Comments on: A Brand New Day for Federal Higher Education Funding http://www.quickanded.com/2009/02/brand-new-day-for-federal-higher.html The Quick and the Ed is an education blog published by Education Sector, an independent think tank in Washington D.C. The Quick and the Ed offers in-depth analysis on the latest in education policy and research. Fri, 12 Mar 2010 14:29:25 -0500 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.1 hourly 1 By: Anonymous http://www.quickanded.com/2009/02/brand-new-day-for-federal-higher.html/comment-page-1#comment-476 Anonymous Fri, 27 Feb 2009 02:36:00 +0000 http://www.quickanded.com/wordpress/?p=1475#comment-476 It seems to me that this has been studied quite a bit (see reams of institutional research literature), and it's not that complicated. If low income students get enough grant (and even reasonable amounts of loan) money so that they can have a similar educational experience to that of wealthier kids, in other words, so that they don't have to work full-time while attending school, they graduate. <br/><br/>If they have to work, slow down their educations to manage it all, live off-campus, cut corners on books and other costs, well, they're less likely to graduate. Pell grants aren't enough. I wish someone would do an experiment at a state school where they randomly gave full scholarships to 200 low-income students who would normally just get a pell grant and a subsidized loan (and a job, and some credit card debt...). <br/><br/>I bet you fifty bucks those students would have comparable graduation rates to similarly-qualified rich kids. That wouldn't cost $2.5 billion to study (even after you paid me fifty bucks for being right!)--you could save the money for scholarships!<br/><br/>Funding scholarships at a level where poor students can afford to attend residential colleges full time for four years probably wouldn't be very controversial within higher ed. It's just expensive. And even now, I'm not sure the US is ready for that, though our industrialized peer nations have been doing it for a long time... It seems to me that this has been studied quite a bit (see reams of institutional research literature), and it’s not that complicated. If low income students get enough grant (and even reasonable amounts of loan) money so that they can have a similar educational experience to that of wealthier kids, in other words, so that they don’t have to work full-time while attending school, they graduate.

If they have to work, slow down their educations to manage it all, live off-campus, cut corners on books and other costs, well, they’re less likely to graduate. Pell grants aren’t enough. I wish someone would do an experiment at a state school where they randomly gave full scholarships to 200 low-income students who would normally just get a pell grant and a subsidized loan (and a job, and some credit card debt…).

I bet you fifty bucks those students would have comparable graduation rates to similarly-qualified rich kids. That wouldn’t cost $2.5 billion to study (even after you paid me fifty bucks for being right!)–you could save the money for scholarships!

Funding scholarships at a level where poor students can afford to attend residential colleges full time for four years probably wouldn’t be very controversial within higher ed. It’s just expensive. And even now, I’m not sure the US is ready for that, though our industrialized peer nations have been doing it for a long time…

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