ASHE presentation

Just a quick post to attach a copy of the presentation I will be giving at the upcoming Association for the Study of Higher Education (ASHE) conference in Vancouver this November. Here is a copy of the paper and below is an abstract of the piece.

“Meeting need and buying prestige: an analysis of institutional aid among public colleges and universities”

Abstract:
Institutionally-funded financial aid has been the fastest-growing item in most public colleges and university budgets during the past decade, yet little is known about what factors contribute to these expenditures or how aid is being distributed between need and no-need criteria. This study utilizes panel data analysis to conclude that increases in SAT scores and state merit-based aid significantly reduce the amount of institutional need-based aid, while greater shares of non-resident students result in greater expenditures on non-need-based aid. The share of low-income students and state/federal need-based grant programs do not appear to influence the provision of institutional aid among public institutions.

I am still teaching myself panel data analysis and how to implement two-stage least squares models. If you happen to read this paper, please forgive me in advance if my description of methods is less than par. To me, econometrics is attrition warfare; a never-ending battle with myself provides a humbling reminder that I don’t know as much as I think I know. Ah, the story of my life.

Merit aid’s bait and switch

Penn State University is asking its honors college students to return, I mean “donate,” their $3,500 merit-based grants back to the university. The university is only asking those students who have no unmet financial need to donate and so far the appeal has brought more than a quarter of a million dollars back to the university.

Evidently, the university failed to provide enough need-based aid to its low-income students and is now trying to backtrack. According to the Associated Press strory, last year students attending Penn State had more than one million dollars in “unmet” financial need so it’s hard to think that the university never saw this coming! Sure, this happened at Penn State, but the story could easily happen at any one of the 650 public four-year college in the U.S. because they all operate in similar environments and follow similar administrative styles.

This over-spending on merit aid doesn’t surprise me one bit because the higher education marketplace has become a “positional arms race” (pdf) where colleges are aggressively competing for the best and brightest, often at the expense of providing adequate aid to lower-income students. This is all happening during a time that the federal Pell Grant is losing its purchasing power and states are having a tough time to fund students as they once did. So, colleges have become the last place poor kids look for aid…only to find it’s not available.

This is a perfect example of how colleges are playing the student aid game, and it is perfectly in line with my dissertation research concerning the way public colleges offer need-based and non-need-based subsidies.

Merit-aid crowds out need-based aid

Just after writing my previous post last night, I opened my email to find this article about a new study released by Cornell University’s Higher Education Research Institute. It goes right along with part of the discussion about how colleges spend money on student subsidies. Turns out, the more a college spends on “merit-based” aid (which disproportionately benefits upper income students), the fewer low-income students a college is likely to enroll. There is a crowding-out effect between these types of aid, giving some evidence that neoliberal values are trumping egalitarian ones with regard to student enrollments. This is worrisome given the persistent educational inequalities we see in higher education:

EAIR presentation

Here (pdf) is a copy of my paper that I’ll be presenting at the European Association for Institutional Research’s annual conference. The title of this paper is “The ethical dimensions of tuition discounting: context from the U.S.” In a nutshell, I set up two competing theoretical frameworks to help researchers understand the ethical tension that arises when colleges offer tuition discounts. Tuition discounts are essentially subsidies that colleges award to students to reduce the price they pay for college. These subsidies are a form of price discrimination, where nearly every student ends up paying a different price for the exact same educational experience. Who currently receives these subsidies? Moreover, who should be getting these subsidies?

The answer to the first question is that all students from each income quartile receive a good chunk of grant aid from colleges. But, it’s upper-income students who are benefiting the most in recent years. Researchers have consistently found this, citing that the growth in subsidies for wealthier students has grown by leaps and bounds compared to growth for lower income students. This is occurring at the same time that the federal Pell Grant awards are losing “purchasing power,” and states spending per college student is declining across the board. Needless to say, no other providers are picking up this slack. I just pulled the following data from the U.S. Department of Education which shows how much grant aid is spent per income quartile. And then it shows how much “unmet” need each of these groups have after grants have been figured into the equation.

Students from lower income families have billions, yes “b,” of need that goes unmet each year. On the other hand, their upper income peers have considerably less need (obviously), yet they receive roughly the same amount of grant aid? The playing field is clearly not equal when it comes to how students pay for college or the extent to which subsidies play in their favor. This brings us to the second question…who should be getting these grant subsidies? To answer this, let’s look at two ethical paradigms: egalitarianism and neoliberalism.

The egalitarian would argue that the distribution of aid is regressive, as upper income students receive more than their fair share of aid. This is evidenced by the graphic above. The egalitarian would also say that every dollar spent on upper income students is an inefficient use of subsidies because these students are probably going to enroll in college regardless of whether they receive a discount. They might choose College B over College A if B offers the best price…but you can bet these students will go to college no matter what. A small sacrifice is made in this instance. Students from poor families have a much bigger sacrifice to make because, to them, it’s not an issue of choosing A versus B but it’s an issue of whether they’ll go to college at all.

The neoliberal philosopher would argue that it doesn’t matter how aid is being distributed. All that matters is that it’s going to the people who “deserve” it, and that the market is working efficiently. They would say that the “best and brightest” students should receive these subsidies if that’s the way colleges want to spend their money. The sheer size of unmet need is enough to make the neoliberal concede that it would break a college’s bank if they tried to close that gap. It’s not worth it and money is used more efficiently aiding those who maximize the university’s prestige. The blind-side to this argument is that it isn’t critical of the inherited advantages these students are born with just due to the dumb luck of being born into a privileged family. It legitimizes class inequalities by hiding behind the argument of meritocracy; it turns a blind eye to societal inequalities related to class and socio-economics.

Colleges appear to be caught in the middle of these two paradigms. On one hand, they see a responsibility in aiding low-income students but they also have intense pressure to compete for the “best and brightest.” These two paradigms are on a collision course with one another and we’ve got to look closely at the role colleges play in all this. Often times, social institutions follow the leader and simply accept standard business practices without giving much thought to the ethical implications related to their practice. Tuition discounting is a perfect example of this, where it’s becoming a standard practice that hasn’t taken much time to reflect on the implications of where this is taking higher education.

At this conference, I’ll be engaging in more discussion about this issue. It’s complex, it requires a lot of patience and open mindedness, and it is one that must be taken quite seriously. While I am inclined to favor the egalitarian arguments, I see very clearly the political advantages of the neoliberal position. As with most policy issues, compromises must be made and end results balance competing interests. This is likely the case with regard to tuition discounting, so hopefully discussing these theories will help move practice into a more thoughtful and reflective approach to distributing these subsidies.

Dissertation prospectus

I’ve attached a copy of my dissertation prospectus, which is a general overview of my dissertation proposal. It’s just a quick two-page overview of my dissertation topic. I haven’t spent much time on this blog describing what my research questions are, data sources, methods, or policy relevance of my study.

So, in the next few posts I’ll try making more of an effort of describing why this research interests me, why it matters in the “big picture,” and how it can potentially add value to what we know within this small little world of higher ed policy.

Download file Hillman_Prospectus (pdf). Click again on next page.

Europe bound…

At the end of August, Ashley and I are going to travel to Lithuania where I’m going to present some of my dissertation research at an academic conference.

The conference is sponsored by the European Association of Institutional Research, where professors, researchers, and policy analysts from all over Europe get together to discuss higher ed issues. The conference focuses on European topics, but there is always a handful of US professors and researchers who attend to share their work.

I thought my dissertation work might be really relevant to this crowd because many EU countries are moving towards higher ed funding models that are similar to what we have in the US. So, here’s an abstract to my paper that I will be presenting:

“This study examines “tuition discounting” trends at public colleges in the U.S. It utilizes multilevel modeling to identify the effect state-level factors have on institutional spending on need-based and merit-based tuition discounts. It also examines the underlying micro-economic concepts of tuition discounting and provides empirical evidence of the cost drivers associated with discounting. As colleges become more reliant on tuition as a primary source of revenue, these findings will hold important policy implications related to college access, affordability, and enrollment management.”

The EAIR committee chair wants me to focus more on the ethics behind tuition discounting, which is something that I could probably talk about for hours! But I only have 30 minutes, so I better keep it brief!
Ash and I will get to do some exploring while we’re there, and we’re really excited about meeting new people on our trip. So, where the heck is Lithuania anyways?

Dissertation presentation

Here it is in all its glory. Still working through some kinks and figuring out exactly what methods I will be using. BUT, with any luck my final dissertation will look a little something like this presentation. I’m presenting this in class tomorrow, so hopefully I’ll get some good feedback from my ed policy peers.

To download the ppt presentation:  Dissertation Presentation

Homebrew

One of my goals for 2009 was to make some homebrew. So, on January 1st I started my first batch of beer from scratch. Eventually I’ll put up a post (with a video!) of the entire process start to finish…but that won’t happen for a while. My first bottles are almost ready, so yesterday I spent a few hours making a label/logo to stick on these bottles. I have some strange infatuation with sasquatch, no I don’t believe he’s real, I just like the folklore/fantasy that goes behind the story. You know what I mean? And I think it makes for a good beer mascot. The name of my homebrew is “Bungalow Brew” and this first recipe is a holiday ale (heavy stuff…should be about 9% alcohol…yikes). I’m also working on another batch of India Pale Ale that is fermenting in a carboy as we speak. Here’s the logo I put together yesterday using some old crusty crayons and some computer graphics…

R Project

I’m trying to figure out what kind of statistical method I will use for my dissertation. I’ve got it narrowed down to two options: panel analysis or hierarchical linear modeling. I’m leaning towards HLM, and will eventually put up a post that explains some of this in more detail. But, I just came across a resource that other folks might find handy: R statistical software. Click on that link and you can download the software for free. This package is supposed to be really useful for HLM, but I haven’t used it yet so I really don’t know how useful it’s going to be. But I’ve seen other researchers use it in their analysis, so I assume it can’t be all bad. I’m hoping that this will help me with some data visualization tools where I can present the data in a way that is pleasing to the eye, intuitive to non-statistical audiences, and useful to understanding the data. Anyway, if you’re working on your dissertation and stumble upon this post I’d recommend downloading R and taking a test drive. Sample screenshot:

Default movie trailer

Although I’d like to see a Michael Moore style documentery showing the political shenanigans going on behind the scene with the banking industry and politician’s pocketbooks, this film should still be a good contribution to raising awareness about the corrupt system that we currently have.

DEFAULT – The Student Loan Documentary from Default on Vimeo.