Professor Sue Dynarski testifies before House Subcommittee on Education and Labor on May 9th, 2019 on the topic titled “The Cost of Non-Completion: Improving Student Outcomes in Higher Education.”
Transcript:
I'll first recognize now
Dr. Dynarski for
for your remarks.
And then we'll go
all the way through.
Thank you.
Chairwoman Davis, ranking member,
Smucker, and members
of the subcommittee.
Thank you for the opportunity
to testify today.
a person can make.
My dad was a high-school dropout.
I'm a college professor.
I have seen firsthand
the power of
education to change
people's lives.
A bachelor's degree pays
for itself several times
over in the form
of higher income,
lower unemployment, and
increased economic security.
College graduates with a BA,
earn 80 percent more than
those with just a
high school degree.
Within ten years of
college graduation,
the typical BA
recipient will have
recouped the cost of
attending college.
Those who attend college
without graduating see
much smaller benefits,
especially for men.
The earnings of non completers
more closely resemble those of
high school graduates than
of college graduates.
Rising student debt has shifted
financial risk on to students and
makes graduation
even more important.
Those who earn a BA rarely
default on their loans.
Most defaults are
by non completers.
Now while college completion has,
college attendance
has risen steadily,
degree attainment has stagnated.
That's because half
of college students
dropout without earning a degree.
As a result, only about 30
percent of adults have a BA.
For those from the lowest income
families, it's 10 percent.
For Black adults,
it's 22 percent and
for Hispanic adults, 15 percent.
And most people start college
intending to earn a degree,
most do not succeed.
The Department of
Education projects
a sharp increase in the number
of college students who
are Black or Hispanic,
while the number of White
students will barely
budge. Unless we increase
completion rates for
disadvantaged Black and Latino
students we're looking at
a sharp decrease in the
education of our population.
Now completion rates vary
dramatically by sector.
The odds of graduating if you
start out at a non-profit
for your college,
are 76 percent. At a public
four-year college,
65 percent. At a
community college,
37 percent, and at a
for-profit school, 35 percent.
At hundreds of schools,
only one out of five
students will graduate.
At 300 colleges, students
are more likely to
default on their student loans
than they are to get a degree.
The very low completion rates at
for-profits are
especially troubling.
Students attending
for-profits take on
much higher debt and
they're far more
likely to default on their loans.
That's because evidence
shows that students
don't get an earnings boost from
attending a for-profit college.
Now why do students dropout?
Students with weaker
academic preparation are
more likely to dropout
unsurprisingly.
But even well-prepared
students drop out of college.
For example, a
high-performing student from
a low-income family is no more
likely to graduate college than
a mediocre student from
a high-income family.
Part of this is
financial insecurity.
Students need to know that
their college costs are
covered in order to
focus on their studies.
Our complicated,
bureaucratic financial aid
system often fails them.
Even more importantly,
school quality matters.
Better schools produce
better outcomes.
This is obvious when we're
talking about K-12 education
which is free for students.
Since it's free, we focus
our policy discussions
on how to make
that free education a good
education. For college,
we are rightly concerned
about affordability,
and we talk about it quite a bit,
but we can't stop there.
An affordable school
is worthless or even
harmful if it doesn't
provide a quality education.
Evidence shows that resources
matter for college completion,
especially for
disadvantaged students.
Yet those with the
greatest needs attend
the schools with the
fewest resources.
In elementary and
secondary education,
we steer additional money and
support towards students
with the greatest need.
Federal money sends
federal funding,
sends money to schools who
teach English language learners,
those with learning
disabilities and the
economically
disadvantaged. In college,
the equation is flipped.
Schools that have
most students with
the greatest need get
the fewest resources.
At private universities per
pupil instructural spending is
about 45 thousand dollars a year, at
community colleges, 10 thousand.
Now we've got strong
evidence about
what works in
increasing completion.
And unsurprisingly
it costs something.
At the City University
of New York,
the ASAP program
more than doubled
the graduation rate of
community college students.
Similar program in
Ohio, similar success.
These programs now serve tens
of thousands of students.
They cost a few thousand
dollars per student per year,
which still leaves
community colleges spending
far less than four year colleges.
Stable funding is critical
for schools if
they're to succeed.
But when states face
a budget crunch it's
typically the public
colleges that get cut first.
Spending on public colleges took
a very hard hit
during the recession.
The result was
decreased resources,
higher tuition prices,
and high dropout rates.
Facing underfunded and
overflowing public
colleges, students
turned in large numbers
to for-profit colleges.
They left those colleges
with huge student debts
and worthless credentials.
This pattern is likely to
repeat itself with
the next recession.
Unless we make a change,
we will see another spike
in for-profit enrollment,
another spike in
student loan default.
Unless we consistently
give our public colleges
the resources they need
to educate our students.