Helping Degree Seekers Finish What They Start

There is a paradox in American higher education: of the millions of students who apply to and enter postsecondary degree programs, only about half end up graduating within six years.

In an article in Thursday’s paper, my colleague Tamar Lewin and I look at a number of policy recommendations that experts are making to increase the country’s postsecondary completion rates, making sure that more students are not only going to college and can afford it, but also that they finish it.

Here’s a fuller look at a new report from a high-powered group of education, social justice and economic experts that suggests reforming financial aid to help improve the country’s stagnating completion rates. Titled “The American Dream 2.0,” the report argues that completion has become a pressing economic issue. For one, it says, the country needs a better-educated work force, and ensuring that more students finish their degrees is one path to ensurig that businesses have skilled employees to hire.

Moreover, many students who enter a degree program but do not complete it still end up heavily in debt â€" taking on a hefty part of the cost of higher education without getting its full benefits. “The job market barely distinguishes between people who never went and people who dropped out,” said Kevin Carey of the New America Foundation, a Washington-based research institution. “It’s not just enough to let people in or even to let them in and make sure they can afford it in an abstract way.”

While the country offers hundreds of billions of dollars of aid to students, many families and individuals find themselves flummoxed by the application process. The same debt that makes college a possibility for many students ends up smothering some, leading them to drop out.

The report includes a broad range of suggestions to help improve completion rates, including these:

Have the fe! deral government collect and report better higher-education performance metrics, on access, completion, cost and employment outcomes.

Make it simper to apply for aid, and make its costs and benefits clearer to students and their families.

Offer federal incentives for states and schools to find faster and cheaper ways to educate students, including getting high-school students ready for college.

Run experiments on new ways to aim and deliver financial aid.

Reward colleges for improving completion rates, and tie student aid to getting past certain educational goal posts.

It argues that such measures would benefit students and the broader economy. Moreover, it argues that such measures also have a strong social justice component, offering particular benefits to lower-income students and minorities. About half of all enrollees do not get a degree within six years, but the rate is 63 percent for African-American students and 48 percent for Hispanic ones.The report comes from a coalition of experts that includes Marc H. Morial of the National Urban League, Mitchell E. Daniels Jr. of Purdue University and Robert Reischauer, the former director of the Congressional Budget Office. A related report includes a wealth of data on American impressions of higher education and how students and families finance it.