Addressing nonfinancial barriers to college access and success: Evidence and policy implications

Dynarski, Susan; Nurshatayeva, Aizat; Page, Lindsay C.; Scott-Clayton, Judith

doi:10.1016/bs.hesedu.2022.11.007

Cited by 14 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 236 publications

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“…Those choosing to attend part time and discontinuously are less likely to complete college (Adelman, 1999;Cabrera et al, 2012). Moreover, controlling for student characteristics, students who take courses online have higher dropout rates and tend to learn less than comparable students receiving face-to-face instruction (Bettinger et al, 2017;Dynarski, Nurshatayeva, et al, 2022;Figlio et al, 2013;Hart et al, 2018;Xu & Jaggars, 2013). And as before, we find that the less beneficial modes of attendance are not randomly distributed.…”

Section: Types Of Choices and Their Benefits And Costssupporting

confidence: 63%

“…Nontraditional modes of attendance can allow students to tailor their higher education experience to the contours of their lives, including needing to work and take an active part in family life as a breadwinner or caretaker. However, students should be made aware that, all other things being equal, students choosing to attend part time and discontinuously, take courses online, and live at home are less likely to persist and graduate (Adelman, 1999;Bettinger et al, 2017;Cabrera et al, 2012;Dynarski, Nurshatayeva, et al, 2022;Figlio et al, 2013;Hart et al, 2018;Pascarella & Terenzini, 2005;Xu & Jaggars, 2013). However, these negative impacts of nontraditional attendance patterns are not widely known, particularly by nondominant students and their parents.…”

Section: Crucial Choices and Key Informationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…To more equally provide highquality information in middle and high school, it is important to increase the number of school counselors (particularly in schools serving nondominant students), enlist other school personnel to supplement their efforts, expand supplementary outreach programs (such as the federal TRIO programs and their state and private counterparts), and incentivize colleges to reach out more to high school students (Dynarski, Nurshatayeva, et al, 2022;Haskins & Rouse, 2013;Kirst & Venezia, 2004;Lavecchia et al, 2014;Perna et al, 2008;Venezia & Jaeger, 2013). But as we will explore below, it is also important to better train counselors and to restructure the counseling process so that it starts earlier; is more proactive; works collaboratively with parents, siblings, and peers; emphasizes personal contact rather than use of social media; explicitly builds trust and validation; builds on all students' cultural wealth and acknowledges students' differing interpretive frames; and acknowledges our human tendency to be only boundedly rational.…”

Section: Improving College Counseling In Middle and High Schoolmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Choice, Information Inequity, and the Production, Legitimation, and Reduction of Educational Inequality

Dougherty

2024

Teachers College Record: The Voice of Scholarship in Education

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Background: Choice is a key part of the culture of the United States. Americans believe deeply in the personal and social usefulness of being able to make many choices. Hence, all sorts of efforts have been made to increase students’ options, whether by creating many different kinds of schools and colleges, offering a great array of majors and degree programs, or allowing multiple modes of attending higher education. However, this proliferation of choices reproduces social inequality in two crucial ways. First, the provision of many options produces social inequality: people often make choices that do not serve their interests as well as they might wish, particularly if they are faced with many options and do not have adequate information. Second, the provision of many choices legitimates social inequality: the more one thinks in terms of choices in the context of a highly individualistic culture such as that of the United States, the easier it is for dominant groups to blame nondominants as creating their own troubles through feckless choices. Purpose: This paper focuses on one particularly important realm of choice—higher education—because it has come to play a central role in the transmission and legitimation of social inequality. Four higher education choices are of particular interest: whether to enter higher education, which college to attend, what major to choose, and what modality to attend college (for example, part time versus full time or in person versus online). Analyzing this choice-making process, the paper focuses on the impact of inequitable access to high-quality information. Beyond analyzing how choice proliferation and information inequity join to produce and legitimate educational inequality, the paper lays out detailed recommendations for what can be done to reduce this inegalitarian impact. Research Design: The paper draws on a wide variety of social science literatures including sociology of education, critical race theory, behavioral economics, and cognitive and social psychology. More particularly, the paper synthesizes sociology of education research inspired by Pierre Bourdieu and work drawing on critical race theory. Although there are major tensions between these two bodies of work, they can be fruitfully combined to both illuminate and overcome the ways information inequity produces and legitimates educational inequality. Recommendations: To reduce the role of information inequity in producing and legitimating educational inequality, the paper recommends four strands of change. One strand involves providing high-quality information more equitably through restructured and much more pervasive school counseling and other forms of information provision during middle school, high school, and higher education. A crucial component of this more equitable information provision is drawing on the community cultural wealth of nondominant communities. Second, it is important to design an “architecture of choice” that simplifies choice making and nudges students toward better choices by such means as simplifying the financial aid process, improving credit articulation for community college transfer students, and building guided pathways through college. A third strand involves reducing the harms of suboptimal choices by creating the means to monitor student progress and intervene when students might or actually do go off course. Finally, because suboptimal choices will still occur, it is important to enlighten student choosers and their observers about how choice making under conditions of information inequity produces and legitimates social inequality and to empower them to combat that stratified and stratifying process.

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Section: Types Of Choices and Their Benefits And Costssupporting

confidence: 63%

Section: Crucial Choices and Key Informationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Improving College Counseling In Middle and High Schoolmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Choice, Information Inequity, and the Production, Legitimation, and Reduction of Educational Inequality

Dougherty

2024

Teachers College Record: The Voice of Scholarship in Education

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“…While promise programs are part of the "Free College" movement, there is no one singular college promise model and these programs vary significantly in how they support participating students (Millet et al, 2020). In some instances, colleges may offer financial aid alongside robust non-financial supports including intensive advising, career services, and special first-year experiences courses; some may require that students attend school full-time (Dynarski et al, 2022). Promise programs also vary in length, anywhere from one semester to 3 years (Rauner & Smith, 2020).…”

Section: Theoretical Framing and Prior Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

More than just money? Early outcomes of Lake Tahoe Community College (LTCC) College Promise Program

Escobar,

Friedmann,

Tovar

2023

New Drctns Community Coll

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Promise programs have grown in popularity as a way to provide college tuition/fees and other student supports in the hopes of increasing college access and success. This chapter presents results from a comprehensive mixed‐methods evaluation of the Lake Tahoe Community College Promise Program. Using rich administrative data and interviews with students and alumni of the program, we find that promise students successfully completed two‐thirds of units attempted and persisted at higher rates in their first year compared to first‐time full‐time non‐promise students. We also find the program has high satisfaction levels among students and alumni who participated in interviews. This chapter provides additional insights into student outcomes, students’ experiences, and areas of refinement with the various components of the LTCC College Promise Program.

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“…13.For example, Oreopoulos (2007) points to myopic behavior and lack of information in dropout decisions. While some informational issues about college entry are addressed in Page and Scott-Clayton (2016) and Dynarski et al (2023a), the majority of discussion concerns financial aid and other barriers to entry (e.g., Dynarski et al (2023b).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Contexts of Convenience: Generalizing from Published Evaluations of School Finance Policies

Handel,

Hanushek

2024

Eval Rev

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Recent attention to the causal identification of spending impacts provides improved estimates of spending outcomes in a variety of circumstances, but the estimates are substantially different across studies. Half of the variation in estimated funding impact on test scores and over three-quarters of the variation of impacts on school attainment reflect differences in the true parameters across study contexts. Unfortunately, inability to describe the circumstances underlying effective school spending impedes any attempts to generalize from the extant results to new policy situations. The evidence indicates that how funds are used is crucial to the outcomes, but such factors as targeting of funds or court interventions fail to explain the existing pattern of results.

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Addressing nonfinancial barriers to college access and success: Evidence and policy implications

Cited by 14 publications

References 236 publications

Choice, Information Inequity, and the Production, Legitimation, and Reduction of Educational Inequality

Choice, Information Inequity, and the Production, Legitimation, and Reduction of Educational Inequality

More than just money? Early outcomes of Lake Tahoe Community College (LTCC) College Promise Program

Contexts of Convenience: Generalizing from Published Evaluations of School Finance Policies

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