Nick Anderson, Author at The Hechinger Report https://hechingerreport.org/author/nick-anderson/ Covering Innovation & Inequality in Education Mon, 25 Mar 2024 22:36:55 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://hechingerreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/cropped-favicon-32x32.jpg Nick Anderson, Author at The Hechinger Report https://hechingerreport.org/author/nick-anderson/ 32 32 138677242 OPINION: There’s a temporary fix to the FAFSA mess — all colleges must extend decision deadlines https://hechingerreport.org/opinion-theres-a-temporary-fix-to-the-fafsa-mess-all-colleges-must-extend-decision-deadlines/ Tue, 26 Mar 2024 05:00:00 +0000 https://hechingerreport.org/?p=99594

For far too many students, the joy of getting into college this year is clouded by the uncertainty of not knowing what it will cost. That’s the result of a crisis in the financial aid system that is the lifeblood of college access for millions of Americans. We can and must give these students more […]

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For far too many students, the joy of getting into college this year is clouded by the uncertainty of not knowing what it will cost. That’s the result of a crisis in the financial aid system that is the lifeblood of college access for millions of Americans.

We can and must give these students more time to gather financial aid offers, weigh their options and make good decisions.

The root of the trouble is a glitch-plagued revision to the Free Application for Federal Student Aid. The rocky rollout of the new FAFSA has caused extraordinary delays this year in transmission of essential financial data from the federal government to colleges and universities.

As a result, many college applicants are receiving offers of admission without knowing how much grant aid they would receive if they enroll, along with the size of loans they might need to cover tuition and other bills.

Related: The Fafsa fiasco could roll back years of progress it must be fixed immediately

Meanwhile, the traditional college decision date looms: May 1. That is barely five weeks away. That’s why the American Council on Education and other higher education groups are urging colleges to extend their deadlines.

For the past half century, May 1 has been the consensus make-up-your-mind moment for students admitted to selective colleges and universities. By that date, they must place a deposit to secure their spot in a class. 

There are good reasons for a deadline. It focuses the minds of those pondering multiple offers who might keep waffling without a fixed date to force a decision. It accelerates the sifting and sorting that occurs as colleges turn to wait lists to meet enrollment targets.

The deadline enables the start of housing assignments and planning for orientation and other summer programs and helps nudge admitted students to give one more look to colleges that struggle to fill seats.

FAFSA Fiasco

This op-ed is part of a package of opinion pieces The Hechinger Report is running that focus on solutions to the new FAFSA’s troubled rollout.

May 1, in short, is a crucial turning point as colleges wrap up one school year and prepare for another.

But that date is not set in stone. Four years ago, hundreds of colleges eased their enrollment-commitment deadlines in response to the coronavirus pandemic and widespread economic and social upheaval. And in general, May 1 is much less relevant, or not relevant at all, to colleges that have rolling or open admissions.

It is heartening that many selective schools did decide to push back deadlines after the Education Department warned in late January that FAFSA information will arrive well behind schedule. Some data has begun to flow, but the effects of the backlog are continuing and profound.

ACE counts well over 175 deadline extenders, and the total is rising. They include DePaul University, one of the nation’s largest Catholic institutions; North Carolina A&T State University, the nation’s largest historically Black institution; the University of California and California State University systems; the universities of Georgia and Florida; and most members of the Big Ten.

They also include liberal arts schools such as Wesleyan University and Agnes Scott, Amherst, Kalamazoo, Lewis & Clark and Williams colleges.

Approaches vary. Some schools are pushing back to May 15, others to June 1. Some are extending deadlines only for in-state students. Some ask for deposits by May 1 but allow refunds until June 1. All are demonstrating admirable solidarity with students in financial need.

It is not too late for others to join them.

Highlighting the complexity of the situation, many colleges face financial and competitive pressures to meet enrollment targets and cite those reasons for maintaining deadlines. Their arguments cannot be lightly dismissed.

Also, more than 100 well-resourced colleges and universities have developed timely financial aid offers using information from the College Board’s CSS Profile questionnaire. That gives those schools an edge over others that rely only on FAFSA.

But applicants often secure admission to both kinds of schools – those that use CSS Profile and those that don’t. These students might face decision-making quandaries if some financial aid offers arrive much later than others.

Some CSS Profile users, including the University of Virginia, William & Mary and Georgia Tech, have extended deadlines. Most have not.

Those holdouts would have a powerful impact and, quite possibly, could help alleviate the crisis with even modest deadline extensions. Even if schools leave deadlines unchanged, it would be extremely helpful for them to acknowledge the FAFSA crisis and give clear public assurances that they will make exceptions for students who need more time.

Many higher education problems defy simple solutions. To raise graduation rates, for example, or to contain costs and lower student debt, requires sustained effort on many fronts and the will to innovate.

But this crisis is different. Colleges should do their best to give families breathing room to make good choices.

At a time of dwindling public confidence in higher education, pushing back a few deadlines to help students in need is the least we can do. And it just might help restore a bit of that lost confidence.

Nick Anderson is vice president for higher education partnerships and improvement at the American Council on Education. Previously, he covered higher education for The Washington Post. 

This op-ed about the FAFSA was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in educationSign up for Hechinger’s newsletter.

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Flagship universities fail to enroll Black and Latino high school graduates from their state https://hechingerreport.org/flagship-universities-fail-to-enroll-black-and-latino-high-school-graduates-from-their-state/ https://hechingerreport.org/flagship-universities-fail-to-enroll-black-and-latino-high-school-graduates-from-their-state/#comments Sun, 18 Apr 2021 11:00:00 +0000 https://hechingerreport.org/?p=78605

Alarms sounded at the University of Maryland when the Class of 2022 arrived at College Park. Seven percent of freshmen in fall 2018 were Black, down from 10 percent the year before and 13 percent in 2014. It marked a nadir for a metric crucial to the flagship university’s commitment to diversity in a state […]

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Alarms sounded at the University of Maryland when the Class of 2022 arrived at College Park. Seven percent of freshmen in fall 2018 were Black, down from 10 percent the year before and 13 percent in 2014.

It marked a nadir for a metric crucial to the flagship university’s commitment to diversity in a state where about a third of public high school graduates each year are Black.

The university’s admissions team resolved to reverse the trend, with urgent outreach to high school seniors who had started applications but not finished them.

“We got on the phone and we called hundreds, hundreds of students,” said Shannon Gundy, executive director of undergraduate admissions. The interventions continued even after admission decisions. Gundy’s team called admitted students to remind them about a campus visit day, to confirm their intent to enroll, and to push them to register for orientation.

It helped. The Black share of freshmen rebounded the next fall to 10 percent.

Yet the episode underscored the enduring disconnect between the racial demographics of many flagship universities, including U-Md., and the population of states they serve.

Fifteen state flagships had at least a 10-point gap between the percentage of Black public high school graduates in their states in 2019 and the Black share of freshmen they enrolled that fall. At the University of Maryland, the gap was 24 points, the sixth largest in the nation. Credit: Amanda Andrade-Rhoades for The Washington Post via Getty Images.

Fifteen state flagships had at least a 10-point gap between the percentageof Black public high school graduates in their states in 2019 and the Black share of freshmen they enrolled that fall, according to federal data analyzed by The Hechinger Report and The Washington Post.

For U-Md., the gap was 24 points — the sixth-largest in the country. Critics say College Park has a dismal record of recruiting and enrolling a student body that resembles Maryland.

“It’s really just the age-old conversation about waiting for a seat at the table,” said Saba Tshibaka, a senior and organizer with the student group Black Terps Matter. “I want U-Md. to really understand the impact of denying these native Black students from Maryland, but I don’t think that they do.”

College Park, like many flagships, also struggles to recruit Latino students. About 7 percent of its freshmen in 2019 were Latino, compared with nearly 14 percent of Maryland’s public high school graduates.

Flagship universities are among the most prestigious public universities in the country, financed in part by tax dollars, and their missions include providing affordable and high-quality education to residents of their states.

Focused on research and teaching, the schools are typically more selective than other public universities. They recruit heavily in their home states but also around the nation and the world. Getting into them can provide a huge academic and career boost. They tend to have higher graduation rates, and their alumni networks provide powerful economic and political connections.

“Many of the flagships and highly selective public colleges are behaving basically like an Ivy League institution when it comes to admissions,” said Tomás Monarrez, a research associate at The Urban Institute who has analyzed racial representation in higher education. “The issue is not that there aren’t enough qualified Black and Latino students. It’s about who they’re choosing to accept.”

Related: Report finds a drop in Black enrollment at most top public colleges and universities

Black students have long been underrepresented at flagships across the country.

In 2019, federal data show, the Black share of public high school graduates was 17 percent in Michigan, 37 percent in South Carolina and 49 percent in Mississippi. But the Black share of freshmen enrollment that fall was 4percent at the University of Michigan, 6 percent at the University of South Carolina and 10 percent at the University of Mississippi.

The 39-point gap in Mississippi was the largest in the country on this measure of flagship demographics.

“[W]e have progress to make,” University of Mississippi spokesman Rod Guajardo acknowledged in a statement. He said the school is intensifying efforts to recruit and retain African-American students from within the state. He cited a financial aid initiative and a program that invites rising high school seniors to a summer conference on the campus in Oxford, Miss.

https://tuitiontracker.org/interactives/flagships-21/

The drive at many flagships to recruit more from out of state also shapes demographics. Those students, who pay higher tuition, often come from white and affluent families. At Mississippi, slightly more than half of incoming freshmen are from out of state. Guajardo noted that the Black share of in-state students is 20 percent. That’s twice as large as the Black share of the total entering class in 2019.

The universities of Michigan and South Carolina also have scholarship and college-readiness initiatives to bolster Black enrollment. Rick Fitzgerald, a spokesman for the University of Michigan, said the percentages of Black and Latino students at the flagship in Ann Arbor had declined after a 2006 state law barred the consideration of race in public university admissions.

Fifteen state flagships had at least a 10-point gap between the percentage of Black public high school graduates in their states in 2019 and the Black share of freshmen they enrolled that fall,

Perennially controversial, policies on affirmative action in admissions vary from state to state. At U-Md., race and ethnicity are two among 26 factors weighed in what officials describe as a “holistic” review of applications.

University leaders say they are committed to advancing equity in admissions.

“I think the state of Maryland’s citizens, who come from all parts of the state and every ZIP code, should have the opportunity to attend the flagship institution,” said the university’s president, Darryll J. Pines, who took office in 2020.

Recruitment and enrollment

College Park has competition for Black high school students in its home state. Some opt for one of the state’s four historically Black universities, Gundy said, or for Howard University in the District of Columbia. Many go to community colleges or to prominent schools out of state.

The 2018 drop in Black enrollment fueled a major push for improvement. Wallace D. Loh, then the university’s president, created a task force to beef up outreach, and the admissions office created new positions focused on diversity. 

The university also set a $100 million fundraising target for an endowment to provide need-based scholarships for underserved students from Maryland and the District of Columbia.

“That was the year that it got our attention and made us think, ‘OK, we need to do something to change this. This can’t be the start of a trend,’” Gundy said.

The campus of the University of Maryland, which is a flagship state university in College Park, Md. The university has struggled with a racial equity gap in enrollment for years. Credit: Astrid Riecken For The Washington Post via Getty Images

U-Md. officials said that last fall the Black share of freshmen was 11 percent. Like some of its peers, the university also enrolls hundreds of Black students every year through transfer programs.

Among major public universities, U-Md. has one of the highest six-year graduation rates for Black students: 81 percent in 2019. That’s just behind the University of Michigan — 84 percent — and ahead of the University of Florida’s 77 percent. Black graduation rates for the University of California at Berkeley and the University of Wisconsin were 76 percent.

Related: Progress in getting underrepresented people into college and skilled jobs may be stalling because of the pandemic

The University of Virginia had the highest Black graduation rate among flagships in 2019, 90 percent. But federal data also show Black students are significantly underrepresented at U-Va. They made up 7 percent of the entering freshman class that fall. 

Graduation data show that College Park has a strong record in educating African Americans, said Freeman A. Hrabowski III, the longtime president of the University of Maryland Baltimore County, a separate school within the University System of Maryland.

U-Md. is “doing a good job in recruiting students who can succeed there,” Hrabowski said, adding that it is “simplistic” to focus only on racial diversity in the entering classes of public universities when there are often significant challenges in school systems that leave many high school graduates unprepared for rigorous college work.

“Flagship universities are not accepting a lot of students — including Black and Latino students —who probably could succeed there. They’re exacerbating racial inequities instead of combating them.”

David Hawkins, executive director for educational content and policy at the National Association for College Admission Counseling

At UMBC, about 18 percent of freshmen in 2019 were Black, up from 12 percent in 2014.

But Hrabowski said: “I’m less interested in the numbers going in, than I am in the numbers we are producing.” To him, it’s all about the degrees.

In 2019, federal data show, U-Md. awarded 880 bachelor’s degrees to Black students. That was the highest total for any flagship in the country, partly a function of its size and high graduation rate. The benchmark suggests that the issue for U-Md. is how to open those opportunities to a wider group of potential students.

Skeptics question whether the flagships focus too much on a narrow band of students who they know will graduate with minimal support.

“Flagship universities are not accepting a lot of students — including Black and Latino students — who probably could succeed if they went there,” said David Hawkins, executive director for educational content and policy at the National Association for College Admission Counseling. “They’re exacerbating racial inequities instead of combating them.”

U-Md. officials said they are trying to help high school students who may not have access to challenging coursework or expert college counseling.

Gundy cited a program begun several years ago called Maryland Ascent, which matches prospective first-generation college students from Baltimore City and Baltimore County with admissions staff who help them navigate applying to college.

She also said recruiters each year visit almost all of the state’s high schools. But several educators in Baltimore and in Prince George’s County — two places with the largest numbers of Black students in Maryland — said the university often bypasses some high schools. U-Md. did not provide a list of the high schools its recruiters visit.

Related: Students sick of ‘lip service’ from universities over racism

Tshibaka, the Black Terps Matter organizer, said the quality of conversations matters as much as the quantity of visits.

She has accompanied admissions officers on high school visits. Sometimes, Tshibaka said, recruiters fail to talk up multicultural organizations, academic programs, clubs and other aspects of campus life that might entice Black students.

“That’s a systemic issue,” she said.

Messaging is a big part of recruiting, said Monica Goldson, chief executive of Prince George’s County schools.  She said it is important for students to know that the flagship, located in their home county, is an option.

“Sometimes I think our students automatically don’t apply because they feel like maybe they don’t have what it takes in order to get in,” Goldson said.

U-Md. draws more than half of its in-state undergraduate students from Montgomery County, the largest school district in the state, and Howard County, in central Maryland. About 11 percent of in-state undergraduates are from Prince George’s.

“It’s really just the age-old conversation about waiting for a seat at the table. I want U-Md. to really understand the impact of denying these native Black students from Maryland, but I don’t think that they do.”

Saba Tshibaka, U-Md. senior and member of the student organization Black Terps Matter

Goldson said she is working with U-Md. to raise those numbers. Last fall, about 30 students started taking a free calculus class at the university in a dual enrollment program. And local education leaders are working to create a pipeline from Prince George’s Community College, which would grant graduates automatic entry into U-Md. or nearby Bowie State University.

“Our ability to be able to foster a seamless connection from the high school experience to the community college experience, and then being able to provide supports to them beyond is critical in helping to improve and increase the number of children of color that have access to four-year universities,” Goldson said.

Issues around campus climate loom

In recent years another question has shadowed the university: Is it perceived as an inviting space for students of color?

In May 2017, a white U-Md. student murdered Army Lt. Richard Collins III, a Black student from Bowie State University who was visiting the College Park campus. The killing drew widespread attention and prompted lawmakers to revise the state’s hate-crime statute.

Alysa Conway, a senior studying public policy, government and politics, entered the university as a freshman the following fall.

“I’m coming into the university with the thought that a Black man was killed on campus,” Conway, who is Black, remembers thinking. “I had to mentally come into that upon entry.”

Then, in June 2018, 19-year-old Black football player Jordan McNair died after suffering from exertional heatstroke during a team workout. Not long after his death, the university acknowledged that its medical staff failed to properly diagnose and treat McNair.

“Now, it’s not just one death,” Conway said, adding that McNair’s death exposed a pattern. “It definitely challenged their narrative that they give, [of] being a campus that is diverse in nature and respectful of all diverse people.”

Gundy acknowledged such incidents could have hurt Black enrollment.

“There had been troubling events on our campus, there were troubling events in the state and in the nation,” she said. “There were lots of African-American students whose families were deciding, you know, maybe going to a predominantly White institution is not the thing for our family right now.”

The university is working to repair its relationships with Black communities. State officials in January approved a $3.5 million settlement between the school and the football player’s family. U-Md. also announced it had partnered with the Jordan McNair Foundation on initiatives around student-athlete health and safety, including education. And the university has plans for a memorial that will honor Collins, Pines said.

After the police killing of George Floyd in 2020, students set forth a list of demands to improve the Black experience at U-Md. — hire more counselors of color, create a hotline for students to report racist incidents, enforce mandatory racial bias training for students and employees.

“Many of the flagships and highly selective public colleges are behaving basically like an Ivy League institution when it comes to admissions.”

Tomás Monarrez, research associate, The Urban Institute

On his first day in office, Pines pledged to place diversity, equity and inclusion among his priorities. He said he’s had several meetings with Black student leaders about their demands, and recently shared plans to name two new residence halls after former students who helped diversify the campus in the 19th and 20th centuries.

For many students, optimism is mixed with skepticism. “There’s a level of distrust between the Black student body and administration,” Conway said. 

Pines this year moved the university to the Common Application, a platform hundreds of colleges use to help students apply. He recently unveiled measures designed to increase access to the university — including the extension of a test-optional admissions practice through spring and fall of 2022 and 2023.

For Pines, the issue is personal. The president, a former dean of engineering, got his start at a flagship university — UC-Berkeley.

“The quality of the education that I got, a kid from an impoverished environment, is the reason I’m sitting in front of you today,” said Pines. “And that, I believe, is what we owe the citizens of the state of Maryland.”

This story about flagship universities was produced jointly by The Washington Post and The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for our higher education newsletter.

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