As the US
student debtors enter month 20 of awaiting word on when or if
President Joe Biden will keep his promise to cancel some of their debt, many questions hang
in the air.
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How much should
the federal government dismiss? Should higher-income people qualify? If
everyone gets at least some relief, will future debtors expect it, too?
But here is a
question we are not asking often enough: What should we do about the schools
that left borrowers in a challenging situation to begin with? Without any
changes to the higher
education system and its institutions, debt will continue
spiraling into the trillions of dollars.
One thing to do is
for applicants and their families to shop differently. A good place to start is
studying available government data for any school you are considering to see
whether people who attended earn more than they would have if they had gone straight
into the workforce after high school.
At many schools,
the answer is no. Three years ago, in an examination that should have received
a lot more attention, the center-left think tank Third Way put all available
data for all higher education institutions together. It found that at 52
percent of the schools, more than half of the enrollees were not earning more
than the typical high school graduate six years after they began their studies.
After 10 years, the figure was still 29 percent.
Anyone can download
the school-by-school spreadsheet that
Michael Itzkowitz, the author of the
Third Way study, posted. I picked 28 four-year institutions to contact,
focusing on those whose most recent data showed that 60 percent or fewer people
were out-earning a typical high school graduate six years after enrolling.
Just under half of
them did not respond to requests for comment. But officials at several other
schools were willing to engage — and they questioned how much of a story any
one metric can tell.
Before we hear
from them, a bit more about the data in question. It comes from the College
Scorecard, a department of education website that made its debut in 2015.
Itzkowitz was the director of the Scorecard in 2015 and 2016. It includes
information like a school’s net price, its graduation rate and the debt
students incur.
The department
describes the income data as “the share of individuals who received federal
student aid, were working, and were not enrolled in school that earned more
than the typical high school graduate six years after entering college”.
That income figure
for the typical high school graduate was $28,000 when Itzkowitz aggregated the
federal data. And in case it is not clear, the department includes both people
who completed their studies at the school where they began and those who left
before finishing.
To Itzkowitz, who
is a senior fellow at Third Way and also works as an independent consultant,
the figure is a simple, basic measure of whether people got what they came for.
After all, most students pursue higher education to increase their earning
power.
College
administrators do not dispute this, for the most part. But some students are
shopping for the quality of the lived experience as an undergraduate,
especially at specialized schools. And they may be willing to borrow to do it,
even with the possible income outcomes in mind.
At the New England
Conservatory of Music in Boston, 57 percent of the people were earning more
than a high school graduate six years after enrolling, according to the data
that the Third Way study used. (More recent data for this particular
institution is not available on the College Scorecard.)
Zach Schwartz,
associate director of enrollment there, said that he and his colleagues spend a
lot of time with admitted students and their families talking about money and
debt. Sometimes, it is clear that it is a bad idea, financially, for a student
to matriculate.
He also asks all
applicants to consider an average boring Tuesday there and compare it to one at
a more standard undergraduate institution. At a conservatory, that day might
include rehearsals with an orchestra and a chamber group, plus solo practice
and instruction in music history and theory.
At
Grambling State University in Grambling, Louisiana, and other historically Black colleges and
universities, there are additional concerns. These institutions help students
who may not have been well served by their previous schools, may face
discrimination when hunting for a job and may face it again when asking for a
raise.
Just 43 percent of
the students who start at Grambling are outearning high school graduates six
years later.
“Our interest is
not in getting the elite financially but getting the students who would not
have had opportunities at other institutions,” said Gavin R. Hamms, the
associate vice president of enrollment management. “It is deeper than the
data.”
Warren Wilson
College in Swannanoa, North Carolina, faces a unique challenge. It is a
so-called work college, which means students have an on-campus labor assignment.
There are community engagement requirements, too, on top of regular classwork
and whatever additional job students might need to earn extra income.
The school’s
graduation rate is just 53 percent, according to the College Scorecard. If
those among the 47 percent enter the labor market without a degree, they’re at
a disadvantage. Indeed, just 37 percent of the students who start there are
outearning high school graduates six years later.
Warren Wilson’s
provost, Jay Roberts, did not shy away from the figure in an interview. Warren
Wilson has obstacles to completion — and thus to higher earnings — that most
other schools do not have. While it has reduced the campus work requirements in
the past few years, the school still won’t be right for every teenager who
shows up thinking that it is.
Roberts does ask
that people consider other metrics, too, though. The school, he said, does
better than peers on survey questions of those who do graduate about whether
the school prepared them for social and civic engagement and whether they find
their work meaningful.
The question of
who is outearning high school graduates should not be the only one college
shoppers consider. But even if it isn’t the last word on the matter, it is a
perfectly fine first one.
Data is a
conversation starter, and it should lead pretty quickly to overarching
questions that teenagers and any family members who are helping them should
ask. What is the definition of success here? You may have the ability to pay or
to borrow for higher education, but what should your willingness be, given the
story that a school’s data tells? And have you given that institution an
opportunity to put all the data in context before dismissing it out of hand?
Itzkowitz is
adamant that certain schools do have some explaining to do.
“There are some
institutions that are in the business of enrolling a high proportion of
low-income students,” he said, “and ultimately leave them worse off than if
they had not attended college in the first place.”
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