse, some Engineer, Law, Medicine, Psych, Architecture), the degree is possibly net positive.
(D) If the degree is from one of the HYPS schools, the degree is likely net positive
If you don’t fall into A,B,C,D, odds are the degree is a financial loss.
2. Community college seems a better deal than 4-year college for the first 2 years for almost everyone. Very school-ish folks may find otherwise, but it’s MUCH cheaper, and not worse instruction than the bottom 75% of 4-year schools. Also, much more focused on academics than most 4-year schools, which focus on the whole experience (and the football team). CCs are used to dealing with marginal students as well, and seem to have very good support for them.
But…overcrowding.