I had the opportunity to attend my first academic conference, put on by the Association of Education Finance and Policy (AEFP) in Kansas City, MO. Since I live in KC, had the time to attend all three days, and am very interested in policy regarding college access -- it all worked out really well.
I went into the conference as a first-time observer with the goal of learning how paper presentations work and how a college counselor could help improve both a student's college choice and their persistence through graduation. Some things that I took away from the sessions I attended include:
(if something shouldn't be discussed email me at cdjarrell [at] gmail and I'll remove it)
- Online instruction helps more students graduate high school, which is good, but doesn't help enough to get them to enroll in college
- Charter schools help students to enroll in slightly higher quality (less bad) colleges
- Higher quality colleges help minorities more, in regards to graduation
- When looking at quality of college, helpful to look at (in no order): their selectivity, graduation rates, spending on faculty/resources, test scores, and the amount of undergrad faculty
- Gloria Bernal had a very informative flow chart of how the study was set up that really helped me
- more academic study presentations should include this to help people quickly understand how the experiments were run
- The most relevant factors to Columbian (country) students college decisions: the amount of scholarship money and the quality of the college
- Most college-going interventions take a behavioral view: they try to simplify the information and reduce its complexity through reminders, steps, etc.
- The College Board did a massive study with 700,000+ students basically replicating a lot of the popular interventions through sending personalized college info through mailers and emails and, unfortunately, found little impact at that scale. They didn't affect college attendance, the quality of colleges attended, or the expected cost of said colleges. Students also generally didn't apply to the recommended colleges that were suggested
- Although I would've loved to see large positive impacts, I don't think this closes the door on low-touch, personalized interventions at scale. Maybe they don't come via mail or email?
- HS Seniors have their college lists in mind by senior year, so behavioral nudges to better quality and/or cheaper colleges should happen before then. And if they are nudged senior year, it's normally because of sudden changes in test scores/financial aid awards
- A large percentage of HS students still don't know much about FAFSA verification or what their next steps are in the summer before they enroll or even if they got and accepted a financial aid award or not
- We need to communicate these things much clearer
- It's important for colleges to look at leading academic momentum indicators, which can be easily predicted at most colleges and community colleges via machine learning; can predict odds of graduation at close to 80%
- Causal and prediction questions are different but can be complementary. It's important to identify which you're looking for
- Most adults don't have strong opinions either for or against income share agreements, except for parents currently paying for college which oppose them
- Interesting thing about ISA's is that they reverse the inter-generational way of paying for college: instead of currently paying for future benefits (like social security), you're paying for current benefits in the future
- Simplified grant language, along with little messages of belonging and encouragement, raised the percentage of people that followed through and took advantage of them
- Previous study finding: Dynarski and Deming found that for every additional $1,000 in aid money, a college would see a 3-4% increase in chance of enrollment
- The timing of financial aid communications is extremely important and overlooked
- To have an impact with education online, the more personalized you make it the better. The impact is also not the same across all courses, as it varies greatly by type of subject and the instructor
- One way to scale online education quickly is to have a course shell that could then be adapted by instructors
- Minority students disproportionately struggle with college-going skills such as study skills and coping strategies
- First Year Experience (FYE) courses are common at colleges and have been shown to have positive impacts across the board
- One way to provide FYE mentoring is via small groups (3) in their first semester and then 1:1 mentoring in the spring
- Simple things such as providing virtual meeting software for group communications, utilizing texting with students, and encouraging faster response times to questions, even if it's just to say that you'll have an answer at the next meeting
- In community colleges, A LOT of students are underplaced in developmental courses, which could lead to less students graduating. A simple algorithm helped more properly place students at one CC and could be adopted easily elsewhere
- We should be careful to attribute more diversity at colleges to affirmative action plans, more so changing population demographics
- A socio-economic status based diversity plan can roughly replicate a race-based one
- I didn't know what "pair programming" was before but I like the switching of "driver" and "navigator" responsibilities that is encouraged in it
- I also didn't know that standardized admission tests first came about to help identify higher achieving, low-income students that were previously hidden. This was surprising because most of the coverage you hear now about SAT/ACT is how they hurt disadvantaged students. Also it was surprising to hear that the grad school standardized tests are better for minorities than whites, although it wasn't fully clear how
- The main differences in standardized test performance by race/SES are due to differences in test prep courses, personalized tutors, and an overall familiarity with the process
- Another surprising note: There's no evidence of test optional policies actually helping diversify colleges
- One thing colleges need to do a better job accounting for is local information for where that student is coming from
- Framing, reference points, and spatial choice architecture all have behavioral effects important to students
- Framing: showing students things such as expected salary earnings vs. showing them graduation rate or the cost of the college vs. the amount of aid given
- Reference points: setting estimated average costs by SES quintile
- Choice architecture: the sequence of info presented
- Good college counseling helps reduce the hassle of figuring out the college admissions process, it helps with setting proper defaults, assists with applying, and providing timely outreach
- Students surveyed in 2017 said they chose their college based primarily on the quality of the teaching and the availability of scholarships
- When the school name is hidden, people prefer the cost more. When the school name is shown, they prefer the perceived quality more
- It's interesting but not surprising that we act more rational when the school name is not shown
- In China, they have a much more centralized college admissions process based solely on your college entrance exam score and rank-order choice of college. A simple machine learning algorithm helps students quickly and accurately establish where they match academically
- Student loans are generally bad for borrowers intending to go to a 2-year college
- Setting a reference point of the max amount of loan possible reduced 2-year college borrowing whereas information about not having to borrow all of what was possible had no effect
- Students that are particularly loan-averse are Hispanics and those that are already risk-averse
- Creating an opt-out procedure for an academic grant increased the number of people that accepted the grant, not surprisingly
- The Bureau of Labor Statistics has 20 year projections of careers that students can use to determine if a college degree is needed or not