The Romero Report Episode 014: Feds List
This week’s Romero Report looks at the federal watch list for universities and what it means.
Aldemaro Romero Jr. The Romero Report
This week’s Romero Report looks at the federal watch list for universities and what it means.
Aldemaro Romero Jr. Letters from Academia
Below is my newest article of the “Letters from Academia” about graduation time at colleges and universities
As graduation season approaches, a number of questions resurface among the general public. Among those questions are how well institutions of higher education are preparing their graduates for the real world and their chances of landing a good job. Even the value of a college degree is questioned given the time, effort and money invested in getting it.
Let’s take a look at some recent studies that address these questions.
When it comes to graduation rates, the numbers continue to be less than stellar. According to a recent study by the National Student Clearinghouse, a nonprofit and nongovernmental organization that provides data on educational matters, only about 56 percent of students earn degrees within six years. This figure was the result of tracking 2.4 million first-time college students who enrolled in fall 2007 with the intent of pursuing a degree or certificate.
Students enrolled at four-year, private, nonprofit schools did better in graduation success (72.9 percent) as compared to those in public universities. The worst record was for those enrolled at two-year public institutions (community and technical colleges) at 39.9 percent. Of course, students seeking a four-year degree should be obtaining that degree within four years (with some hard-working, bright students finishing as early as in three).
When it comes to the most popular majors, business continues to be at the top of the list. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, a primary federal entity for collecting and analyzing data related to education in the U.S. and other nations, more than 20 percent of the 1.79 million bachelor’s degrees conferred in 2011-12 were in business. This has been a constant since the 1980-81 academic year. Before that time, a degree in education was the most popular. The diminishing demand for teachers across the country has led to dramatic decreases in enrollment in schools of education. In case you are wondering, the least popular majors are precision production, military technologies and applied sciences and library science (35, 86 and 95 degrees conferred in 2011-12, respectively).
Regarding the chances of graduates landing good jobs, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, based on data from the Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, determined that in 2012, about 44 percent of graduates were working in jobs that didn’t require a college degree, while 36 percent of that group were in what they called “good non-college jobs,” that is, jobs paying around $45,000 a year. This is consistent with the national statistics showing that although unemployment is down, wage disparities persist.
It is yet unclear how the recent decrease in unemployment will impact people who are still in school.
A recent topic of discussion is whether a college degree is worth the time and money spent obtaining one. To answer that question we need to look a hard data generated by a reliable source.
One such source is the Pew Research Center. This is a nonpartisan think tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping America and the world. They do that by conducting public opinion polls, demographic research, media content analysis and other data-driven social science research.
In one of their recent reports, Pew found that college graduates still out-earn people without degrees. According to their research, salaries for Millennials, the generation born between the early 1980s and the early 2000s, varied greatly depending upon whether they had a college degree. Those who worked fulltime in 2012 who had a bachelor’s degree had median annual earnings of $45,500, while the median for those with only some college was $30,000. Those with a high school diploma averaged $28,000.
Further, they found that the earnings gap has increased with time. In 1965, for example, high school graduates earned 81 percent of what their college graduate counterparts did. Today that difference is 61.5 percent, showing that having a college education increases earning potential even further.
The population at large understands this statistical reality. The same Pew Research report shows that people agree that a college degree makes a difference and is worth the time, effort and investment.
For example, 98 percent of people making six figures and up said that their degree paid off, compared with 63 percent of graduates earning less than $50,000. In other words, the more you earn the more you see how much of a difference a college degree makes in your life. Not only that, but if your degree was an advanced one (masters, doctorate), the difference was even more prominent. People with advanced degrees were even more likely than bachelor and associate degree holders to say their education was worth the investment.
These data clearly show a few things. One is that despite all the talk about whether a college degree is worthwhile, the answer is a resounding yes in terms of both employment and earnings. This should be a clear message to those engaged in the anti-intellectual chatting that is becoming noisier these days.
By the same token, postsecondary institutions need to do a better job in graduating students on time. Better advising, more emphasis on measuring the effectiveness of different pedagogical approaches and enhancements in faculty/student contact must be part of the strategy to achieve that goal.
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Colleges Should Encourage Prompt Graduations
Dr. Aldemaro Romero Jr. interviews Dr. Peg Simons about Simone de Beauvoir from Aldemaro Romero Jr. on Vimeo.
This is an interview with philosopher Dr. Peg Simons about the French intellectual Simone de Beauvoir.
Aldemaro Romero Jr. The Romero Report
This week’s Romero Report discusses a recent article in “The Economist” that poses the question, “Is college worth the investment?”
Aldemaro Romero Jr. Letters from Academia
Below is my latest article for my weekly column “Letters on Academia”, on how the federal government is keeping an eye on the financial conditions of institutions of higher education
In this same column two weeks ago I discussed the closure of Sweet Briar College, a small, all-women, liberal arts school in Virginia. According to the institution’s administrators, they were closing it down because of financial difficulties. As I mentioned in the column, that decision came as a surprise because Sweet Briar was not even on the list of postsecondary institutions red flagged by the U.S. Department of Education for being in some sort of financial trouble.
I received a number of comments from readers who were surprised that the federal government keeps a watchful eye on the financial condition of U.S colleges and universities, both public and private. I decided to use this week’s column to expand on that issue.
For some time the U.S. Department of Education has been keeping a list of U.S. colleges and universities that are supposed to operate under certain restrictive conditions and/or under extra scrutiny because of concerns about their management and/or administration of federal money. Since virtually all postsecondary institutions in this country receive some sort of federal support, the number that are monitored is extensive.
This monitoring, to a certain extent, has been operating undercover. To begin with, the Department of Education had not, until a few weeks ago, released the list of institutions they are watching. The reason why the list has now become public is because Insider Higher Ed, an electronic publication that covers postsecondary education, filed an open-records request under the Freedom of Information Act last summer. That request was initially denied, but then the government did not respond to an appeal filed by the online publication.
Although the federal government does communicate with each of the institutions they are watching to let them know that they are on the list, it has been very reluctant to make the full list public, in part out of fear that placing an institution on that list may create panic among the school’s students, parents and supporters.
Now that the list is public we can learn a few interesting facts about it. One is that the number of institutions they are monitoring as of March of this year was 556, of which 69 are under stricter scrutiny for “heightened cash monitoring” or HCM-2 status. What that means is that those institutions must first disburse to students the loans and grant money that they are entitled to and then provide detailed information on each recipient before being reimbursed by the department. Of those institutions, 39 are for-profit colleges.
The rest, which are classified as HCM-1, are institutions that must also disburse the funds before getting reimbursed, but they do not have to be as specific when seeking the reimbursements.
More than half of all the institutions on the list are for-profit ones that include many that most people will not initially perceive as a college or university, such as beauty schools. Others are highly specialized, focusing on a single subject like healthcare or on specific trades. Also on the list are very small religious schools, as well as several foreign ones. The number of well-known and established institutions is relatively small. Yet, you might be surprised to see certain names there such as Alabama State University, Southern Illinois University Carbondale and the University of Puerto Rico, all public institutions with long histories.
Obviously these designations usually point to symptoms of other financial or managerial problems. These problems can include being investigated by a federal office, facing accreditation issues, or for not providing audits of financial statements in a timely manner. The current number of institutions being watched by the feds represent about 10 percent of all that receive some sort of federal money in the form of student aid, grants, etc. Once on the list, the institution remains there for five years.
Sometimes the consequences of being on that list can be dire. Take the case of Corinthian Colleges, a for-profit college company that after been scrutinized by the feds had to sell or close all of its U.S. campuses, many of which were acquired by the ECMC Group, a not-for-profit organization.
It is also quite possible that the list will increase – particularly for public institutions. There is already legislation being considered that would bring about severe budget cuts to higher education in states such as Arizona, Wisconsin, Illinois and Louisiana.
Students and their parents should welcome this level of scrutiny and, in turn, demand more accountability and financial discipline from these institutions. Now is this list exhaustive enough? Does it take into account all the necessary parameters? Not necessarily.
The problems with Sweet Briar were more complex than just short-term financial ones. They were the result of years of bad leadership and management. Maybe the Department of Education needs to take a broader view and make their lists, which from now on will be a matter of public record, more comprehensive, exhaustive and, therefore, more useful not only to those institutions but also to the general public. After all, the future of postsecondary institutions of higher education depends upon good management, particularly in these difficult financial times. A good model the feds may want to look at is how investment bodies look at corporations. It is not only about the balance sheet, but also about the quality of their management.
Other issues may be addressed by a proposed plan by the Obama administration to rate institutions based on outcomes such as learning, job placement and the like. Postsecondary institutions can expect more scrutiny from now on, and that is a step in the right direction.
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The Feds Are Watching Colleges And Universities
Dr. Aldemaro Romero Jr. interviews Prof. Garrett Schmidt about playing trumpet for jazz from Aldemaro Romero Jr. on Vimeo.
This is an interview by Dr. Aldemaro Romero Jr. with Prof. Garrett Schmidt about the art of playing trumpet for jazz.
Aldemaro Romero Jr. The Romero Report
This week’s Romero report looks at the recent Sweet Briar College incident and discusses the larger issues of college mismanagement.
Aldemaro Romero Jr. Letters from Academia
In this article for my weekly column “Letters from Academia”, I discuss a recent article by The Economist that asks the question: “Is college education worth?”
The March 28 edition of the prestigious magazine The Economist ran a cover story titled, “The whole world is going to university.” The piece began by saying that the American system of higher education is the biggest and best-funded in the world and because of that many other countries are imitating it, particularly when it comes to its funding model: a “mixed private-public funding and provision, with brilliant, well-funded institutions at the top and poorer ones at the bottom.”
The article went on to say, however, that America’s universities are a poor value for the money because, “The government rewards universities for research, and so that is what professors concentrate on.”
That is a debatable argument for several reasons. One of them is that state governments, which have traditionally provided most of the funding for public institutions, keep cutting budgets for education and they tend to do that across the board, regardless of how much research is done at universities.
The article also claims that because selectivity is a yardstick for measuring an institution’s prestige (and that of its graduates), “Good universities have little incentive to produce more graduates and to charge more to their students.” Again, this is not totally correct. Because of continuous budget cuts, postsecondary institutions have been forced to increase their enrollment as their main source of revenue. Also, because of diminishing state support, those same universities have been forced to increase their tuition and fees. The reason is very simple. Despite all the anti-tax rhetoric, money has to come from somewhere.
The article proposes that universities should be measured by their education performance so students (and their parents) know how to make better choices. In that regard they are totally right. Every time one visits the Web site of a college or university, one learns about their latest successes in sports, faculty scholarly achievements and fundraising triumphs. Yet, one rarely reads anything about how they measure how well their students have been prepared for their professional life, particularly when it comes to essential skills that go beyond basic knowledge in a discipline. Skills like critical thinking, communication, teamwork and problem solving are rarely mentioned. Yet, these are exactly the skills that are required in life no matter what profession one chooses.
One larger problem we are facing these days is the increasing rhetoric by politicians and media pundits that even suggest that a postsecondary education is too expensive a proposition for what is gained. This is only feeding the anti-intellectualism that is becoming established in the American discourse. As much as this populism is becoming widespread, the facts run unambiguously counter to that very notion.
In the chart that accompanies this article we can see the 2014 information presented by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. After obtaining data from people age 25 and older in the U.S. population, the results are unmistakable: There is an inverse correlation between educational preparation and unemployment rates and a direct one between level of education and pecuniary earnings. In other words, the more education you have the less likely you are to be unemployed and the more likely you are to earn higher levels of income.
What these data are saying is that despite all its inefficiencies, institutions of higher education in this country are directly responsible for elevating the quality of life of the citizens of the United States.
Despite these hard numbers the article suggests that there is very little data on whether a college education is worthwhile. Let me, then, add another very important yardstick that is entirely quantitative.
For years, PayScale, Inc., an online salary, benefits and compensation information company, has been measuring the return on investment or ROI of the money individuals spend on education.
After analyzing data from about 1,500 institutions of higher education they found that the ROI for a college education could be as high as 11.2 percent per year. Try to get that from any bank account or most investments in a sustained way!
It is also surprising that the highest ROI does not necessarily come from the big name universities. The 11.2 percent mentioned is for graduates of Berkeley College in New York. For the curious among you, Harvard’s ROI is 6.9 percent, Princeton is 6.7 percent and Yale is 5.8 percent. In other words, you don’t have to go to a top-notch institution to get a great return for your money.
These numbers should not, however, make postsecondary institutions complacent. In a documentary I produced a couple of years ago, you can hear the testimonies of many successful individuals who, regardless of major, said that their professional success in life was not so much because of what they memorized for final exams but because of the very skills I mentioned earlier in this article: critical thinking, communication, team-work and problem-solving abilities. These are the kind of skills that you learn in the classroom and by interacting with good professors and peers, not from reading a textbook.
Colleges and universities need to be more assertive not only in publicizing the financial benefits of a postsecondary education but also more diligent in measuring how well they are teaching those basic skills for success. The public and private support for their own survival and the betterment of the country may depend on it.
PDF Version
College Education Is Still A Worthwhile Investment
Dr. Aldemaro Romero Jr. interviews Dr. Liz Cali from Aldemaro Romero Jr. on Vimeo.
Dr. Aldemaro Romero Jr. interviews Dr. Liz Cali about African-American literature.
Aldemaro Romero Jr. The Romero Report aldemaro romero, aldemaro romero jr., college, education, legal, policy, politics, red tape, regulations
This Week’s Romero Report discusses the effect that an overburden of red tape can have on the academic environment.