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Tag: Higher education affordability

  • Reporter’s Notebook: Why are campus political groups so hard to track down?

    Reporter’s Notebook: Why are campus political groups so hard to track down?

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    The Republican Party has spent the past few years struggling through a deep divide, largely caused by fallout from a contested election. The Democratic Party seems to be disjointed, too, though the cause is less clear.

    No, I’m not talking about Congress or the national committees in Washington trying to control the future direction our country is headed. I’m talking about college students. 

    For many decades, campuses have had clubs for College Democrats and College Republicans, but over the past few years these clubs and the organizations that oversee them have fallen into disarray. The 2021 election for the new leader of the College Republican National Committee was contested, and the group has frayed as a result. Tension and accusations of racism have plagued the top leaders of the College Democrats of America in recent years. And students on both sides said that it was difficult to stay organized and afloat during the pandemic, causing some chapters and state-level organizations to become dormant or die off completely. 

    For politically oriented students, such campus organizations can be crucial parts of their college experience, said Amy Binder, a professor of sociology at Johns Hopkins University’s SNF Agora Institute, which is dedicated to furthering civic engagement and informed dialogue. 

    “Students who are active in politics in college are likely to remain active in politics. And many of them want careers in politics or politics-adjacent sectors,” Binder said. “So, what’s happening on college campuses is really important for how young leaders are being socialized and shaped.”

    At The Hechinger Report, we’ve been reporting on how the culture wars and the growing political divide are beginning to affect where students go to college, which led us to publish The College Welcome Guide.  It collects data on factors like enrollment figures, graduation rates, free speech climate, incidence of hate crimes, services for veterans, LGBTQ+ resource centers from more than 4,000 campuses, as well as showing state laws that affect college students.

    It seemed obvious that we should include campus political organizations in our table. I volunteered to get the lists of all College Republican and College Democrat chapters in the country.

    I assumed it would be an easy task – simply Google the national organizations, find lists of campus chapters, copy them into an Excel spreadsheet and send it to my editor. At most, I thought I’d need to send an email to a press contact.

    To my surprise, neither the College Democrats of America nor the College Republican National Committee had a list of chapters on their website. The Democrats have a list of links to state-level organizations, and the Republicans had a “find a chapter” feature, but no way to pull a list of all chapters. All the emails I sent to the Democrats bounced back, and the Republicans didn’t reply. We tried other search methods, too, but in the end, Hechinger editors decided that the information we had would be a nightmare to fact-check and so we couldn’t responsibly include this category in The College Welcome Guide.

    Related: Culture wars on campus start to affect students’ choices for college 

    I agreed – but I was determined to find out why we couldn’t accomplish this task.

    The split in the College Republican National Committee seems to be the primary reason that the College Republican chapters were so tough to track down. 

    Courtney Hope Britt, the chair of the organization, said that there had been some cracks in the organization ideologically before she ran for chair in 2021, but the strife increased after her win was contested. Some state-level organizations and chapters decided to disaffiliate with the College Republican National Committee at this point.

    Britt, who graduated from law school at the University of Richmond in her home state of Virginia before she ran for chair, said she had worked hard to win her seat, driving around the country to meet with students for her campaign during the pandemic. She said that not everyone supported her, but that she won the election fairly, despite complaints otherwise. 

    “We put a lot of our hope and faith in students because they should be young and idealistic, but in a lot of ways, they’re just refracting what they see in larger politics. It’s not fair to students, because the adults who are role models to them aren’t doing much better.”

    Amy Binder, professor of sociology, Johns Hopkins University

    “Some of them moved on and said, ‘Okay, this is the reality,’ and some of them took their cues from what they’re seeing nationally in politics, that if you don’t like the result of something you just deny them,” Britt said. “I disagree with that fundamentally.” 

    Britt won re-election this summer and will continue to serve as the organization’s chair until 2025. Leading the organization and fundraising to keep it afloat is her full-time job.  At the start of the fall 2023 semester, she said, there were 240 clubs.

    She said that running the organization over the past two years has been challenging, though not exclusively because of the election-related drama. 

    “I think that everyone in party leadership, at least internally, knows right now that it is difficult to lead the party in its current state,” Britt said. “The Republican Party has a lot of very tense divisions. I mean, just look at the House Republicans over the last month. I think that I need not say much more than that.”

    With all the turmoil, law student Will Donahue saw an opportunity to create a new national organization.

    Donahue is from California, whose chapter had clashed with the College Republican National Committee before the 2021 election controversy.  He created the College Republicans of America in the spring of 2023 to give some of the chapters that had left the opportunity to recharter with another organization, with a new focus. 

    He wants the new organization to emphasize professional and personal development, to prepare students to be successful in both their political careers and their lives. They plan to partner with organizations that teach financial literacy and investing strategies, he said, and to emphasize community service.

    “I think it kind of repairs the national image I think people have about Republicans that may or may not necessarily be true,” Donahue said. “But if the youth generation is leading the ground movement to try to make the planet a better place and become global citizens, I think that’s the direction that we need to move in.”

    On the left, the trouble among college Democrats has been more difficult to identify. There is no contact information on the College Democrats of America page, which is embedded in the Democratic National Committee website. I found a few email addresses elsewhere online, but all bounced back with error messages.

    Related: Getting rid of the ‘gotcha’: College students try to tame political dialogue 

    Finally, on Nov. 2, I got in touch with Justin Parker, the newly elected national vice president of the College Democrats of America. 

    The organization has what Parker calls a “colorful past.” He hasn’t been involved for long, but he said that lack of transparency among past leadership led to drama, resignations and the disaffiliation of state-level organizations from the national group over the last few years.

    Right now, he said,  27 states are affiliated with his group, and he hopes to coax some of the groups that left to rejoin. 

    Parker said he and other leaders have plans to revamp the organization to increase communication between chapters and state organizations across the country, so that they can learn from each other’s experiences and all become better.

    Among those plans, Parker said, is continuing to work on a freshly revamped independent website that still has no contact information and no chapter list. The rebuilding work is crucial, he said, in order to reach as many young voters as possible before the 2024 election.

    Jen Anderson, a sophomore at Montana State University in Bozeman, helped resurrect her campus chapter of the College Democrats and later the statewide Montana College Democrats after she was unhappy with some of the policies enacted by the state legislature. She said the state-level student organization had been dormant since at least 2020. 

    “I think that everyone in party leadership, at least internally, knows right now that it is difficult to lead the party in its current state.”

    Courtney Hope Britt Chair, College Republican National Committee

    She and other leaders recently decided to disaffiliate from the College Democrats of America because they wanted to focus their energy on the issues Montana residents face. She said the group plans to avoid anything related to the presidential election, geopolitical conflict and the culture wars.

    In Michigan, sophomore Jacob Welch has had a similar experience. He helped restart the College Democrats chapter at Grand Valley State University during his freshman year, then worked to re-ignite the state-level organization and was elected president. 

    In early October, Welch said, the Michigan Federation of College Democrats decided to leave the College Democrats of America, because the Michigan members believe college political groups should focus more on taking action around societal issues they’d like to see changed. Like Anderson in Montana, he said he wanted the group to focus on issues that are priorities for Michigan residents.

    On both sides, students said that participating in their campus political club gave them a chance to spend time with like-minded students and make friends. Those stakes seemed to be a bit higher for conservative students, who are more likely to be in the political minority on college campuses.

    Related: Hampered by pandemic restrictions, campus organizers are working overtime to make student voting easier

    Britt, the chair of the College Republican National Committee, said that, for conservative students, finding a sense of belonging of campus can sometimes feel difficult when few other students share their views and even faculty seem not to respect their opinions.

    Britt recalls sitting in an election law class during the Trump presidency and hearing her professor say that the Republican Party was dead. She was confident enough in her views by then to be comfortable speaking up, but she said it was only one example of feeling ostracized for her political orientation.

    “I think it’s useful both for those students to have a sense of belongingness, to have a home, but also for the rest of the campus community because they’re bringing ideas and conversations up that otherwise may not be presented without them being there,” Britt said.

    Experts agree on the social value of these clubs, and some say that the political value can be great, too.

    Binder, the sociology professor, said that she thinks students interested in politics are looking beyond the two mainstream groups.

    For example, she said, some students on the left see the College Democrats as being “hopelessly in the center” and ultra-career oriented, sometimes calling them “resume builders.” She thinks leftist students are more likely to gravitate towards gender alliances, multicultural centers or groups that advocate for a specific cause. They might seek out groups like Young Democratic Socialists of America, which is focused on community organizing. On the right, Binder said, some conservative students are being drawn to groups such as Turning Point USA, a group that advocates for conservative politics on campuses, and aims to promote freedom, according to its website.

    She thinks there is a tendency to scold students for not “holding up these hallowed institutions” of the political parties.

    “We put a lot of our hope and faith in students because they should be young and idealistic, but in a lot of ways, they’re just refracting what they see in larger politics,” Binder said. “I kind of feel like that’s not fair to students, because the adults who are role models to them aren’t doing much better.”

    This story about campus politics was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education.

    The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.

    Join us today.

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    Olivia Sanchez

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  • Canada treats adjunct faculty better than the US – and it pays off

    Canada treats adjunct faculty better than the US – and it pays off

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    MONTREAL — Raad Jassim really likes his job.

    As an adjunct faculty member at a Canadian university, Jassim has four teaching assistants to help him grade assignments and answer questions. He makes the equivalent of about $7,000 per course, per term. He has a multiyear contract and can typically pick the subjects that he teaches. He has an office, access to professional training and government-provided health insurance.

    All of these things, he said, help him focus on the reason that he’s there: his students.

    And few of these benefits, or that kind of pay, are available to his counterparts south of the border, in the United States.

    The comparatively poor working situation of American adjuncts “is a sad story,” said Jassim, who teaches corporate finance, real estate investment and managerial and engineering economics at McGill University. “It breaks my heart.”

    The Redpath Museum on the campus of McGill University in Montreal. Part-time faculty at McGill earn more, on average, and have more benefits than their counterparts south of the border in the United States. Credit: Allen McEachern for The Hechinger Report

    Now there’s new scrutiny of how adjuncts’ pay and benefits affect not only them but also their students, who often go into debt to cover rising tuition.

    Some 44 percent of American university and college faculty are part-time, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

    U.S. adjuncts worry about their ability to engage with students and how well their students are learning, according to a new study that compares Canadian adjuncts with what it calls the “woefully under-supported and poorly compensated” American adjuncts.

    “You’re almost like a starving artist.”

    Antwan Daniels, an adjunct in Kansas City

    “The people we’re relying on to teach our youth are dedicated and feel meaning in their jobs but are being relied upon without making a living wage,” said Candace Sue, executive director of Chegg’s Center for Digital Learning, a spin-off of the textbook and study help company that produces resources about technology and education and commissioned the study.

    “It’s not fair to them — we know that. But it’s also not fair to the students who are relying on them to be focused on the classroom and to keep them going.”

    The research is among the latest to document the woes of what has grown into an army of 792,000 U.S. university part-time and contingent faculty who work part time or on fixed contracts.

    Related: What’s in a word? A way to help impatient college students better connect to jobs

    American adjuncts earn a median of $3,700 per course, an amount that has declined significantly when adjusted for inflation, the American Association of University Professors, or AAUP, says. The figure comes from 900 universities and colleges that provide employment data for about 370,000 full-time and 90,000 part-time faculty.

    More than one in four adjuncts earn below the federal poverty level for a family of four, another new report, from the American Federation of Teachers, or AFT, finds. More than three-quarters are guaranteed employment for only one term or semester at a time. That information is based on a survey distributed to adjuncts who are AFT members and, through social media, to adjuncts who are not members of the union; 1,043 responded. The AFT represents 85,000 adjuncts who have unionized.

    “If you’re cobbling together jobs at different universities to make ends meet, you don’t have the time to do the work you want to with your students,” said AFT President Randi Weingarten.

    The arts building at McGill University in Montreal. Part-time faculty at McGill get perks including email accounts so that their students can reach out for recommendations and advice. Credit: Allen McEachern for The Hechinger Report

    Fifty-seven percent of adjunct faculty, and almost all of the adjuncts at community colleges, get no medical benefits, the AAUP says. About one in five rely on Medicare or Medicaid, according to the AFT.

    “You’re almost like a starving artist,” said Antwan Daniels, an adjunct in Kansas City and father of four who teaches chemistry at three different universities — one in person and two online — while also working on a doctorate in higher education administration.

    Though much of the conversation around these salaries and benefits has centered on the toll it takes on adjunct faculty members themselves, researchers have turned to documenting how it is affecting students.

    Forty-eight percent of university and college faculty are adjuncts, while fewer than a quarter are now full time and tenured.

    “Like with everything, if a contingent faculty [member] doesn’t have security themselves, it’s really hard to do that million and one things to help their students,” said Josh Kim, a sociologist at Dartmouth and a senior fellow at the Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship at Georgetown University, who began his own career as an adjunct.

    More than a third of adjuncts in the Center for Digital Learning study, which was conducted by Hanover Research, said low pay and lack of benefits or job security affected their ability to engage with students and the learning students take with them from class.

    Related: Culture wars on campus start to affect students’ choices for college

    Adjunct faculty are more likely than faculty in general to say they don’t have enough time to prepare their courses and don’t receive enough administrative support, according to a breakdown of a September faculty survey provided to The Hechinger Report by the educational publishing and technology company Cengage.

    “Unless the school has a well-rounded support system for the adjunct faculty, you’re serving the students at probably 60 percent of your capacity,” Daniels said. “You’re having a rushed conversation. You’re trying to distill it down to, ‘What do you need at this moment?’ ” Students, he said, “are not served in the way they should be.”

    Fewer than half of adjuncts say they’ve received the training they need to help students in crisis, the AFT survey found.

    More than one in four adjuncts earn below the federal poverty level for a family of four. Fifty-seven percent get no medical benefits.

    “We have a population of people that are being depended on to educate students that don’t have all the tools in their toolkit to do it in the way that we as a society expect them to be supported to do their jobs,” Sue said.

    These new studies follow earlier findings by the Delphi Project on the Changing Faculty and Student Success showing that increased reliance on part-time and non-tenure track faculty resulted in higher dropout rates, lower grade-point averages and graduation rates and a reduced likelihood that community college students will continue on to four-year institutions for bachelor’s degrees, among other things.

    Related: Some universities’ response to budget woes: Making faculty teach more courses

    “There are now two decades of research saying that having more exposure to part-time faculty who lack the most support leads to more dropouts, lower graduation rates, lower GPAs and difficulty finding a major,” said Adrianna Kezar, director of the Delphi Project and the Pullias Center for Higher Education at the University of Southern California, where it’s housed.

    Last-minute hiring and lack of job security are among the biggest problems, Kezar said. But “it’s overwhelming and cumulative, the number of bad working conditions, so you can’t totally distill out one or two. There are so many of these things that add up.”

    What’s bringing new attention to this issue, she said, is that “institutions are being held accountable more” for their success rates, “so they’re more worried about these connections.”

    “There are now two decades of research saying that having more exposure to part-time faculty who lack the most support leads to more dropouts, lower graduation rates, lower GPAs and difficulty finding a major.”

    Adrianna Kezar, director, Delphi Project on the Changing Faculty and Student Success

    Things appear brighter in Canada, the Center for Digital Learning study found in its comparison. Canadian adjuncts were almost three times less likely to be concerned about low salaries, and 87 percent of them get benefits.

    “It does show that alternatives are available,” the report concluded.

    While policies like that require financial investments by universities and colleges, Weingarten said it’s mostly a matter of these institutions’ priorities.

    Jay Lister, who teaches part time at McGill University in Montreal. “I can’t fathom what I would do without the job security,” he says. Credit: Allen McEachern for The Hechinger Report

    Instructional spending by universities, per student, goes down as the proportion of the faculty who are adjuncts goes up, a researcher from the Center for the Study of Academic Labor at Colorado State University found.

    People think the cost of higher education is increasing “because there are more and more resources that are going into teaching and learning and it’s completely the opposite,” Weingarten said. “Where is the rising tuition going? Where’s the money going?”

    Life as a Canadian adjunct isn’t perfect, said Jay Lister, who teaches education at McGill. But “I have guaranteed employment,” he said. “Even days when I’m just normal stressed, I worry about my students. I can’t fathom what I would do without the job security.”

    At a coffee shop near the campus, wearing a union T-shirt, an Expos cap and a long beard tied with elastics, Lister said he also has enough to live on — though he said that might be different if he had kids.

    Related: With tenure under attack, professors join forces with a powerful teachers’ union

    Heather McPherson, a contingent lecturer at McGill, said her daughter — a doctoral candidate in anthropology at a university in California — has none of the relative job security she herself enjoys.

    “She’s complained a lot,” McPherson said, outside the Faculty of Education Building on the slope of Mount Royal, which overlooks the city. “I don’t think her students suffer, but her stress level does.”

    Adjuncts at McGill even get university email addresses for up to nine semesters after they teach a course, so students can reach out for recommendations or advice, said Jassim, who is president of the university’s Course Lecturers & Instructors Union.

    Heather McPherson, a contingent lecturer at McGill University in Montreal. McPherson’s daughter also has part-time teaching duties — as a doctoral candidate in the United States — but with less job security. “She’s complained a lot,” McPherson says. Credit: Allen McEachern for The Hechinger Report

    Back in the United States, Kim likened the plight of adjuncts to those of autoworkers and Hollywood writers and actors, who have or are now striking for improved conditions.

    “We have this system where the people who actually do the work are getting the least benefits and the least security. I think this is all related,” he said.

    “What an enormous resource,” Kim said. “We have these motivated people. Just a little more security and a little more recognition and a little more pay would make such a difference.”

    This story about adjunct professors was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for our higher education newsletter.

    The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.

    Join us today.

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    Jon Marcus

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  • OPINION: With a little extra help and support, rural students can overcome daunting barriers to higher education – The Hechinger Report

    OPINION: With a little extra help and support, rural students can overcome daunting barriers to higher education – The Hechinger Report

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    For many rural students, higher education means waking up before the sun four days a week, then driving an hour through cornfields or pine forests to reach the only college for 100 miles.

    It’s a far cry from the awkward parental drop-off, search for elusive twin XL sheets and Olivia Rodrigo wall poster most people associate with the back-to-college season.

    For the more than 33 million people living in education deserts, college-going can be a drastically different experience. In addition to long commutes, homesickness and culture shock, many students arrive underprepared in key subjects like math and science.

    Their new college calendar may not be conducive to seasonal demand for jobs harvesting, hunting or fighting wildfires. They often grapple with local or even familial skepticism about the value of higher education, especially in areas where the main industries have not historically required a college degree and where students who leave town for college prove unlikely to return.

    For all of these reasons, despite high school graduation rates similar to those in suburbs and cities, rural college-going rates are much lower. For rural students, the calculation about going to and staying in college is very different. Montana is seeking to make that calculation a little more positive through a new program, Montana 10.

    Consider Baker, Montana, population 1,800. For high schoolers there dreaming of a college education, the nearest option, Dawson Community College, is about 70 miles away.

    The nearest four-year institution, Dickinson State University, is 100 miles away, across the border in North Dakota. Students seeking a traditional four-year college experience in their home state must travel more than 225 miles to Montana State University in Billings.

    That’s why these students need a little extra help both adjusting to and staying in school, and why they need someone like Julie Pettitt-Booth, executive director of new student services at MSU Billings, who understands what they’re going through as they adjust to college and the big city for the first time.

    Related: Rural students are the least likely to go to college

    Coming from tight-knit communities, many rural students struggle with isolation and homesickness, as well as financial constraints. Such challenges are especially prevalent for students coming from low-income homes, for students who are the first in their families to attend college and for those who have especially long commutes to school.

    Each challenge makes it easier to contemplate dropping out. That’s where Pettitt-Booth and college support staff across the state come in: providing one-on-one care to help students stay focused and clear those hurdles.

    If a comprehensive student support program can work in Montana the way that it has worked in other places, the state could see more degrees and less debt, spurring economic stability for rural towns and the state as a whole.

    The Montana University System’s new program called Montana 10 offers academic, social and financial supports designed to help low-income, rural and Native American students get acclimated to college, stay enrolled and reach graduation on time.

    To do this, Montana 10 simultaneously offers a combination of student support services — advising, career planning, academic help in first-year math and English classes — and financial supports like textbook assistance and scholarships.

    In exchange, students must enroll full-time, complete their federal financial aid paperwork and meet with program staff regularly to stay on track.

    The goal is simple: graduate students.

    At the heart of the program are advisers who understand what students need both logistically and emotionally and who recognize what it means (good and bad) for a student, a family and a community when students leave for college.

    They also help students navigate unique financial aid situations, such as how to qualify when their family’s assets are all farm equipment or when their parents live off the grid.

    These advisers know how to help students who want to leave their small towns behind as well as those who commute daily from the homesteads where they plan to spend their whole lives.

    Related: STUDENT VOICE: Why rural students like me are ‘meant to be here’ in college

    Building students’ sense of belonging, along with financial and academic supports, can help students stay in college semester after semester. Montana 10 follows a tradition of comprehensive approaches to student success that have been proven effective in rigorous research studies in improving students’ likelihood of staying in college and earning a credential.

    There’s also a big payoff: According to Montana state officials, of Montana jobs paying more than $50,000 a year created between 2011 and 2021, 63 percent went to degree holders.

    In eastern Montana, the most rural part of the state and home to towns like Baker, more than 60 percent of high-demand occupations have workforce shortages, especially in vital fields like education and healthcare.

    If a comprehensive student support program can work in Montana the way that it has worked in other places, the state could see more degrees and less debt, spurring economic stability for rural towns and the state as a whole.

    That means illuminating a winding path through the Rockies toward a postsecondary degree. A path that will lead to more teachers, nurses, engineers and tradesmen.

    Rural colleges matter. When they’re the only option for a hundred miles, getting students in the door, and even more importantly, keeping them enrolled and helping them graduate, can have far-reaching benefits.

    Alyssa Ratledge is a research associate at MDRC, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization that is conducting an evaluation of Montana 10.

    This story about rural students and college was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s newsletter.

    The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn't mean it's free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.

    Join us today.

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  • OPINION: Here’s why a costly college education should not be the only path to career success – The Hechinger Report

    OPINION: Here’s why a costly college education should not be the only path to career success – The Hechinger Report

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    More than 40 million Americans — roughly one out of every seven adults — have earned college credit but have no degree to show for their time and money.

    Florida native Alix Petkov is one of them. He enrolled in college right after high school with the idea of becoming a psychiatrist. Unaware that this career choice required medical school — and unable to afford college, much less a graduate education — Petkov changed majors twice and found himself making only halting progress toward a bachelor’s degree.

    An on-campus job in information technology rekindled his interest in computers, but the gig paid just $10 per hour, and his computer science classes covered the same things he had already picked up at work.

    So Petkov quit college roughly 30 credits short of a degree, with $16,000 in student loans and a credit card balance of $4,000 from paying living expenses.

    He burnished his tech portfolio with freelance computer work, applied for IT jobs, worked in restaurants and stewed over his frustrating experience, later saying that “College only destroyed me.”

    It doesn’t have to be this way. Like millions of other learners, Petkov was forced into an outdated and bureaucratic model of higher education that’s not designed for how people navigate learning and work today.

    Far too many learners are pausing their education long before they earn a credential because they run out of money, time or patience. Or they wind up in a program that lacks the support and structure to meet their individualized needs and goals.

    Related: The college degree gap between Black and white Americans was always bad. It’s getting worse

    Learners need better access to lower-cost, shorter-term programs that help them achieve their career goals.

    Federal and state governments and postsecondary institutions can and should adopt policies and practices that will help students build career pathways and make alternatives to a college degree more accessible, affordable and practical.

    To achieve this, federal and state policymakers must ease some of the guardrails meant to protect learners from making “bad” decisions — after all, some of these guardrails have stifled postsecondary innovation and limited competition between college and noncollege options, ultimately restricting learners’ choices. Students must also receive better information about college and noncollege pathways and outcomes both before they begin a program and while they are enrolled.

    College isn’t always the best option for every learner.

    Petkov said he received little — and often incorrect — information in high school and college about higher education and potential alternatives. No one advised him, for example, that he could save thousands of dollars by completing university-required general education classes at a local community college.

    Looking back, Petkov admits he would have pursued a different path altogether if he had a better up-front understanding of the costs and courses required to complete a degree.

    His story, which he shared with me this summer over a video call after I requested an introduction, illustrates why students need more transparent financial counseling and more options for using financial aid beyond the limited college options currently afforded by student aid programs.

    Giving high school students information about program costs and financial aid well before they apply to college will aid their decision-making. Students should be able to use Pell Grants for noncollege alternative programs that have proven track records of moving students into jobs that pay family-sustaining wages.

    Petkov said it didn’t become apparent until later that his financial aid and campus job wouldn’t cover all of his college expenses. Because he was awarded Pell Grants, he borrowed less than other students.

    But Pell Grants can be used in just one setting: college. Had Petkov been allowed to use the federal subsidy to pursue a college alternative — like an accelerated tech or healthcare upskilling program from a noncollege provider — he would have done that instead.

    Related: OPINION: Often overlooked vocational-tech schools provide great solutions to student debt, labor shortages

    Because of time and expense, college isn’t always the best option for every learner. Mounting evidence on program-level outcomes shows that far too many of the options that the government deems “safe” simply because they are accredited have failed learners and left them no better off than if they had not pursued college at all.

    Petkov didn’t find his true path until more than a year after he quit college. While searching online for IT jobs, he stumbled on information about Merit America, a nonprofit offering low-cost programs that prepare people for tech careers. (Merit America is a grantee of the Charles Koch Foundation, part of the Stand Together philanthropic community, where the author is a senior fellow.)

    Merit America built on Petkov’s existing IT knowledge to give him new tech skills that allowed him to push past self-doubt and launch a successful career. After completing the program, Petkov landed a tech coordinator’s job at a nonprofit in Washington, D.C., that started him at $45,000 — more than twice what he was making in food service.

    Two jobs later, he’s currently the IT director of an executive coaching firm and makes a little more than $100,000 per year. A University of Virginia analysis shows that Merit America completers see an average annual wage increase of $24,000 three or more months after finishing the program.

    Merit America is among the growing number of providers preparing students for placement into high-demand tech and healthcare careers. Yet students from low-income backgrounds who rely on financial aid and loans often get little guidance about such college alternatives and may instead be advised to pursue a college degree.

    It’s time to open more doors to short-term, noncollege options, so that students like Petkov can access more personalized options to help them thrive.

    Steven Taylor is a senior fellow on postsecondary education at Stand Together Trust. He leads the postsecondary education and workforce policy portfolio and partnership strategy.

    This story about debt but no degree was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s newsletter.

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    Steven Taylor

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