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100 Top Colleges Vow To Enroll More Low-Income Students (npr.org)
Research shows that just 3 percent of high-achieving, low-income students attend America's most selective colleges. And, it's not that these students just aren't there -- every year tens of thousands of top students who don't come from wealthy families never even apply to elite colleges. Universities are taking note -- and banding together under something called the American Talent Initiative -- a network backed by Bloomberg Philanthropies, the Aspen Institute and the research firm Ithaka S+R. To join the club, schools have to graduate 70 percent of their students in six years -- a qualification that leaves just under 300 schools in the U.S. eligible. Nearly a third of those schools -- exactly 100 -- have signed on. Their goal? Enroll 50,000 additional low- and moderate-income students by 2025. From a report: Each school has its own goals, too -- many want to increase the number of Pell Grant students on campus, others aim to improve graduation rates -- but they're all on board to share strategies, learn from each other's missteps and provide data to monitor their progress.
Maybe they are too smart to want to attend "elite" colleges?
What percentage of high-achieving, middle income students attend the most selective school? Is it more or less that 3%?
I want to see the list of which of the ~290 colleges with 70+% 6-year graduation rates have opted *not* to participate.
70% graduation rate in 6 years can be achieved in two ways:
1. Only admit qualified students.
2. Pass everyone.
How about 70% graduation rate plus 70% get jobs, in field? Yes I know, they'd just corrupt the definition of 'in field'.
I'd say that their current method has produced a list of 'elite schools' plus 'diploma mills'.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Straddling low income people with loans that they'll never be able to pay off for overpriced education? Great idea... /s
There's a reason Colleges are called billion dollar hedge funds. The saying is Harvard is a hedge fund with a college attached.
College tuition keeps going up, the colleges know they will get paid. Kids cant file for bankruptcy if they cant pay their loans because they can't find work.
Go to a local community college, its the same price of buying a car for 4 years, and people can generally make car payments. In state online 5k, in state 10k, out of state 20k, Private 30k, Harvard 45k (starting). While everyone wants a Tesla, some can only afford a Prius. Costs matter.
The whole thing is a racket, overpriced, scam.
and they drop out after never showing up, you get to keep the money!
There have been legislative proposals to reduce or ban student loans to students at schools with excessive dropout rates.
There have also been proposals to reduce or ban student loans at schools with excessive student loan default rates.
Another reform proposal is to reduce the taxpayer funded Sallie Mae repayment guarantee from 100% to 80-90% to ensure that lenders have some skin in the game.
Just about any one can get an student loan.
They are becoming more like tech schools with there marketing with an degree you can make x an year and XX% Our Grads are working in their field. Starbucks seems to fit in to a lot Fields in their minds. But unlike the tech schools they are not as hands on, come with forced high cost meal planes and forced high cost dorms
While I think that increasing opportunity for undeserved communities is laudable, I do think that you should be honest about the issues in poor communities. From TFA:
I'm 100 percent convinced that talent is distributed uniformly across society. There's no data to suggest that if you happen to be born into a less well-to-do family you are somehow less intelligent.
This is just not true. SAT scores are or were roughly an IQ test. They show a clear correlation to income, as outlined in this article:
https://www.washingtonpost.com...
There may be any number of causes of this, but denying the facts will likely lead to under prepared students starting and failing at college.
Interestingly, high SAT scores have not been shown to be correlated to student achievement in college. In face, many colleges are moving to test-optional admission strategies after a 2014 study involving 123,000 students at 33 colleges showed virtually no statistical difference between GPA and graduation rates between students that did and did not submit standardized test scores.
Unfortunately a different study has also concluded that it is unlikely that adoption of test-optional admission policies would will boost enrollment of underrepresented minority and low-income students. The study examined 180 selective liberal arts colleges, 32 of which had adopted test-optional policies between 1992 and 2010. It compared colleges with test-optional policies against colleges that required test scores. The 32 test optional schools did not see any statistical increase in enrollment of low-income or black, latino, or native american students compared with the larger group of 180 schools. This result was unexpected, but the report authors hypothesized that this might be due to the fact that by de-emphasizing standarized tests, more weight was put on extra-curriculars and AP/IB coursework which continue to have unequal opportunities/access across income and minority status.
Sadly, from my history of admissions work with my alma mater, the two highest correlating factors for academic success were: 1. parental income; and 2. one-or-more parents graduating from college. You might say #1 is probably highly correlated with #2 so a large driver of college success is a student fulfilling the expectations of their college educated parents, which sort of perpetuates the have vs have-not split.
Next on the list that showed correlation is adjusted (i.e., no-extra points for AP/IB classes) High-school GPA in core-curricula classes (A's in underwater basket weaving don't count). The main complication with adjusted GPA comparison between applicants is normalizing them across schools (different grade inflation factors in different schools). In a highly selective school, it doesn't matter too much (most of your applicants will have mostly A's), but it's much more difficult to normalize the middle of the grading scales between disparate high schools to compare applicants.
The SAT II (subject test) showed a reasonably correlation to college GPA, but not graduation rates.
The general SAT score correlations to college success ranked below sustained (e.g., over 2 years) extracurricular activities, and coming from a well-known "feeder" school (a HS where lots of people apply to a specific college), but both showed weak-to-no correlation that varied from year-to-year like the generic SAT. The "feeder" effect seemed to indicate that groups of students that have a history of academic success tend to do better than isolated individuals (which indicated the advantage of support groups in college leading to higher college success).
Your mileage may vary, though...
This is going to be mostly a waste of time and money for these colleges, hoping to satisfy SJW's. There are already plenty of governmental or private programs for lower income students who actually make good grades and show promise. This just drives more marginal students who are not going to do well and waste everyone's time and effort into the school to achieve quotas.
With grade inflation, I find using GPA as a metric of "success" sadly suspect. What correlation is there between SAT scores* and success in life after graduation?
*Under the old model. Not to be confused with that thing they call an SAT today.
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
With grade inflation, I find using GPA as a metric of "success" sadly suspect. What correlation is there between SAT scores* and success in life after graduation?
*Under the old model. Not to be confused with that thing they call an SAT today.
As I mentioned, before adjusted GPA is a good measure of *relative* performance. People with higher GPAs from a specific high school have better college success than those with lower GPAs, although normalizing the grade inflation between different schools is hard.
There are some studies that indicate higher SAT scores can lead to higher incomes, but this was a secondary correlation that is only significant when you corrected for different bachelor degrees (which made the most main difference in future income). The main effect in all of these studies is actually graduating from college (vs not graduating from college after 6 years).
For me, most of what that says is if you can put up with all the bullshit about studying for SATs and doing busywork assigned by professors, it correlates to how well you can get along in a corporate world so you earn a better income. Since the correlation between *wealth* and IQ is apparently much lower.
https://thesocietypages.org/so...
UCLA did this. They wanted to be more "inclusive" so they got a lot more blacks and hispanics to enroll. Guess what? The had way more diversity enrollment, but embarrassingly the same graduation rate for those minorities. What is the takeaway? You can pull the kids from the ghetto and put them in college, but you can't make them learn. They have never learned how to learn so they suffer against classmates who know how to study and grasp concepts. The solutions that universities have come up with are to create bullshit curriculums for minorities so they can graduate in /something/. This includes bullshit courses in women's studies, the trans track and black history. There is no academic rigor in these tracks and they often can be completed in a week with packet work. UNC was busted for these easy tracks by the NCAA because they were vehicles for getting dumb black athletes through with grades high enough to play athletics. The only way UNC escaped disqualification is that the courses /could/ be taken by anybody, but no serious student would spend their money on that shit.
By driving up poor people admissions (read: ethnic), the universities get to pat themselves on the back for job well done. But they won't talk about attrition of those students or their grades or level of rigor in their tracks (if they make it through). This is just a big marketing scheme to say "look, we care more".
The fact that there's no statistical difference between GPA and graduation rates between students that did and did not submit standardized test scores does not mean that there's no correlation between those test scores and achievement. In fact, there is such a correlation. See:
https://www.vox.com/cards/sat/... [vox.com]
http://files.eric.ed.gov/fullt... [ed.gov]
Just a quick point, the study these articles are pointing to reference a College Board study indicating a correlation between SAT and college achievement. College Board is the publisher of the SAT test. This is like referring to a study funded by the pasta industry that concludes pasta is good for you...
Other points in those articles highlight the same point I made before: HS GPA is a better indicator than SAT and SAT hasn't been shown by many admissions studies to have a significant statistically independent prediction of college success measurements despite what the publisher's of the SAT might want people to believe. This is why many college admissions departments are slow-walking away from the SAT. It appears to add very little value into their admissions criteria, but the alternatives aren't well vetted yet...
Here's some interesting reading for those that don't know the history the SAT and its relationship with the UC system...
https://senate.universityofcal...
Similar reports about the effectiveness of the SAT have been going on since the 80's when I was in college and working with admissions. The only thing keeping the SAT alive is pretty much the UC system requirement (UC being a big "customer" of the SAT was the main driver to convince the SAT to change to be more like the ACT). I predict by the time my kids will be college aged, the UC system will finally drop the SAT and it will be a distant memory.