issue: Education

Funding Cuts Hit College Students Harder Than Faculty

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Fiscal cliff or not, the coming years are certain to bring cuts in public spending on higher education. The looming sequestration threatens to cut $500 billion in federal discretionary spending starting next year, leaving a multi-billion dollar hole in R&D funding at public universities. State governments have already begun higher education funding cutbacks. So as policymakers pledge austerity and deficit reduction, colleges and universities will be left in a financial pinch.

Students and university faculty and staff are the obvious targets to fill these budget holes. But who actually pays the price for cuts in university funding?

New PPI research suggests college students will bear the brunt of additional austerity imposed on colleges and universities. Looking at previous cuts in public funding, we found college students were unquestionably worse off relative to faculty and staff when it came to making up the difference. And the impact of this uneven allocation could be serious. If college students continue to pay the biggest price for austerity, the next generation of young people may think twice about the value of going to college.

That’s because college students paid a high price for cuts in university funding over the last decade, while faculty and staff were relatively unaffected.  As shown in this first graph, total tuition at four-year universities rose a staggering 35% over the last decade (in constant dollars). These rising prices are certainly behind the rising real average debt per graduate, up almost 30% over the same time.

Continue reading “Funding Cuts Hit College Students Harder Than Faculty” →

Young People Turned Out to Re-Elect President Obama. Now What?

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

They defied the pundits: young people turned out to vote in numbers that rivaled their 2008 record. An estimated 23 million young people age 18-29 voted, even more than the highly coveted 65 and over cohort. And not surprisingly, for reasons I’ve previously pointed out, young people overwhelmingly supported President Obama by a margin of 60-40.

But President Obama’s work has really just begun. Now that TV advertising has returned to normal, young people are eager to know what’s next, what President Obama is going to do to help them get more jobs and more money.

Young people are struggling: they’ve had a worse recession and recovery than any other age group. The 18-34 year old cohort is still over 2 million jobs short since the recession began and real earnings continue to fall. But helping young people means understanding why they have been hit so hard in the first place relative to other age groups, why they weren’t the first to be re-hired as common theory dictates, and why the youngest and least educated are being squeezed out of the labor force. Continue reading “Young People Turned Out to Re-Elect President Obama. Now What?” →

Democratic Devolution: How America’s Colleges and Universities Can Strengthen Their Communities

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

In the face of a deepening economic and political crisis, the U.S. political and governing system is deadlocked. We need a new way forward. The old and tired government versus markets debate is just that—old and tired. It’s time for a broader mobilization of America’s civic resources, including the nonprofit sector and especially our colleges and universities.

We see government as a catalyst that stimulates new forms of interaction and partnerships between all sectors of society. Based on our experience at the University of Pennsylvania, we believe government should challenge all institutions of higher education (public and private; community colleges, colleges, and universities) to contribute systematically to improving the quality of life and learning in their local communities.

When called to service (e.g., Peace Corps, AmeriCorps) young people have answered the call. Each year, more than 75,000 citizens serve through AmeriCorps alone. But it is not enough to simply call upon college students to serve. Rather, government should challenge institutions of higher education, as well as students, to make a greater contribution to the public good.

America’s colleges and universities represent immense concentrations of human and economic capital (with nearly four million employees, 20 million enrolled students, $400 billion in endowments, and $1 trillion in annual economic activity). As “anchor institutions,” they have the potential to be sources of stability and permanence in civic partnerships with government and the private sector to revitalize local communities. For colleges and universities to fulfill their great potential and more effectively contribute to positive change in their communities, cities, and metropolitan areas, however, they will have to critically examine and change their organizational cultures and structures and embed civic engagementacross all components of the institution. Through more effectively targeting existing resources, as well as utilizing both modest financial incentives and the bully pulpit, the federal government can stimulate colleges and universities to realize their stated—but not fully realized—mission of service to society.

To realize this potential, we recommend a five-part strategy:

First, Congress should create a new federal commission—comprised of local, state, and national government officials along with leaders from the private sector and higher education—to forge civic partnerships with the nation’s institutions of higher education;

Second, the commission should develop innovative strategies for integrating federal programs and funding streams, as well as aligning federal efforts with these new local civic partnerships that involve colleges and universities;

Third, the commission should promote regional consortia of higher educational institutions to significantly and effectively improve schooling and community life;

Fourth, the federal government should create prestigious Presidential Awards for outstanding Higher Education-Civic Partnerships, and;

Fifth, government should provide support to colleges and universities based on the “Noah Principle”—funding given only for building arks (producing real change), not for predicting rain (describing the problems that exist and will develop if actions are not taken).

Download the memo.

Young College Grads: Real Earnings Fell in 2011

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

The latest Census figures show real earnings for young college grads fell again in 2011. This makes the sixth straight year of declining real earnings for young college grads, defined as full-time workers aged 25-34 with a bachelor’s only. All told, real average earnings for young grads have fallen by over 15% since 2000, or by about $10,000 in constant 2011 dollars.

This statistic is fundamental to our understanding of the current economy. College graduates have jumped through the hoops that were supposed to give them a better life. They are supposed to have the skills that enable them to compete on the global economy. But something is going wrong. The fastest growing jobs now for young college grads include dental assistants, hairstylists, and bus drivers.

The middle-skill jobs that young college grads generally take (think sales agents, teachers, and financial analysts) continued to shed workers in 2011. And for the few high-skill jobs actively hiring (think engineers, web developers, and computer support specialists) most college graduates still lack the necessary training. That leaves many young grads taking jobs that don’t require a college degree for less pay. I call this “The Great Squeeze” – as college grads take the lower-skill jobs, they squeeze out those with less education and experience from the labor market. Nobody wins.

Given the prospect of falling real wages, coupled with rising college costs and debt, many young people are beginning to question the value of a college degree altogether. That means it’s essential whoever wins the election make the plight of young college grads a priority. Not making the investment in education is not the answer; ensuring there are better jobs upon graduation is.

Debacle in Chicago

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

The Chicago teachers’ strike is turning into an all-round debacle – for school children and their families, for President Obama and his party, and quite likely for the teachers themselves. Only Republicans are smiling, as the strike supplies fresh fodder to their campaign to vilify and weaken public sector unions.

By shutting down the city’s public schools over a contract dispute, the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) has left about 350,000 students in the lurch, not to mention their parents, who’ve had to scramble to find safe places to park them during the day. Even if you think the teachers have valid grievances, it’s hard to justify using Chicago’s public school students as pawns in a political test of will with city leaders.

Now in its fourth day, the strike also threatens to throw a monkey wrench into President Obama’s finely tuned campaign machine.

Chicago, after all, is the President’s home town. Its mayor, the sharp-tongued Rahm Emanuel, is Obama’s former Chief of Staff and a key political ally. The CTU, 25,000 members strong, is furious at Emanuel for pushing accountability measures it claims are unfair to teachers. And teachers’ unions are a potent source of votes and money for Democrats.

The stage is thus set for a family feud among Democrats at the worst possible moment – just as Obama seems to be pulling away from Mitt Romney.

Continue reading at The Hill.

Photo credit: Shutterstock

Young America: Squeezed into Summer Vacation

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Last week’s employment status report of America’s youth from the BLS shows the number of people aged 16-24 not in the labor force or enrolled in school in July continues to rise, despite the overall recovery in the labor market.

The number of youth “at loose ends” during the summer of 2012 totaled over 7.5 million – a 2% increase over the same month in 2011, and a 10% increase over 2007. These are young people aged 16-24 that were not working for pay, not actively looking for work, and not enrolled in school in July. I analyzed data from the Current Population Survey to get these numbers.

What’s likely happening is that potential young workers are being squeezed out of the labor force. I’ve written about the “Great Squeeze” before. As middle-tier jobs fall away, we see a shift down in the workforce. College grads squeeze out non-degree holders by taking jobs that don’t require a degree (and pay less). Those with less education squeeze out those with even less education. Eventually there are no jobs left for the youngest, least educated workers.

So, what are these 7.5 million young Americans doing on their summer vacation? Beach getaways and late nights out? Auditioning for American Idol? One Fed economist found an answer that may surprise most parents: “watching TV, playing video games and sleeping.” Of course we can also take comfort knowing at least some of these people are getting experience in unpaid internships, as they don’t count as being employed (statistically speaking).

How young Americans spend their summer vacation matters – for the 7.5 million young people in this category that aren’t unpaid interns, they are not getting the “real-world” experience that will enable future success. And we need them to be prepared for the economy they will inherent. Or at least able to pay for our retirement. That means doing what we can to fix the real problem: Getting young people the education and training that they need to prosper.

 

PPI Event – Improving Charter School Accountability: The Challenge of Closing Failing Schools

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute


The Progressive Policy Institute hosted a forum to discuss the importance of holding charter schools accountable and closing those schools that are failing.  David Osborne, Senior Fellow at PPI, released his report “Improving Charter School Accountability: The Challenge of Closing Failing Schools”

Accompanied by Greg Richmond, Nancy Van Meter, and Lindsey Burke, the forum stressed the potential for success of charter schools as a whole, but pointed to the importance of closing those charters that are failing their students.  While the causes for failing schools was debated, there was a general consensus that these failing schools must do better and should be held to higher standards in their charters.

According to Osborne’s report, the primary way of achieving higher accountability and success is to start at the beginning, with the actual charters and authorizers.  More training, larger staffs, better funding, and improved information are all critical to improving the quality of charter school authorizers and the schools that they are responsible for.

Download the report here: Improving Charter School Accountability: The Challenge of Closing Failing Schools

Continue reading “PPI Event – Improving Charter School Accountability: The Challenge of Closing Failing Schools” →

Improving Charter School Accountability: The Challenge of Closing Failing Schools

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Today some 5,600 charter schools are in operation, with more than two million students. Some critics persist in a fruitless argument that these schools have failed, despite a mountain of evidence to the contrary. But regardless of your opinion about them, charter schools are here to stay. Those concerned about public education should quit debating whether we should have charter schools and instead focus on improving their quality. That will require us to do at least two big things. We must replicate the most successful charter models—the subject of a Progressive Policy Institute paper last year, Going Exponential: Growing the Charter School Sector’s Best— and we must close down the worst charter schools— the subject of this report.

From the beginning, the charter concept was to give schools more autonomy—freedom to hire and fire their staffs and control their own budgets and curriculum—while still holding them accountable for performance. No charter would be allowed to fail its students year after year, as traditional public schools are often permitted to do. If their students were not learning, they would close.

This promise has not always been fulfilled. Hundreds of school districts have authorized charters then failed to invest in oversight. Even some statewide authorizers report that they have insufficient data to make merit-based renewal and revocation decisions.

Let me be clear: failing charter schools are at much greater risk of closing than other failing public schools. Still, if we are to harness their true potential, many states need to heighten that risk. In its first 10 years, the charter community focused mostly on quantity: getting charters open. Over the past ten years, it has focused increasingly on charter school quality. Today, it is time to open a third frontier: authorizer quality. The key to quality in the charter sector is quality authorizing.

In this report, I discuss why it is so important that authorizers close failing charters, review the facts about charter and authorizer performance, examine why some authorizers fail to close underperforming charters and propose solutions to these problems. To answer such questions, I have reviewed the literature and interviewed fifteen current or former charter authorizers and another ten experts on charter schools. In addition, thanks to the generosity of the National Association of Charter School Authorizers (NACSA), I have reviewed the data accumulated by its annual surveys of authorizers.

Why Young Grads Struggle to Pay Mounting Debt

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

According to new calculations by the Progressive Policy Institute, the strongest growth in employment for college grads aged 21-29 since the end of the recession has been in jobs like dental assistants, bus drivers, hairstylists, and event ticket takers.

This sobering news may make recent college grads – and their bill-paying parents – wonder what exactly they’re getting for all the years and dollars invested in getting a degree.

According to data compiled by PPI, since May 2009 young college grads have seen big employment gains in occupations once held by those workers with less than a college degree. That includes healthcare support, transportation, personal care & service, and production jobs, which all saw employment gains of over 20% for those with a college degree or higher aged 21-29. Employment growth in office and administrative jobs – secretaries, file clerks, bank tellers, payroll assistants, etc. – increased over 10% for young college grads.  Meanwhile, young workers with less than a college degree saw substantial employment declines in similar jobs.

Continue reading “Why Young Grads Struggle to Pay Mounting Debt” →

Trying to Shed Student Debt

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

PPI Economist Diana Carew’s work on the rising burden of student debt for young college grads was cited in the Wall Street Journal:

In the past decade student debt has surged as tuition and enrollment climbed. At the same time, college graduates’ earnings have declined. The average debt load of all new graduates rose 24%, adjusted for inflation, from 2000 through 2010, to $16,932, says the Progressive Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank in Washington. Over the same period, the average earnings of full-time workers ages 25 to 34 with no more than a bachelor’s degree fell by 15% to $53,539.

Read the entire article here.

Good News for College Grads (and the Economy)

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Finally, there is some good news for college grads. New data from the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) shows the median starting salary for the class of 2012 is 4.5% higher than their peers grading just a year earlier. That translates into a starting annual salary of $42,569, compared to $40,735 for the class of 2011. And since inflation (minus food and energy) increased 2.4% over the last year, the benefit to college grads in the class of 2012 is real.

A lot has been said about the growing pile of student debt college grads are facing, and how policymakers can find ways to alleviate the burden. But that’s just part of the struggle college grads are facing – as PPI  noted in a study released earlier this year, the fact grads are becoming less able to repay this debt is just as important as the debt itself. What’s missing from the discussion on college grads is a solution that addresses this double whammy: right as the cost of going to college and debt per student is rising, real earnings have been falling. In fact, PPI found real earnings of young college grads aged 25-34 working full-time declined 15% over 2000-2010.

Continue reading “Good News for College Grads (and the Economy)” →

The Great Squeeze: It’s Not Just College Grads

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

There’s been a lot of press lately about how young college grads are struggling. And they are – especially younger grads who have seen their real earnings drop 15% over the last decade.

But that’s missing a big part of the story. You see, when college grads struggle, that trickles down to all levels of educational attainment.

While the economy has officially been in “recovery” for almost three years, we are still about six million jobs short of when the recession began in 2007. But just because we’re short on jobs doesn’t mean the number of available workers decreased alongside it. In fact, the opposite is true – with natural population growth, the number of available workers across all levels of educational attainment continued to rise, for workers aged 25 and older.

Now we all know someone with a college degree generally makes a more desirable job candidate than a non-degree holder – after all, that’s the selling point of going to college (and a big factor behind the $1 trillion in outstanding student debt). So in the competition for the 2.2 million jobs that have been created since the recession officially ended, guess who loses? Answer:  Those without education beyond high school.

Continue reading “The Great Squeeze: It’s Not Just College Grads” →

The Inconvenient Truth About Today’s College Grads

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

The job market for new college graduates is healing, but very slowly. The unemployment rate for new college grads was 7.4% in the 12 months ending November 2011, just the same as a year earlier (by our definition, ‘new college graduates’ are people aged 21-26 with a bachelor’s only). That’s up from 3.9% in 2007, according to our tabulations of the Current Population Survey.

And for today’s college grads, a lack of jobs is not the worst of their problems. They are getting the short end of the stick, and the stick is just getting shorter as college costs creep ever higher. Over the last decade, the average amount of student debt for college graduates increased by a staggering 25%, in constant dollars. Yet the reality is this is not surprising, given how tuition costs have skyrocketed in the last ten years. According to the Department of Education, tuition costs and fees across all four-year colleges and universities increased by 32 percent from 2000-2010, with public institutions showing an average increase of 40 percent, all in constant dollars. Families are struggling to keep pace, which lead to two-thirds of 2010 college grads taking on debt before they even finished school.

What’s more, as student debt for young college graduates becoming a bigger burden, their real wages are falling. Over 2000-2010, average wages for full-time workers aged 25-34 with only a Bachelor’s degree fell by 15% percent, after adjusting for inflation. The same jobs their peers got just ten years earlier are paying less. So, just as college is getting more expensive, graduates are less able to pay for it.

This is an inconvenient truth that cannot be wished away. College grads are an important segment of the advanced skill workforce that we are relying on to get America moving again. Instead we find too many them living in tents, spending valuable time wondering how Adele could feasibly “set fire to the rain” instead of developing the next cancer treatment, the next manufacturing technology, or the next software designed to protect America’s borders. If they can’t find work, then where does that leave the rest of us? Perhaps we’ll all be living in tents, playing Hacky Sack and Frisbee, sooner than we think. Like it or not, this truth is here, and until we address it college grads will only become more frustrated and more disconnected. With good reason.

Read more on the debt burden facing today’s college grads: The Payback Stress Index: A New Way to Measure the Pain of Student Debt.

The Payback Stress Index: A New Way to Measure the Pain of Student Debt

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

For new college graduates, the world is their oyster. Without many of the real-world burdens the rest of us face, they can do anything they set their mind to.

That is, unless they start their careers staggering under a pile of student debt. It would appear that student debt is one rather onerous real-world burden bestowed upon college graduates the day they are handed their diplomas—and this burden is causing them more stress now than at any point in the last decade.

Using data on average student debt and wages for young college grads, PPI has calculated the Payback Stress Index. This new measure enables us to quantify, for the first time, the increasing burden of student borrowing for today’s college graduates.

Based on the Payback Stress Index, PPI finds that paying off college debt was 58% more economically stressful for students who graduated in 2010 compared with students who graduated in 2000. Specifically, we calculated how long it would take to pay back the average student loan, given the average earnings of full-time workers aged 25-34 with only a bachelor’s degree. We then indexed that calculation to what the average repayment time was in 2000, assuming an interest rate of 6 percent, and assuming that the representative college graduate paid 5 percent of earnings at each repayment. The chart below of PPI’s Payback Stress Index maps the rise in financial stress facing each class of college graduates.

Climbing Stress Mountain, No End in Sight

The Payback Stress Index allows us to compare different graduating classes within a single framework. To be sure, the PPI Payback Stress Index works with averages, and uses certain assumptions that may not hold true for every graduate—each college graduate with a student loan has their own repayment term and some were able to take on no debt at all. We’re also assuming real earnings don’t change throughout the repayment period, which affects how long it takes to repay student loans.

Still, the sharp climb in student debt payback stress has no end in sight—leading young college graduates to wonder when, or if, they will ever make it to the top and come down the other side. It’s no wonder the younger generation has started giving the traditional benefits of going to college a second thought.

Download the entire report:1.2011-Carew_The-Payback-Stress-Index_A-New-Way-to-Measure-the-Pain-of-Student-Debt

Senate Guts School Accountability

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

The U.S. Senate is finally getting around to reauthorizing the controversial No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), something that was supposed to happen in 2007. Unfortunately, instead of fixing NCLB’s evident flaws, there’s a bipartisan push to fatally weaken the law as a credible tool for educational accountability.

A bill to renew the bill (known again by its historic title, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act) crafted by Sens. Harkin (D-Iowa) and Enzi (R-Wyo.) is being widely panned by education reformers. As Michelle Rhee points out, “by removing meaningful evaluations, the country would be taking huge step backward in the effort to reform our schools.”

In a rare moment of bipartisanship, Congress passed NCLB in 2002. It was designed to tie federal support to education (mostly through the Title I program of aid to schools in low-income areas) to improvements in student performance. Its signal achievement was to require local school authorities to measure the academic achievements of all students, including racial and ethnic subgroups. This provision meant that schools could no longer hide their failure to educate all students behind averages.

But NCLB’s critics pointed to several glaring flaws. One was the requirement that 100 percent of public school students reach proficiency in reading and math by the 2013-2014 school year. Not only is this standard deemed unattainable, but it puts too much weight on standardized assessments of widely varying quality.

Another problem with NCLB is its requirement that schools have “highly qualified teachers”. That sounds innocuous, but in practice it has led schools to hire teachers based on their academic credentials rather than their actual ability to teach. An abundance of data has shown that one of the quickest ways to achieve student growth is through an effective teacher. A “highly qualified teacher” by NCLB definition is one that is simply “certified and proficient” in the subject matter taught—regardless of how well those credentials translate into student learning, achievement, or growth.

The Harkin-Enzi bill kills the “100 percent proficiency” target, but doesn’t replace it with a better yardstick. Instead, it vaguely charges states to strive for “continual growth.” The bill is thus a throwback to NCLB’s predecessor, 1994’s weak Improving America’s Schools Act (IASA). This toothless measure paved the way for such lax accountability standards as Tennessee’s goal to “improve mean performance level(s) across grades by [an] average of .05” for grade-levels three through eight—hardly a worthy goal for true reform.

Harkin’s original draft required the states to adopt teacher and principal evaluations which would focus on both in-class observations and student achievements. Unfortunately, it was watered down in a redraft on Monday.

After the rewrite all the meaningful elements—save perhaps the mandate that states enforce a college-readiness standard—went by the wayside. The weaker version of the bill closely tracks a letter sent to the senators by teacher and principal advocacy groups, including the National Education Association. The gist of their message to the Senate was, “We appreciate the great reform ideas you’re proposing here but just please don’t implement them.” Also, the new version is clearly intended to assuage the “federal overreach” fears of GOP local control advocates.

In short, the bill not only omits concrete accountability standards, it also disregards the policy prescription that effective teachers—effective in the sense that the teacher actually impacts the student—are the key to true education reform. This ESEA reauthorization does nothing to positively impact an education system that is consistently failing the future of this country. The redrafting effort headed by Sen. Enzi on Monday is a clear message to reform-minded advocacy groups that the letters they are sending urging the federal government to do more in the way of education standards—such as the ones published by EdWeek and EdTrust—are not as effective as those sent by the teachers’ unions. In other words, you can speak loudly but you better carry a larger voting contingency.