The Research Catalogue
New Findings and Insights on Institutional Practices and Academic Success

Reframing the Student Loan Costing Debate: The Benefits of Competition, Educational Policy Institute, July 2005 http://educationalpolicy.org/pdf/loandebate.pdf

The authors of this report “urge legislators and educational policy makers to come together to preserve the competitive structure that now exists, and to work diligently to make the competition as fair and equitable as possible so that the federal taxpayers can continue to reap the benefits of this unusual inter-program competition.” 

“Crafting a Class: The Trade Off Between Merit Scholarships and Enrolling Lower Income Students”  Ronald G. Ehrenberg, Liang Zhang, and Jared Levin, June 2005 http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/cheri/wp/cheri_wp71.pdf

“Our study has concluded that, other factors held constant, an increase in the share of institutionally funded National Merit Scholarship (NMS) students in a college or university’s first-year class is associated with a reduction in the share of Pell Grant recipients among the undergraduate student body at the institution.

While our research has focused only on NMS awards, it highlights the tradeoff that may exist more broadly between using institutional grant aid to craft a more selective student boy than would otherwise occur and using institutional grant aid to attract more students from families from the lower tail of the family income distribution.  If selective institutions, especially public ones, are committed to serving students from all socioeconomic backgrounds, these institutions must track the share of their students that receive Pell grants and focus on socioeconomic diversity as well as on student selectivity as goals. Absent concerted efforts by these institutions to increase representation of students from lower and lower middle income families in their student ranks, current inequalities in the distribution of students attending these institutions by family income class are likely to persist over time.”

Financial aid and its myriad forms are the order of the day.  If need-based support is being squeezed out of higher education, so increasingly will the student population of color.  The Aug. 11, 2005 weekly bulletin of The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education reports:  “Nationwide, an increasing share of all financial aid for college students is allocated on the basis of merit rather than need.  But the state of Illinois has eliminated funding for its Merit Recognition Scholarships and redirected the financial aid to programs for college students in need.  The $1,000 merit scholarships would have gone to students who finished in the top 5 percent of their high school classes and were enrolling at a college or university in Illinois. . . .”

The New Latino South: The Context and Consequences of Rapid Population Growth, Pew Hispanic Center, July 26, 2005 http://pewhispanic.org/files/reports/50.pdf

This report from the Pew Hispanic Center documents the growing Hispanic population in the Southeast.  The study projects that Hispanics will make up 10% of the population by 2007 with far reaching effects on education policy: “Given its distinctive character, Hispanic population growth in these parts of the South will also have distinctive impacts on public policy, and those impacts have only just begun to be felt.”

How Latinos Pay for College:  Patterns of Financial Aid in 2003-04, Excelencia in Education and the Institute for Higher Education Policy, Aug. 10, 2005

Although the percentage of Latino students receiving financial aid for college is at an all-time high, Latinos receive the lowest average federal aid awards of any racial or ethnic group.  Latino undergraduates are more likely than students from any other racial or ethnic group to apply for financial aid; 63 percent receive some form of it. The upshot is that Latino students are more likely to attend college part-time and to enroll in two-year institutions.  http://www.edexcelencia.org/lsa/

First Generation Students in Postsecondary Education: A Look at their College Transcripts, National Center for Education Statistics, Aug. 9, 2005  http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2005171

Using data from the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 (NELS:88), this report examines the majors and coursetaking patterns of first-generation students enrolled in postsecondary education between 1992 and 2000, comparing their postsecondary experiences and outcomes with those of students whose parents attended or completed college. First-generation students were at a disadvantage in terms of their access to, persistence through, and completion of postsecondary education. First-generation status was significantly and negatively associated with lower bachelor’s degree completion rates even after controlling for a wide range of interrelated factors, including students’ demographic backgrounds, academic preparation, enrollment characteristics, postsecondary coursetaking, and academic performance.

This study suggests that weaker academic preparation leads to fewer enrollees declaring science majors.  The policy message is that support is a vital ingredient from entry through degree-taking.  How to provide it is an institutional responsibility, but one of federal concern S&E are considered areas of national need.  Increased Pell Grant amounts and loan-forgiveness are obvious, but not necessarily sufficient remedies.

Taken together, these reports reinforce the reality that demographic trends known for a generation are now manifesting themselves, heightening pressure on families, educational institutions, and their sponsors.  No federal policy is in sight, just disconnected and under-funded programs, which impose a particularly heavy burden on science and engineering, especially on sagging enrollments by US citizens.

“Tapping America’s Potential: The Education for Innovation Initiative”, Business Roundtable, July 2005 http://www.businessroundtable.org/pdf/20050727002TAPStatement.pdf

This report from 15 business organizations headed by the Business Roundtable purports “to double the number of science, technology, engineering and mathematics graduates by 2015” and “focuses on five main areas:

• Building public support to make improvements in these fields a national priority by launching an awareness campaign;
• Motivating students and adults to study and enter careers in these disciplines, with a special effort geared to those in underrepresented groups, through incentives such as scholarship and internship opportunities, and the expansion of undergraduate retention programs;
• Upgrading elementary and secondary teaching in math and science to foster higher student achievement;
• Reforming visa and immigration policies to enable the U.S. to attract and retain top science, technology, engineering and math students from around the world to study and stay to work in the U.S.; and
• Boosting and sustaining funding for basic research, especially in the physical sciences and engineering.”

Sounds reasonable -- and familiar. But who pays?  Who hires?  Evidence of demand is always elusive. Critics will see a projection and no "shortage."