To boost enrollment and meet workforce needs, many states are offering free community college programs. It’s a well-intentioned (and bipartisan) idea to help people get the credentials they need, and states build their supply of college-educated workers.

But does free really mean free? Do these programs effectively bring students back to college? And does saying something’s free diminish its value?

Research shows that free college has had some effect, but not as much as you might think.

It doesn’t mean that students still don’t have to pay for food, rent, books, supplies, transportation and other living costs, which at community colleges often cost more than taking classes. That can stop them from taking states up on the offer. And private colleges and universities vying for the same students quietly oppose having to compete with free.

We’ll tell you what you need to know about free college. You’ll also find a searchable database of free college programs at the end of this transcript.

“College Uncovered” is made possible by Lumina Foundation.

Listen to the whole series

Scroll to the end of this transcript to find out more about this topic, and for links to more information.

Kirk: Can we get a Guinness and a pint of Jack’s Abbey?

Bartender: You got it.

Kirk: Thanks.

Jon. What are we doing? I thought we were podcasting.

Kirk: We are, Jon, but we’re also grabbing a pint at a local bar — cheers! — and getting some free snacks.

Jon: I like free. Hey — wouldn’t it be great if college was free?

Jack Freer: Yeah, not everyone is born with the same economic opportunities.

Shane Garrity: Yeah, college is a time where you can make so many friends, so many connections that can carry you forward into your personal and professional life.

Lila Cardillo: I think making college, like, ridiculously expensive, just, you know, doesn’t qualify a lot of people for entering certain professions. And just so it makes the wealth divide greater.

Kirk: That’s Jack Freer, Shane Garrity, and Lila Cardillo.

I mean, politically speaking, Jon, when it comes to college, perhaps nothing is more popular than free. And, again, that’s politically speaking.

Jon: Yeah. Of course, political talk is also free, or at least cheap. And if you stand in front of a group of Americans at, say, a bar like this one and say, ‘Hey, maybe everybody doesn’t need a college degree,’ most of the bar will not their heads and probably agree with you.

Kirk: But then if you say, ‘Yo, we all have to agree that young people need more than a high school degree to get a good job’ — nowadays, everybody at the bar will also not their head in agreement.

Jon: That’s why a lot of states are ending up in the middle. They’re making community college free.

Kirk: So where do I sign up? I love free stuff — like these bar snacks. But is free college really free? You might be surprised to hear the answer.

Kirk: This is College Uncovered, a podcast pulling back the ivy to reveal how colleges really work.

And we should note here, Jon, that our little podcast is already free, as they say, wherever you get your podcasts.

Jon: Yeah, it is, but it’s also priceless, Kirk. I’m Jon Marcus at The Hechinger Report …

Kirk: … and I’m Kirk Carapezza with GBH. Colleges don’t want you to know how they operate. So GBH …

Jon: … in collaboration with The Hechinger Report, is here to show you.

Okay, so the number of people in the U.S. with some college credit, but no degree or certificate to show for it — that number keeps growing. It’s now north of 40 million, the highest that it’s ever been. And since the pandemic, hundreds of thousands more students have dropped out, most of them low income or the first in their families to go to college. That’s the idea behind free community college. It’s a chance to woo those students back.

Kirk: Right. More states are offering free community college. Two thirds of states now have some form of free, from Michigan to New Mexico, Rhode Island to Oregon. The details differ from state to state, but free college has widespread support.

Community colleges like it because they’re facing an enrollment plunge. Businesses like it to meet their need for skilled workers. And it’s just plain good for students, who see their lifetime earnings rise. Or that’s the thinking. But it’s not quite so simple.

So do these new programs help students graduate on time and with less debt? You might be surprised to learn that free college isn’t as effective at helping students finish college as you’d think.

Today on the show: ‘The Real Cost of Free.’

I went over to Bunker Hill Community College here in Boston to meet Magno Garcia. Since he graduated from high school, Garcia has enrolled in Bunker Hill three times off and on, commuting from his home in nearby Chelsea. Back then, Garcia worked long hours in retail and as an air-conditioner technician so he could avoid student loan debt. He wanted a degree in accounting so he could move up to management at the HVAC company. But the first two times he enrolled, he ran out of cash, time and energy.

Magno Garcia: I wasn’t really motivated, so it was, like, the worst idea, because I paid for everything out of pocket.

Kirk: What do you think you needed at the time?

Magno Garcia: Guidance. I never felt like I had someone that was, like, ‘Hey, I’m here to help.’

Kirk: Overwhelmed, Garcia dropped out twice to put food on the table and pay rent. He kept working retail. He was also devoting time to a personal passion: producing his own music videos on YouTube. Now, at 34 years old, Garcia is back at Bunker Hill. And, Jon, guess what drew him back to college?

Jon: Let me guess. Was it because it was free?

Kirk: Indeed it was. Massachusetts recently began offering free community college for anyone over the age of 25 without a degree.

Magno Garcia: I’m taking advantage of that.

Kirk: Massachusetts education officials say returning students like Garcia are responsible for the first public college enrollment increase in nine years. Enrollment in public four-year colleges slowed, but community college enrollment in Massachusetts rose by 8 percent last year. All 15 community college campuses, including Bunker Hill, saw a spike. But that’s not necessarily the full story.

Davis Jenkins: It’s good news in that there’s been some stabilization, but, overall, you know, enrollment’s down.

Jon: Davis Jenkins studies community colleges at Columbia University. Despite the recent uptick, Jenkins points out that community college enrollment in Massachusetts is actually down nearly 40 percent since 2014. It’s also down nationwide. The number of community college students across the country dropped nearly 30 percent over the last 10 years.

Davis Jenkins: Community college enrollment was hit hardest during Covid, and it had been dropping for a decade before that.

Jon: To get more students back in classrooms, some political leaders want to expand free community college to all state residents, regardless of age.

But free doesn’t always work out for students. Because, while, yes, removing financial barriers is a good thing, many still can’t afford to stop working and focus on their studies. So they don’t graduate. While federal data doesn’t tell us the racial makeup of the 40 million Americans with some college and no degree, researchers say they’re likely to be more diverse, the first in their families to go to college and from low-income backgrounds, compared to their peers who did graduate.

Amanda Fernandez: We certainly have a long, long way to go — in particular, for Latino students who still to this day are experiencing the ramifications of an inequitable education, and in particular during the pandemic, when these issues were exacerbated.

Kirk: Amanda Fernandez is CEO of Latinos for Education. She says free community college signals progress. But a poll commissioned by Latinos for education and the nonprofit Mass., Inc. finds disparities in attitudes about going to college among people from different racial and ethnic backgrounds. And Latino parents were the least likely to say their child participated in college prep programs. Another survey by The Chronicle of Higher Education finds Latinos with a high school degree are more likely to be unsure how to enroll and how to pay for college.

So I asked Amanda Fernandez: Is there an information gap?

Amanda Fernandez: It’s a communication gap and it’s a belief gap. And that’s where I think it’s actually lower-hanging fruit. Because our families want their children to go to college, but they don’t have the information about how to even get into an early college program, how to get into a vocational education program. And so, therefore, their students don’t believe or their children don’t believe that they can access higher education and therefore they lose interest.

Kirk: That interest is so important, right? Because in many Latino communities, this is often a family decision.

Amanda Fernandez: Our Latino families are having conversations with their kids about, ‘What are you going to do after high school?’ But they’re not confident in being able to say, ‘You will go to college because we know how to access financial aid, we know how to apply for it.’

Kirk: Does taxpayer support for free college programs help students access college, and — more importantly — graduate?

Amanda Fernandez: I do believe some of that scholarship money does go to other supports that are needed for persistence in the community college space. But, again, you have to think about the longer term and the realities of, you know, when the average age of our community college students is around 27 years old and they have lives and they have to support their own families and children and extended families, you have to support the continued persistence.

Kirk: Sociologist Sara Goldrick-Rab agrees. Goldrick Rab is a senior fellow at Education Northwest, a nonprofit organization in Portland, Oregon. She’s author of “Paying the Price: College Costs, Financial Aid and the Betrayal of the American Dream.” And she’s a longtime advocate for free community college programs.

Sara Goldrick-Rab: For 20 years, my research has suggested that this is a very viable part of the solution, and that’s what I’d call it. I’d call it part of the solution.

Kirk: She says free community college will help close some of these gaps, but it’s not a panacea.

Sara Goldrick-Rab: It’s not meant to be all things. It’s not meant to solve every problem around college affordability, but it’s very clear that it’s targeted to the people who most need college to be affordable. Those are the people who right now are not going at all.

Jon: Goldrick-Rab says making college tuition free is not enough, because going to college costs much more than just tuition. Even if politicians do promote free college as the answer.

Sara Goldrick-Rab: They’re not accounting for the full range of costs. The number one college affordability issue in this country is housing. That’s what people are grappling with. And we’re not talking about that because most people don’t live on campus, for example.

Jon: Kirk, that’s one of the issues with these free programs. It’s not always clear what’s covered. For example, some provide funding for living expenses, but most of them do not.

The total cost of attending college includes food, housing, books, supplies, health care, transportation and a bunch of other costs. In fact, non-tuition expenses are the majority of the cost in public higher education. And if you want to find the true cost of attendance from a college, good luck, because that’s based on numbers provided by the colleges. They report them to the federal government. But they’re just estimates for everything except tuition and fees. And those estimates — they’re often grossly incorrect.

So for all of these reasons, supporters of free college say funneling everyone into a system where you’re supposed to graduate within two or four years is the wrong approach. It will only make educational inequities worse.

Kirk: And they say free community college changes who’s going to college. And it helps colleges reach students who will get the biggest return on investment.

Not everyone agrees with that logic, though, Jon. I went to Nashville, Tennessee, to check out the free college program there firsthand. Former Gov. Bill Haslam told me he had made the successful push for free community college because Tennessee employers need well-trained workers.

Bill Haslam: We had looked out at the state and realized that of all the jobs are going to exist in Tennessee in 2025, 55 percent of them would require a degree or certificate beyond high school.

Kirk: It was all about churning out more qualified workers and attracting companies to locate or relocate there. At the time Haslam said this, only a third of Tennessee’s population held a degree or certificate, so Haslam said he wanted to do something that would shock the system and then get people to think:

Bill Haslam: ‘Hey, I never thought that I would go to school, but maybe I will.’ If you haven’t grown up with the thought that college is a real possibility for you, then it’s not something talked about at the dinner table. It’s not on the radar screen.

Kirk: And it worked. At first.

Community college enrollments spiked 5 percent the first year, with thousands of low-income students taking up the offer. Students like Eric Bihembo, who immigrated from Uganda as a teen, signed up.

Eric Bihembo: College wasn’t on my radar.

Kirk: Did you think it was too good to be true?

Eric Bihembo: It was too good to be true. I mean, free money where I could go and get a free education. It was overwhelming. At the same time, I just wanted to check it out.

Kirk: Going from Uganda to Nashville, was there a bit of a culture shock?

Eric Bihembo: We don’t have these big buildings where you can stand and compare yourself and see how small you are.

[‘Pomp and Circumstance,’ from the Tennessee State commencement ceremony]

Kirk: In the end, Bihembo graduated from community college in Nashville and then completed a Tennessee Highway Patrol cadet program.

Where do you see yourself in 10 or 20 years?

Eric Bihembo: My dream job is one day to work with the FBI doing cybersecurity. But I want to start as a police officer to pick up all the experience and be able to apply it in the in the bigger world.

Kirk: Researchers say Bihembo, who graduated in two years, is the exception. Because while more students enrolled in Tennessee’s community colleges, it didn’t mean a higher percentage graduated.

Jennifer Freeman: It boosts enrollments at first, but those people don’t necessarily stay in school.

Jon: Jennifer Freeman is with the nonprofit Jobs for the Future. Turns out, even though most community college students say their goal is to earn a degree, they usually don’t.

Only one in five adults who re-enrolled in Tennessee’s free college program graduated after three years.

To retain students, Freeman suggests improving support systems and tailoring offerings to students career goals. Otherwise …

Jennifer Freeman: … people go back and then they kind of go back to the same college format, structure that didn’t work for them in the first place.

Jon: Columbia’s Davis Jenkins agrees. He says, sure, free helps, but two-year schools will ultimately need to improve their product.

Davis Jenkins: Community colleges. I love them, but they generally don’t treat adults well. They’re going to have to move toward more of a 24-seven advising. They’re going to have to schedule the courses when students need them, not Tuesday through Thursday between 10 and 1, when the professors want to teach.

Jon: Sara Goldrick-Rab, on the other hand, defends these programs, because she says no-cost college broadens access and benefits society. She says the current financial aid system, which requires filling out complicated forms and figuring out formulas to calculate how much college will cost, is an obstacle for too many students.

Sara Goldrick-Rab: Things that knock out a given cost, like tuition, are more promising than things that are predicated on jumping through a bunch of hoops.

Kirk: And advocates say these programs help students like Rebecca Beaucher in Massachusetts. At 45, Beaucher returned to college last fall thanks to the state’s new free college program. Beaucher started college 20 years ago, but quickly dropped out because working full time as an IT analyst and parenting spread her too thin. Going back wasn’t easy, either.

Rebecca Beaucher: I think I was intimidated. You know, it had been so long since I had been in a class environment.

Kirk: She says the free program was the enticement she needed to re-enroll at Northern Essex Community College. She recalls when she heard the news that the program passed in the state’s budget.

Rebecca Beaucher: My heart just dropped and I immediately burst into tears and I sent a text to my husband, like, this is it. Game on. I’m finally getting my degree. I’m just, I’m going for it. I can’t believe this finally happened.

Kirk: This year, Bouchet is taking business classes online and says her goal is to earn her doctorate someday.

Rebecca Beaucher: On my headstone I want it to say, ‘Dr. Rebecca Beaucher.’ I understand that I’m 45, and I may get that when I’m 90. And I am absolutely okay with this.

Jon: So free college is a mixed bag. Some students might only be interested in taking a few classes to brush up their skills. Others might want to get a doctorate someday. But we do know the vast majority are hoping for a four-year degree.

Surveys show more than 80 percent of community college students aspire to earn a bachelor’s degree. Only a small percentage do, though — just about 13 percent, even within six years. That’s according to the U.S. Department of Education. And those rates are even lower for low-income, male, Black and Hispanic students.

Kirk: Yeah. Economists like Josh Goodman at Boston University say there are lots of reasons why low-income students might be better served if they went straight to a four-year college.

Josh Goodman: It’s a combination of things. One is we know the community colleges are less well funded per student than a four-year institution, so they have fewer resources. [Students] are with peers who are academically weaker. And that may have an influence on their success in their own coursework. And though many students plan to start at a community college and then transfer to the four-year sector, many of the students who plan to do that don’t end up succeeding, either because they misunderstand that transfer process or because the alignment between their community college coursework and the requirements of the four-year institutions is not always great.

Kirk: We have a whole episode just about that topic from our first season. It’s called ‘The Transfer Trap,’ so be sure to check it out.

Jon: Okay, so, Kirk, I guess the old saying there’s no such thing as a free lunch — that still holds.

Kirk: Yeah. So here are a few key takeaways from this episode.

One: Do your research. Make sure you’re enrolling in a free program that meets your career and personal goals.

Two: Ask about retention and graduation rates. Because if nobody graduates, then free doesn’t really mean anything.

And three: If your aim is to earn a bachelor’s degree someday, ask whether the credits you earn will even transfer and if they’ll transfer to your major. Because while most community college students say they want to earn a four-year degree, few do so within six years, and the rate is even lower for first-generation, low-income, Black and Latino students like Magno Garcia.

Back at Bunker Hill. Garcia told me the new free community college program for adults there renewed his hope to earn a degree.

Magno Garcia: Third time’s a charm. I actually feel very confident saying that I will graduate.

Kirk: Garcia has found a support network on Bunker Hill’s campus through a program designed for men of color. That’s another good takeaway, Jon: Find a support network on campus.

Garcia is now working as a social worker at a high school while wrapping up his associate degree, and he switched his major from accounting to psychology.

Magno Garcia: It made a huge difference. I was enjoying my classes. The subject matters were more interesting to me than, you know, crunching in numbers.

Kirk: This fall, he plans to transfer to a four-year university and pursue a bachelor’s degree so he can become a teacher or a school counselor.

This is College Uncovered from GBH and The Hechinger Report. I’m Kirk Carapezza …

Jon: … and I’m Jon Marcus. We’d love to hear from you. Send us an email to gbhnewsconnect@wgbh.org. And tell us what you want to know about how colleges really operate. And if you’re with a college or university. Tell us what you think the public should know about higher ed.

This episode is produced and written by Kirk Carapezza …

Kirk: … and Jon Marcus, and it was edited by Jeff Keating. Meg Woolhouse is supervising editor. Ellen London is executive producer. Mixing and sound design by David Goodman and Gary Mott. We had production assistants from Diane Adame.

Theme song and original music by Left Roman out of MIT, and all of our music is by college bands.

Mei He is our project manager, and head of GBH podcasts is Devin Maverick Robins.

College Uncovered is a production of GBH News and The Hechinger Report and distributed by PRX.

It’s made possible by Lumina Foundation.

Thank you so much for listening.

The post College Uncovered, Season 2, Episode 5 appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

I grew up in extreme poverty. The ability to access a free, high-quality education in North Texas changed my life. I benefited greatly from the ways community colleges meet students where they are and wrap their arms around them. Classes were small, and I had a clear sense of belonging, despite being the first in my family to go to college.

I still remember having deep discussions with my English professor about author Larry McMurtry. I am a first-generation Latina from the Rio Grande Valley in Texas, where everyone looked and sounded like me. But this professor and I both loved McMurtry. It was the first time I connected with someone based on shared academic interests despite entirely different lived experiences.

I did not have the remediation needs or learning gaps that many of today’s pandemic students are experiencing, but I did need support and direction.  The tiny community college I attended put me on a path toward a successful and purpose-driven life, and I’m grateful.

I believe that every community college, and every higher education institution, can do the same for their students — and in doing so, help close pandemic learning gaps. It starts with effective strategies and investment of resources.

However, it won’t be easy. Although enrollment at community colleges is on the rise after steep drops during the pandemic, these schools are facing more challenges than ever before. That’s largely due to the pandemic upending education as we knew it — including at San Jacinto College, where I serve on the board of trustees. Students are showing up with serious needs across academic and nonacademic areas, and community colleges, which are often under-resourced, aren’t always equipped to address them.

Related: Many community college students never earn a degree. New approaches to advising aim to reverse that trend

The pandemic led to sweeping achievement declines in core content areas, and recovery efforts have been uneven and unfinished. Millions of students left high school with large knowledge and skill gaps that may negatively impact their futures, including their earning potential, according to forecasts by leading economists.

Students who learned virtually or in hybrid settings largely missed out on the critical thinking that develops through classroom conversations. Their teachers were focused on keeping them engaged in an online environment and on providing fundamental instruction. They missed hearing their peers and teachers reason, explain and express. This has made the transition to higher education that much more challenging.

To address such students’ needs, community colleges typically enroll them in noncredit, remedial or developmental classes so that they can gain and demonstrate proficiency in areas they didn’t master in K-12.

At the same time, community colleges are struggling to meet the growing mental health needs of today’s students. Past funding models created resource challenges in this area; during the pandemic, employee turnover rates created much higher than normal advisor-to-student ratios. Thankfully, many community colleges were able to bolster mental health support through pandemic relief funding, but we must invest in this critical area in more sustainable ways, such as by focusing on a holistic set of policies and practices that others might learn from.

Higher education also hasn’t mastered how to have important conversations with students about what’s going on in their lives. We have to know them better to effectively support them. Regular surveys and focus groups are essential, and we need to act on the information they provide.

Schools should do a basic needs assessment for each student —at least once a year. Schools that do not run a food pantry, a coat closet or a partnership with local shelters should start doing so. When students don’t have basic needs met, they are unable to focus on academics as much as other students can.

Related: OPINION: A New York model helps community college students reach their goals

We also need better academic data on incoming students. Higher education and K-12 systems typically don’t collaborate, but we should have two-way conversations to ensure that we understand who is going to need developmental support in college and in which areas.

And finally, we should adjust our teaching practices to better support students. As a former developmental education faculty member, I always did a first-day writing assessment that allowed me to learn more about my students personally and about their writing strengths and weaknesses. To help students develop their writing, I also broke essay assignments into smaller pieces so students could get quicker feedback — and I could make quicker assessments of their needs.

That approach should be extended to other courses post pandemic. Providing college students with developmental coursework means creating and delivering compact and efficient lessons to help them fill their K-12 learning gaps. It also means dealing with insecurities about reading and writing deficiencies.

We also need to recognize that many college students are also working part-time jobs and being caregivers. Taking an empathetic stance is vital.

We must get students on their desired higher education pathway as quickly as possible, and avoid holding them in high-school level, remediation courses for extended periods.

In higher education today, a lot is happening to make school leaders feel both energized and daunted. But it’s vital that we focus on the most critical tasks before us. Community colleges must get to know and understand their students so they can meet their needs. 

Michelle Cantú-Wilson is a member of the San Jacinto College Board of Trustees, where she previously served in faculty and administrative roles. She also serves on the National Assessment Governing Board, which oversees the National Assessment of Educational Progress, known as the Nation’s Report Card.

This story about community colleges and learning gaps 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 post OPINION: Community colleges have a lot of work to do helping students overcome learning gaps post pandemic appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

What makes a first-generation college student? Well, that depends on who’s doing the defining.

Yes, there’s the federal definition: a student is first-generation if neither parent has a bachelor’s degree.  

Sounds simple enough. But it doesn’t account for those who had a highly educated parent who wasn’t involved in their lives, or those whose parent got a college degree in another country, with an academic system unlike ours, or those who have one degree-holding parent, but are being raised in a single-parent household.

Researchers argue that many students like these are still meaningfully less advantaged compared to students who have two parents with degrees. Despite the narrow federal definition, many believe these are students who need to be identified and given added resources and support both to get through the college application process and to thrive once they get on campus.

New research from Common App shows that expanding the definition of first-generation expands enrollment data, and thus can tell a different story about who is ready for college.

According to 2022 data from Common App, about 450,000 applicants that year met the federal definition, meaning that neither parent had a bachelor’s degree, including about 300,000 students whose parents had never attended any college. But if the definition is expanded to include applicants who had one parent with a bachelor’s degree, the population increases to more than 700,000. And, according to the report, changing that definition changes other things, too, such as college readiness, socioeconomic status and the number of colleges students apply to.

Brian Heseung Kim, director of data science, research and analytics at Common App, said there isn’t one right way to define first-generation students; the question should be, “What kind of disadvantage are we trying to measure?”

After the Supreme Court ruled against the consideration of race in college admissions last summer, Kim said he was interested in looking at many different aspects of diversity in college applicants, including first-generation status. He said this analysis might help colleges that want to understand the diversity of their applicants; how certain home contexts and hardships might affect how competitive students appear in the application process; and how to support students from all different backgrounds.

“It would be great if everyone could kind of align on one definition for first-generation, it’d be so wonderful if we had that clarity,” Kim said.  “But the reality is that different contexts kind of require different identification methods.”

Related: Sick parents? Caring for siblings? Colleges experiment with asking applicants how home life affects them

The Common App’s analysis shows that, depending on the definition, the percentage of students identified as being part of an underrepresented minority group can range from 45 percent (for those who have one parent who earned a bachelor’s degree) to 58 percent (for students whose parents did not attend any college). And the percentage of those students from low-income families varies from 48 percent (for students who have one parent who earned a bachelor’s degree) to 66 percent (for students whose parents did not attend any college).

Sarah E. Whitley, vice president of the Center for First-generation Student Success, said most colleges define first-generation students as those whose parents do not have bachelor’s degrees or those whose parents did not earn bachelor’s degrees in the United States. She said the center doesn’t use one universal definition, and instead works with colleges to identify the definition that makes the most sense for them.

Whitley said the purpose of identifying students as first-generation is to understand whether they have people in their family who can support them with college-going knowledge, but that’s often harder to determine than asking simply “Are you the first in your family to attend college?”

Whitley discourages college from using this language because students may not categorize themselves as first-generation if they had an aunt or uncle or older sibling who attended college. She said it’s better to ask specific questions about parental education, as Common App does, but it can still be difficult to capture everyone. For example, asking about the education of biological parents might not capture students who had a highly educated birth parent but were raised by a stepparent, she said, or students who were raised in a family with two moms or two dads.

The Common App research found that there could be more than 100 definitions, considering the different combinations of parents and caregivers, whether they attended college or graduated, what degree they and many more factors. The analysis considered eight definitions:

• Neither parent earned a bachelor’s degree (the federal definition)
• No bachelor’s degrees among living parents (to focus on those who can provide support to the student)
• No bachelor’s degrees among caregivers (considers others in the household beyond biological parents, such as a stepparent)
• No domestic bachelor’s degree among caregivers (because degrees from other countries may be less relevant in helping students in the U.S. higher education system)
• No bachelor’s degrees earned by caregivers before the student was born (excludes those who earned degrees more recently and may not yet have “accrued some of the more socioeconomic benefits of a college degree,” according to the report)
• No associate degrees, either parent
• No college attendance, either parent
• One parent earned a bachelor’s degree

Yolanda Watson-Spiva, president of the advocacy group Complete College America, said it’s also important to think about the social capital that students have if both their parents went to college, such as access to college alumni and professional networks. She said there are big differences in resources between students who have one parent who earned a bachelor’s degree and students whose parents, grandparents and great-grandparents all went to college.

It makes more sense to think of first-generation status as a spectrum, she said, rather than a yes or no question.  Using only the federal definition of first-generation is too narrow and constrictive, she said.

Watson-Spiva’s mother earned a bachelor’s degree and her father went to community college, but one of her grandmothers only had an eighth grade education. She doesn’t identify as a first- generation student, but said she could imagine how someone in a similar situation might, even though they don’t meet the federal definition.

“Many of those folks still struggle,” she said. “There are still big variations between that person and a person who’s had like four generations of family members that are legacies, that went to college.”

This story about first-generation students was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education.

The post To better serve first-generation students, expand the definition appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

JERSEY CITY, N.J. — When Keischa Taylor sees fellow student-parents around her campus, she pulls them aside and gives them a hug.

“I tell them, ‘Don’t stop. You’ve got this. You didn’t come this far to stop. You’re not going to give up on yourself.’ ”

Taylor is exceedingly well qualified to offer this advice. She began her college education in her early 20s, balancing it with raising two sons and working retail jobs. And she just finished her bachelor’s degree last semester — at 53.

It’s a rare success story. Student-parents disproportionately give up before they reach the finish line. Fewer than four in 10 graduate with a degree within six years, compared to more than six in 10 other students.

Many have long had to rely on themselves and each other, as Taylor did, to make it through.

Now, however, student-parents are beginning to get new attention. A rule that took effect in California in July, for example, gives priority course registration at public universities and colleges to student-parents, who often need more scheduling flexibility than their classmates. New York State in September expanded the capacity of child care centers at community colleges by 200 spots; its campus child care facilities previously handled a total of 4,500 children, though most of those slots — as at many institutions with child care on campus, nationwide — went to faculty and staff.

Taylor put her sons in a Salvation Army daycare center when they were younger. “It’s a matter of paying for college, paying for the babysitter or sneaking them into class,” Taylor recalled, at Hudson County Community College, or HCCC, where she went before moving on to Rutgers University. Even though the community college is among the few that have improved their services for student-parents, she remembered asking herself, “How am I going to do this?”

Parents with children comprise a huge potential market for colleges and universities looking for ways to make up for the plummeting number of 18- to 24-year-olds and states’ growing need for workers to fill jobs requiring a college education. Many of these parents already have some college credits. More than a third of the 40.4 million adults who have gone to college but never finished have children under age 18, according to the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, or IWPR.

“If you want to serve adult learners, which colleges see as their solution to enrollment decline, you have to serve student-parents,” said Su Jin Jez, CEO of California Competes, a nonpartisan research organization that focuses on education and workforce policies.

Another reason student-parents are more visible now: The Covid-19 pandemic reminded Americans how hard it is to be a parent generally, never mind one who is juggling school on top of work and children.

Related: The hidden financial aid hurdle derailing college students

“A lot of the current energy has come from the focus on child care crises,” said Theresa Anderson, a principal research associate at the nonprofit research organization the Urban Institute. “Student-parents are at the intersection of that.”

There’s also new attention to the benefits for children of having parents who go to college.

“The greatest impact on a child’s likelihood to be successful is the education of their parents,” said Teresa Eckrich Sommer, a research professor at Northwestern University’s Institute for Policy Research.

Lori Barr dropped out of college when she got pregnant at 19, but went back as a mother and ultimately got a master’s degree. With her son, Minnesota Vikings linebacker Anthony Barr, she later co-founded a scholarship organization for single student-parents in California and Minnesota called Raise The Barr.

“Whatever we’re doing to support the parent directly impacts the child,” Barr said. “A parent can’t be well if the child’s not well, and vice versa.”

The effect works two ways, Sommer said. In a study she co-authored of an unusual program that gives college scholarships to both high school students and their parents in Toledo, Ohio, the Institute for Policy Research found that students and parents alike performed at or above average, despite what Sommer noted were financial challenges and limited academic preparation.

“Call it mutual motivation. The children helped the parents with technical issues. The parents helped the children with time management,” she said. “We think of kids as a barrier to student success. We have to turn that on its head. Kids are a primary motivator to student success.”

Tayla Easterla was enrolled at a community college near Sacramento, California, when her daughter was born prematurely four years ago; she took her midterms and finals in the neonatal intensive care unit. “I just found that motherly drive somewhere deep inside,” said Easterla, 27, who now is majoring in business administration at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo.

Krystle Pale is about to get her bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Santa Cruz. When she looks at her children who live with her, who are 5, 7, 12 and 13, “I want better for them. I just want them to have a better life,” said Pale, choking up.

Sydney Riester, of Rochester, Minnesota, who is about to earn her dental assistant associate degree, also said her children — ages 3, 6 and 7 — were foremost in her planning. “These kids need me, and I need to get this done for them,” Riester said.

Related: ‘We’re from the university and we’re here to help’

There’s a surprising lack of information about whether students in college have dependent children. Most institutions never ask. That is also slowly changing. California, Michigan, Oregon and Illinois have passed legislation since 2020 requiring that public colleges and universities track whether their students are also parents. A similar federal measure is pending in Congress.

“Ask community college presidents what percentage of their students are parents, and they’ll say, ‘That’s a really good question. I’ll get back to you,’ ” said Marjorie Sims, managing director of Ascend at the Aspen Institute, one of a growing number of research, policy and advocacy organizations focusing on student-parents.

Nearly one in four undergraduate and nearly one in three graduate students, or more than 5.4 million people, are parents, the Urban Institute estimates. More than half have children under age 6, according to the IWPR.

Seventy percent of student-parents are women. Fifty-one percent are Black, Hispanic or Native American. Student mothers are more likely to be single, while student fathers are more likely to be married.

Among student-parents who go to college but drop out, cost and conflicts with work are the most-stated reasons, various research shows; 70 percent have trouble affording food and housing, according to the Hope Center for College, Community, and Justice at Temple University.

Student financial aid is based on an estimated cost of attendance that includes tuition, fees, books, supplies, transportation and living expenses, but not expenses related to raising a child. The out-of-pocket cost of attending a public university or college for a low-income parent can be two to five times higher than for a low-income student without children, according to the advocacy group The Education Trust.

A student-parent would have to work 52 hours a week, on average, to cover both child care and tuition at a public university or college, EdTrust says. A separate analysis by California Competes found that students in that state who have children pay $7,592 per child a year more for their educations and related expenses than their classmates who don’t have kids.

But “when they apply for financial aid, they get financial aid packages as if they don’t have children. It’s ludicrous,” said Jez, at California Competes.

Forty-five percent of student-parents who dropped out cited their need to provide child care as a significant cause, a survey released in February found. Yet the number of colleges and universities with on-campus child care has been dropping steadily, from 1,115 in 2012 to 824 today, federal data shows. That’s a decline of 291 institutions, or 26 percent.

Fewer than four in 10 public and fewer than one in 10 private, nonprofit colleges and universities have on-campus child care for students, an analysis by the think tank New America found. Ninety-five percent of those campus child care centers that existed in 2016 — the most recent year for which data is available — had waiting lists, and the number of children on the average waiting list was 82, according to the IWPR. Other students couldn’t afford the cost.

Related: When a Hawaii college sets up shop in Las Vegas: Universities chase students wherever they are

“Colleges and universities that enroll student-parents should be committed to serving their needs,” said Christopher Nellum, executive director at EdTrust-West and himself the son of a student-mother who ultimately dropped out and enlisted in the military, finding it was easier to be a parent there than at a community college. “It’s almost willful neglect to be accepting their tuition dollars and financial aid dollars and not helping them succeed.”

Even where child care is available and spots are open, it’s often too expensive for students to manage. More than two-thirds of student-parents in Washington State said they couldn’t afford child care, a state survey last year found. About half of student-parents nationwide rely entirely on relatives for child care.

Hannah Allen, who goes to HCCC, gets up at 5 a.m. to get her three kids ready for the day — first the 4-year-old, then the 6-year-old, then the 8-year-old. “I go down the line,” she said. Her schedule is so tight, she has a calendar on her refrigerator and another on the wall.

She can’t drop off her children at school or daycare earlier than 8:30 or pick them up later than 5. “When my kids are in school is when I do as much as I can.” She calls her school days “first shift,” while her time at home at night is “second shift.”

“First you put your kids, then you put your jobs, then you put your school and last you put yourself,” said Allen. “You have to push yourself,” she said, starting to cry softly. “Sometimes you think, ‘I can’t do it.’ ”

There is a little-noticed federal grant program to help low-income student-parents pay for child care: Child Care Access Means Parents in School, or CCAMPIS. Last year CCAMPIS was allocated about $84 million; the Government Accountability Office found that student-parents who got CCAMPIS’s subsidies were more likely to stay in school than students generally. But there were more students on the waiting list for it than received aid. A Democratic proposal in the Senate to significantly increase funding for the program has gone nowhere.

The Association of Community College Trustees, or ACCT, is pressing member colleges to make cheap or free space available for Head Start centers on their campuses in the next five years. Fewer than 100 of the nation’s 1,303 two-year colleges — where more than 40 percent of student-parents go — have them now, the ACCT says.

Related: Aging states to college graduates: We’ll pay you to stay

These things are a start, but much more is needed, said Chastity Lord, president and CEO of the Jeremiah Program, which provides students who are single mothers with coaching, child care and housing. “When your child is sick, what are you going to do with them? It becomes insurmountable. Imagine if we had emergency funding for backup child care.”

Jen Charles struggled with child care as she tried to earn a degree and become a social worker from the time she was 19, when she had a son who was born with disabilities. He was followed by a daughter. Charles was also working, as an administrative assistant and, later, a paralegal.

“When things were going smoothly, I would enroll for one class and say, ‘I’m going to get through this,’ ” she said. But it proved too much. And even though Charles, now 49, got an information technology certification last year through the continuing education arm of HCCC, earning a full-fledged degree “became kind of an extinguished dream.”

As important as an education was to her, she said, “your priority becomes being able to sustain your family — their well-being, their needs being met, a roof, food. All of these other things take precedence. And where in there do you fit your papers that are due, or studying for your quiz? Is that at 10 o’clock at night, when you’re exhausted?”

Just across the Hudson River from Manhattan, HCCC has steadily added programs to support the parents among its 20,000 students. It has set aside “family-friendly” spaces in libraries and lounges and holds events for parents with kids, including movie nights, barbecues, trick-or-treating and a holiday tree-lighting ceremony. There’s a food pantry with meals prepared by the students in the college’s culinary program.

Student-parents get to register first for courses. College staff help with applications to public benefit programs. Lactation rooms are planned. And there are longer-range conversations about putting a child care center in a new 11-story campus building scheduled to open in 2026.

The college’s 20,000 students are largely poor and the first in their families to go to college, said Christopher Reber, HCCC’s president, and many are not native English speakers. Ninety-four percent qualify for financial aid. Having children, Reber said, “adds insurmountable challenges to that list of insurmountable challenges.”

There’s an even more immediate motivation for the two-year college to support its student-parents. It graduates only 17 percent of students, even within three years, which is among the lowest proportions in the state.

“If a student doesn’t know where their next meal is coming from, it doesn’t matter how much academic support you offer — the student is not going to succeed,” said Reber, in his office overlooking downtown Jersey City.

Related: One college finds a way to get students to degrees more quickly, simply and cheaply

With a grant it got in January from the Aspen Institute’s Ascend, HCCC is expanding its work with the housing authority in Jersey City to help student-parents there enroll in and complete job-focused certificate programs in fields such as bookkeeping and data analytics, hiring a coordinator to work with them and appointing an advisory committee made up of student-parents.

It can be hard to win the trust of student-parents, said Lori Margolin, HCCC’s associate vice president for continuing education and workforce development. “Either they’ve tried before and it didn’t work out, so they’re reluctant to go back, or it’s too much of an unknown. ‘Do they care that I have children and I’m not going to be able to take classes at these times?’ ”

Like other schools, HCCC had what Reber called “Neanderthal” rules for student-parents. They weren’t allowed to bring their kids to campus, for example.

“I remember one student, a single mother, relying on parents and friends to watch her baby. The only time she could study was late at night [in the library], but the library said no.”

That rule was dropped, with more changes planned. A new program will reward student-parents with financial stipends for doing things such as registering early and researching child care options, said Lisa Dougherty, senior vice president for student affairs and enrollment at HCCC.

A few other colleges and universities have programs designed for student-parents. Misericordia University in Dallas, Pennsylvania provides free housing for up to four years for up to 18 single mothers, who also get academic support and tutoring, priority for on-campus jobs and access to a children’s library and sports facilities.

At Wilson College in Pennsylvania, up to 12 single parents annually are awarded grants for on-campus housing and for child care, and their children can eat in the campus dining hall for free.

St. Catherine University in Minnesota subsidizes child care for eligible student-parents and has child-friendly study rooms.

And Howard Community College in Maryland, whose president was once a student-parent, provides mentorship, peer support, career counseling, financial assistance and a family study room in the library.

“That may not seem like a big deal, but those are the messages that say, ‘You belong here, too,’ ” Lord said.

These efforts have so far helped a small number of students. Forty single mothers have graduated from the Misericordia program since it was launched more than 20 years ago, for instance.

Some of the obstacles for student-parents are hard to measure, said Jessica Pelton, who finished community college after having a daughter at age 20 and ultimately graduated from the University of Michigan, where her husband also was enrolled.

“You’re typically isolated and alone,” said Pelton. “I just kind of stuck to myself.”

She would often miss out on nighttime study groups with classmates who lived on campus. “Their priorities are not to go home, make dinner and put their kid to bed. We don’t have the option to go party. We’re not here on our parents’ money. We’re paying our own way.”

Some faculty offered to let her bring her daughter to class, she said. “It really meant a lot to me, because it made me feel like a part of campus.”

Finding fellow student-parents helps, too, said Omonie Richardson, 22, who is going to college online to become a midwife while raising her 1-year-old son and working as a chiropractic assistant 35 hours a week in Fargo, North Dakota.

“I felt very isolated before I found a group of other single moms,” she said. “If we had the understanding and support in place, a lot more parents would be ready to pursue their educations and not feel like it’s unattainable.”

This story about student-parents 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. Listen to our higher education podcast.

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MINNEAPOLIS — At a late August meeting in a windowless room at Minneapolis College, a handful of students barely a week into classes sat back on couches, took a breath and marveled that they were there at all.

“Gifting myself with an education is a part of my recovery,” said Nomi Badboy, 43, one of three students attending this week’s meeting of the school’s collegiate recovery program. But she admitted to feeling overwhelmed: Her four kids were trying her nerves, her ailing father was requiring more of her time, and a bad-news ex had left her with a destructive puppy and a lingering disbelief that she can pull it all off.

Ray Lombardi, 50, listened thoughtfully. “What I’m hearing is that we have three things in common: It’s hard to be a parent. It’s hard to stay sober. And it’s hard to go back to school as an adult,” he said, adding, “It would be a great tragedy to get sober, get my life in order, and then come here and have college be the cause of going back into using.”

Collegiate recovery programs began appearing at four-year institutions in the late 1970s, offering services like sober-living dorms, life skills classes and recovery coaches. Today, more than 170 programs exist across the U.S. and Canada. But it’s only in the last dozen or so years that programs began popping up at community colleges; Minneapolis College’s program, opened in 2017, was the first in Minnesota and the fifth in the nation.

Today, there are at least 23 recovery programs at community colleges, and their expansion reflects a growing awareness that many survivors of opioid addiction and those who struggled with substance use during the pandemic are now enrolling in pursuit of a fresh start. But despite the need, the programs face significant obstacles, and many are scrambling for dollars and staffing to stay afloat.

Related: More than a third of community colleges have vanished

Substance use disorder affects about 18 percent of American adults, according to national statistics. Among 18- to 25-year-olds, the share is nearly 28 percent. Meanwhile, of the 29 million adults nationwide who said they’ve ever had a problem with substance use, about 72 percent considered themselves to be in recovery or recovered.

Unlike treatment, a necessary but often short-term process, recovery is the long-term work of rebuilding a healthier and typically sober life. Education is an example of what’s called “recovery capital,” something earned that makes long-term recovery more likely.

Community colleges are a natural first step for people in recovery, said Jessica Miller, who oversees four collegiate recovery programs, including two at community colleges, for the Ten16 Recovery Network, a substance use disorder treatment provider in Central Michigan. At two-year institutions, admission is accessible, tuition is affordable, and flexible coursework fits into schedules complicated not only by jobs and families, but counseling, support groups and doctor visits.

“I don’t know why we weren’t trying to do this years ago,” Miller said.

In November, the Association of Recovery in Higher Education, which serves as a hub for the programs, launched a working group tasked in part with editing the guidelines for starting recovery programs to make them more applicable to community colleges. A new networking group for community college program coordinators held its first call in February.

Advocates say the growing number of recovery programs makes sense not just for individuals but for community colleges looking to recoup lost students. Since 2010, enrollment at two-year institutions has declined by nearly 40 percent, as more people have opted to remain in the workforce or head directly to four-year colleges, among other factors.

The downturn has pushed community colleges to broaden their approach to recruitment, resulting in an increase in the number of students requiring more support and services, said Taylor Odle, an assistant professor of education policy studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The schools are pursuing their goals of serving more students, but the additional supports bring higher costs. “The price tag is not the same,” he said.

Schools investing in recovery programs do so without an abundance of research connecting the programs to improved student outcomes. But the data that exists is encouraging, said Noel Vest, an assistant professor of community health sciences at Boston University. A 2014 paper reviewing the impact of recovery programs, mostly at four-year colleges, found lower incidences of relapse for involved students and slightly higher GPAs and graduation rates compared to their peers overall.

Vest plans to complete a study this summer of five recovery programs, including Minneapolis College’s. He expects the findings to illuminate best practices for the programs and provide an evidence-based foundation for starting more of them. “Right now,” he said, “the data that says we must be doing this just isn’t out there.”

In the interim, advocates for the programs are using creative approaches to keep them alive and growing. At Tompkins Cortland Community College near Ithaca, New York, program leaders have forged connections with student groups on campus whose struggles with substance use might fly under the radar, such as student athletes.

In Central Michigan, the Ten16 Recovery Network is helping its clients enroll in colleges with recovery supports by providing pre-enrollment services at its out-patient treatment facilities. A client might meet with the collegiate recovery program coordinator, for example, to receive counseling about which career paths might be a good fit and which ones might present obstacles due to the client’s history with addiction and the legal system.

At Skagit Valley College, a two-year institution north of Seattle, Aaron Kirk runs the recovery program for formerly incarcerated students jointly with the school’s Breaking Free Club. (About 60 percent of people who are incarcerated struggle with substance use disorder, according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.) In his role, Kirk has built a relationship with the local drug court, which offers alternative sentences to eligible individuals who commit to treatment for substance use. Typically, the sentences include a work or education component, making Skagit Valley a natural fit.

Related: Training people recovering from substance abuse disorders to be part of treatment teams

Genevieve Ward, 42, enrolled at Skagit Valley in the summer of 2021 after spending time in prison on a drug conviction. While taking coursework in human services, she used money earmarked for students in the recovery program to earn certification as a peer recovery coach. She uses the skills daily as a leader in the recovery housing where she lives near campus.

“In school, the number one struggle is that most of us don’t feel like we’re smart enough. That’s what I see the most, and what I feel the most,” she said. She credits the Breaking Free club with creating the community she and her peers need to beat back their insecurities and succeed in the classroom.

In the years leading up to her incarceration, Ward said she was living each day simply to survive. “But this college, this club, has given me hope for the future — I know that there is one.” After graduating this spring, she plans to transfer to nearby Western Washington University, where talks are underway to expand recovery supports thanks in part to advocacy from students in the Breaking Free club. Ultimately, Ward hopes to land in a career that helps people with struggles like the ones she’s faced.

For many students like Ward, community colleges’ flexible academic offerings make college possible. But the same flexibility creates obstacles to the success of on-campus groups. Options like part-time course loads, online classes, and short certificate programs can stymie consistent attendance and participation. Even for full-time students, the two-year window creates frequent turnover. “A lot of our work is student-led,” said Kirk at Skagit Valley. “It’s challenging to have these awesome leaders who graduate so quickly.”

It’s also hard to engage students in recovery programs when they don’t have the time to linger on campus. “These students are flying home from work, making dinner, getting their kids settled, then racing to get over here on time for class,” said Cheryl Kramer, recovery program advisor at Cape Cod Community College, in Massachusetts.

But the toughest scrambles are often for staff and funding. Jonathan Lofgren, a professor of addiction counseling at Minneapolis College, launched the college’s program in 2017 after a sabbatical year studying recovery on college campuses. School leaders provided a dedicated space for the program and allowed Lofgren a half day per week to manage it, but they stopped short of hiring a dedicated coordinator.

During the pandemic, the program moved online and participation dropped. Welcome news arrived in 2021, though, when the school won a state grant in collaboration with a nearby four-year university, providing funding for two paid interns, a peer recovery coach, and a coordinator, Lisa Schmid.

But amid a nationwide shortage of staff in the treatment and recovery field, the peer coach and one intern position remain vacant. In November, Schmid took extended personal leave, which left her role unfilled as well. While she was out, two student workers ensured the recovery program room stayed open, emails went out and weekly meetings happened. But broader goals, like increasing awareness of recovery support services on campus, lost steam.

When Schmid returned from leave in February, she prioritized spreading word of the program to likely partners, such as the college’s veteran services program and its admissions team. In March, Minneapolis College leaders reached an agreement with the campus health clinic to continue funding her position once the state grant runs out.

“The need is everywhere,” Schmid said. Recovery “has always been such a hush-hush thing. How do we normalize it?”

Related: ‘Waste of time’: Community college transfers derail students

Advocates hope that a percentage of the hundreds of millions of dollars in state opioid settlement funding can be earmarked for collegiate recovery, and that Congress might one day approve additional funding. President Biden’s stalled 2024 budget includes $10.8 billion for SAMHSA, of which 10 percent would be set aside for recovery support services.

In a handful of states, legislation has made for a rosier funding picture. Washington lawmakers passed a bill in 2019 that led to the creation of a state grant fund to support recovery. From that work grew the Washington State Collegiate Recovery Support Initiative, which has provided funding for eight colleges, including four community colleges, to open recovery programs or provide recovery services in pre-existing programs, like Skagit Valley’s Breaking Free club.

Patricia Maarhuis of Washington State University said that, ultimately, collegiate recovery supports are about propelling academic success. “People might say this is just another student group, but no. This is not the frosting; this is the cake. If you want your students to stay in school and do well, you need recovery supports.”

Back in Minneapolis, Badboy has found a new home for the destructive puppy and her kids are settled in good schools and daycares. She’s thriving in her classes and expects to graduate in 2025. The balancing act of family, school and recovery, for now, is stable.

Recovery is painstakingly hard, Badboy said. But her journey — more than 12 years sober after nine bouts of treatment — has created a firm structure in her life that supports college success as much as it supports her well-being. Her peers in the program understand that in a way few others can, she said, and she feels accountable to them.

“It’s made it so that I really want to do this — almost that I must do this, I have to do this,” she said. “Because other people like me, who’ve felt the same way about themselves, need to see that this is possible.”

This story about collegiate recovery programs was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

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Erika Turner and her husband have 11 children between them. Four of them are already in college, two are graduating from high school this spring, and her husband has gone back to school in pursuit of a bachelor’s degree. 

“I have seven people depending on the results of their FAFSAs coming back,” said Turner, who lives in Cohutta, Georgia, near the Tennessee border. “That’s a lot of tuition to pay for – you know, financial aid never fully covers everything. You’ve got other expenses, like books, food and room and board and just things that come up during the year. So, as we think about budgeting for this next school year… I don’t like the unknown.”

The Education Department says that last year about 17.5 million people (both high schoolers and older students) completed the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA; so far this year, only about 4 million have successfully done so.

Turner and her family filled out the new version of the FAFSA in one marathon session in January. Because of the government’s delays in launching and in processing the forms, Turner’s family is among the many still waiting for their applications to be processed. Turner works as the head of human resources for a flooring manufacturer and her husband works as an environmental health and safety manager for a field turf company. 

She hopes the returning college students in her family will eventually receive similar aid packages as they have in years past and will be able to persist uninterrupted. For the two children filling out the FAFSA for the first time, she is less certain. One son plans to attend a private liberal arts college in Georgia, Turner said, and the other is likely headed to technical school. 

“Obviously, that’s not as much of a financial burden on us as a family, but it’s still money I don’t necessarily have set aside to pay for that,” Turner said. “We’re depending on Pell Grants and things like that to help close that gap.”

Turner’s family will also rely heavily on outside scholarships. That’s how she first got to know Stephanie Young, the director of scholarships at the Community Foundation of Greater Chattanooga. 

Young focuses on helping students and families figure out how to pay for college. That’s a tough job in normal years, but it’s required a near-herculean lift this year because of the delays and the domino effect they are having on the rest of the process.

Colleges use the FAFSA to determine which grants and scholarships students are eligible for, but they won’t get that information until at least March, so award letters likely won’t go out until sometime in April. Colleges typically require students to confirm their enrollment by May 1, but because they will be so delayed in sending financial aid award information, scores of colleges are extending that deadline. Some are even devising their own forms to ask students directly for financial need data, hoping to give them at least some estimate of what aid to expect.

Related: Decoding the cost: Figuring out the price of college holds many students back

Students often rely partly on outside scholarships, but these scholarships, too, are often awarded based on student need, which is typically determined using the FAFSA.

Young manages many such scholarships and has had to quickly pivot from her normal timelines and procedures to meet the needs of scrambling students and families. Because of the delay in FAFSA forms becoming available, the application figures on some scholarships that require FAFSA information are down significantly.

One such scholarship that typically has about 100 applications by mid-February, this year had 12, Young said. She could see that about 200 applications for it were in the midst of being drafted, but she thinks students haven’t been able to submit them yet because their FAFSAs haven’t been processed yet. This scholarship typically opens its application process in November and closes it at the end of January. This year, it didn’t open until January, and it will remain open until at least March 2, Young said. 

The delays could result in students walking across the stage at high school graduation (which in the South can be as early as the second week in May) not knowing whether they will be able to afford to attend the colleges they were admitted to. 

“My concern is either students will make a snap decision, go to a school and then not be able to fully enroll because they don’t have enough finances to meet the need, or they may wait too late to decide and lose a spot,” Young said. “Will they be at the ones that are the right fit, that are the most affordable to them?”

Young is especially concerned about first-generation students and students from low-income families. Those parents, she said, “may not have the wherewithal to walk through this process with them. So a lot of it falls back on the schools trying to do that or myself in any way that I can jump in and help.”

Yolanda Watson Spiva, president of the advocacy group Complete College America, said she’s worried that the “domino effect” started by the delayed FAFSA is going to eventually affect college completion rates.

“The FAFSA has already been a very intimidating form and the process,” she said. “Even with FAFSA simplification efforts, we’re now seeing that the simplification is not all that simple.”

Because of the delays and glitches, fewer students have been filling out the FAFSA, Watson Spiva said. If fewer students apply for aid, fewer students have the opportunity to compare offers and select the best college for them, and, she suspects, fewer students will go to college.

Related: Louisiana makes filling out FAFSA a ‘fun’ contest to engage students

She said that she’s been hearing from prospective college students that it just doesn’t seem worth the trouble, that waiting a year might be a better decision. But delaying college or taking a gap year makes people less likely to attend college, she said.

Advocates for higher education are perpetually trying to “convince folks that there is a value proposition to go into college,” she said, “This actually doesn’t help us to make our case, unfortunately.”

And there’s a risk for students who are already enrolled, too. Many students leave college because they can’t afford it, and if they can’t get timely information about their financial aid, she thinks it could prevent them from re-enrolling.

“Regardless of whether you’re a prospective student or a current student, college is not easily affordable,” Watson Spiva said. And for many families, “getting the financial aid award letter saying that you’ll have resources is really make or break.”

The pressure to figure it all out is weighing on Chattanooga native Maurquez Thompson, a first-year student at Stanford University.

Thompson, a first-generation college student, said he pays his tuition using a combination of grants and scholarships. He said he’s overwhelmed trying to keep up with all the requests for extra documentation from scholarship providers that are trying to sidestep the need for FAFSA data to determine awards for students. He knows Stanford meets full financial aid for its students, but the extra processes still add stress.

“If the first year of college was just like it is right now for the FAFSA, I think I’d be crying. It’s too much,” Thompson said. “I think the FAFSA right now is the hardest thing people are dealing with.” 

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

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In 2023, Diamond Harriel was looking to make a career switch. She had a 10-month-old daughter and had recently gone back to school for a business administration degree, hoping it could help her earn higher pay than the temporary administrative jobs she had been working. 

One day, through a program that helps single moms, she saw a flier about a new city initiative in Rochester, Minnesota, that aimed to bring women of color into the construction workforce.  

After learning more, Harriel enrolled into a trades readiness training program that taught the ins and outs of construction, from how to read a blueprint, to operating different tools and basic safety. The program exposed her to the possibilities within the construction world: building inspections, project management, apprenticeships in skilled trades like plumbing and electricity.

The city initiative that guided Harriel through the training and helped set up the interview is called the Equity in the Built Environment program. It started in 2023 after Rochester Mayor Kim Norton won a $1 million grant from the Bloomberg Philanthropies Global Mayors Challenge. 

When the 2020 recession hit, one thing had become apparent to Norton: Women of color were bearing the brunt of it. In Rochester, they already held some of the lowest paid jobs, and as the pandemic took hold, those positions disappeared in sectors like the service industry, which disproportionately employs women of color. 

Related: The jobs where sexual harassment and discrimination never stopped

“Probably they struggled the most anyway,” Norton said. “But it was held up and in the sunlight during the pandemic in a way that it was so obvious you couldn’t ignore it.” 

What her office realized is that there wasn’t a shortage of employment opportunities.

Rochester, with a population around 220,000, was halfway into a $585 million, 20-year funding initiative to build new infrastructure downtown. It was also home to the prestigious Mayo Clinic, which had just announced a $5 billion economic growth project.  

All of that growth meant a lot of available construction jobs, which was facing a worker shortage. Could that problem be solved by diversifying the workforce? 

“Our research showed that very few women are in construction and almost no women of color. We said, ‘Well, here’s an opportunity,’” Norton said.  According to the city, women of color make up 13 percent of the city’s population but less than 1 percent work in the construction industry.

Over the past year the city has piloted Equity in the Built Environment to create a solution that could work for everyone — both the construction industry facing an employee shortage and the women they sought to help. If they are successful, they could be a model for other cities as construction projects boom across the country. 

The pilot project consists of tackling the workforce challenge in three ways, said project manager Julie Brock: educating women and girls about the employment possibilities; training and recruitment for women of color; and addressing long-standing issues with discrimination and harassment in the industry. 

First, program participants are set up with a career counselor with a local workforce development nonprofit, and then they enter either a trades readiness track, or an entrepreneurial track that helps women start their own construction businesses. Throughout that time they have access to wraparound services like child care and transportation to remove barriers to attending classes. For those looking for a job, the program works to place them at three different companies that are partners in the work. So far eight women have completed the program. 

Related: Women in construction have been marginalized. This bill would change that

Explaining to women that there could be a job in the field that fits their interests and skills has been a challenge, Brock said. At first, women assumed that the only jobs available would be more around tradework. Now, the pilot program has framed conversations around the built environment, more broadly, with other career opportunities in health and safety inspections, interior design and project management among others.

“The mindset shift is you are not asking people to go on a construction crew to swing hammers,” Brock said. “If somebody wants to do that, that’s great. But there is amazing wealth to be made in the built environment.”

Aaron Benike, vice president of operations at Benike Construction, one of the pilot’s partner companies, said that his company is doing whatever it can to attract a more diverse workforce. It’s what drew him to participating in this pilot. 

With the industry currently going through a wave of retirements of its primarily White male workforce — nationwide 1 in 5 construction workers is 55 or older — he realized they need to be more intentional about outreach. 

Out of over 200 employees, they have few women, and just one woman of color who currently works for the company. 

“It’s just a segment of the population that for one reason or another isn’t part of the team,” Benike said. “For one reason or another they haven’t felt welcome or we haven’t reached out, it’s probably both.”

The construction industry as a whole does have a reputation for discrimination and harassment. A report released by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission last year found that women were often denied jobs or harassed and discriminated against on job sites in the construction industry. 

Benike, who had the opportunity to talk with women interested in construction when the program was being designed, said it opened his eyes to things he’d never really thought about. For the women, he said, “safety meant safety from harassment … and that was a blind spot to me,” he said. “I’ve been on job sites my whole life and never experienced anything like that, but why would I, right?” 

His company is currently undergoing training to obtain an Inclusive Workforce Employer Designation, a series of trainings focused on diversity, equity and inclusion, and a requirement to participate in the pilot. He hopes that job seekers will see that as a sign that his company is a safe space to work. The city’s pilot also has trained mentors at each company to work with women when they are hired to ensure a smooth transition into a new field. 

Benike wants to convince more women to consider getting into the field. “The pay is good. The training is good. It’s safe and the pension is good,” he said. 

In recent weeks the city has also launched public service announcements to bring more women into the pilot; now that it’s been running for over a year, organizers feel ready to scale up. 

For Sara Tekle, a participant who did the entrepreneurial track, the pilot has helped her start a business in craft labor, doing the demoing and cleaning up for construction projects.

Tekle, who is originally from Eritrea, was working in nursing at the Mayo Clinic for years. She had already been doing side jobs with construction after taking on some remodeling at her own house. 

But the program helped her build her website, start the process of getting her contractor license and register her business. She is now in a training that will help her place bids for construction work. She’s also been able to network with companies from the city’s pilot who could potentially contract with her company.

The Rochester City Council has adopted requirements that a certain number of women- and minority-owned businesses be involved in construction on city projects, which could help women like Tekle. 

The program made Tekle feel more comfortable working in construction and supported in making a transition to running a company full-time, which she hopes to do in May when bidding season starts for construction work. 

Tekle, who also works as a women’s advocate, said she’d like to encourage other women she knows to consider working in the built trades — eventually she hopes to be an employer. 

“The construction industry is not engaging or welcoming to women,” she said. “When I start my own company, the biggest vision is to hire a woman.” 

This story was produced by The 19th and reprinted with permission.

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Dear Reader, 

If my newsletter landed in your inbox, you care about college students. If you’re a person in the world, you know that mental health challenges are real. If you had any doubts, the response to Elmo’s “How is everyone doing?” should have cleared those right up.

So, I think I can safely conclude that we agree – college student mental health matters. Now what?

We’ve been writing about student mental health since the early days of The Hechinger Report, and more recently we’ve done our best to document the challenges students and educators faced throughout the pandemic.

We wrote about the anxiety and despair students felt in early Covid isolation. We wrote about college students facing increased symptoms of burnout. Although people of all backgrounds deal with mental health issues, we wrote about how students from marginalized racial and ethnic groups, religious communities, and the LGBTQ+ community faced particular challenges and often lacked access to culturally responsive counseling. We wrote about the pricey mental health recovery programs students often turn to when they take mental health leaves of absence from college. We wrote about how overscheduling kids can lead to depression and anxiety. We wrote about folks trying to answer the question: Is mental health care a job for schools?  

Our colleagues across education journalism are pushing the conversation forward, too. The Chronicle of Higher Education wrote last week about tech companies attempting to fill the void of student need that can’t be met by college counseling centers. EdSource wrote about the way some colleges are taking advantage of their outdoor space to support student mental health. Inside Higher Ed has reported on college counseling centers facing increased demand for trauma counseling.  

A recent story in The New York Times offered a haunting portrait of how faculty and staff at Worcester Polytechnic Institute are responding to the campus mental health crisis.

Clearly, stories of complex personal and community suffering are still out there, well beyond the worst of the pandemic years, and we think these stories are worth telling.

Data shows that current college students are struggling — roughly 40 percent of them experience some level of depression, and 36 percent screened positive for anxiety disorders, according to the 2022-2023 Healthy Minds Study, a study on college student mental health from the University of Michigan. Nearly half of the college students surveyed reported they had been diagnosed with a mental health disorder at some point in their lifetime. 

And mental health concerns could act as an obstacle for students currently considering college. A new survey from the education consulting firm EAB found that 28 percent of high school students said that mental health concerns are a key reason they might postpone enrolling or opt out of college altogether. These concerns are more pronounced for students in certain underrepresented groups: More than half of transgender and nonbinary students reported feeling this way, one third of Black students, and 30 percent of Native American students.

Among the 6,330 high school students surveyed, 48 percent said that “stress and anxiety overshadow their college search and planning.”

The mental health needs of college students are clearly immense. They may also be changing. How is the world of higher education adapting to meet these needs?

Help us decide what to write about next. Under the broad umbrella of college students’ mental health, what are you curious about? What worries you? What gives you hope? Email me and share your thoughts. 

I can’t wait to hear from you. Thank you,

Olivia

If you or someone you know is having thoughts of suicide, the National Suicide and Crisis Lifeline 988 and the Crisis Text Line — text HOME to 741741 — are free, 24-hour services that can provide support, information and resources.

This story about college student mental health crisis was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education.

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Education and education access are directly connected to economic growth. Despite the dysfunction in Congress, especially over border issues and foreign aid, there are key education bills that can provide not only solutions for the issues they address but also models for getting things done across a range of other issues.

Two pieces of legislation that could improve our economic future by advancing education and workforce development passed the Committee on Education and the Workforce a few weeks ago with broad and bipartisan support, demonstrating that consensus is not only possible and practical but achievable.

The success of these bipartisan solutions could break down walls of division and better the lives of our nation’s students while bolstering our cities’ economies.

In mid-December, the committee approved the Bipartisan Workforce Pell Act, with support from both Republican Chairwoman Virginia Foxx and ranking Democratic member Bobby Scott, who co-sponsored the legislation.

The bill would expand Pell Grants to provide needed tuition assistance for short-term education and training directly linked to career opportunities, easing the costs of attaining the education and skills that all students, and especially low-income students, desperately need.

The bill would also fund access to online learning, further cutting costs and making education more flexible and accessible.  A vast array of students across red and blue states would benefit from the bill’s commonsense approach, as would our community colleges, employers and, by extension, all Americans.

Related: ‘August surprise’: That college scholarship you earned might not count

That same House Committee voted, a bit earlier, also with bipartisan support, to reauthorize the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act. This legislation includes federal funding to support education and skills-based training directly connected to career opportunities and economic success.

This too will directly impact our nation’s community colleges, which are the key engines of economic mobility.

Under the bill, existing Labor Department funding could be repurposed to provide eligible workers with individual, customized education and training accounts, leading to improved career opportunities.

The bill would also specifically address the education and training needs of our incarcerated youth by providing them with the education and skills needed to ease their transition into a stable future. And it would add accountability provisions to ensure that spending for education will lead to concrete job growth. Like the Pell legislation, the bill has broad support among education and business leaders.

Passing short-term Pell along with passing workforce and education legislation would provide a clear pathway from high schools to colleges and careers, ensuring a brighter future for millions of students across the nation.

Both pieces of legislation could potentially pass the House and the Senate and be signed into law early in the New Year. 

Smart investments in Education can be both the answer to governmental gridlock and spur economic progress.

Of course, as is usually the case with legislation that clears committee hurdles, the bills contain small flaws that demand fixes. 

For example, in the Pell bill, one item that could derail passage in the full House and Senate and set back the nation’s commitment to social mobility for students is a provision calling for a reduction in student loan eligibility for students at some of the most selective colleges. Another flaw is that the legislation could open the door to abuse by predatory for-profit colleges. These parts of the plan can easily be fixed to ensure passage.

Passing short-term Pell and workforce and education legislation would provide a clear pathway from high schools to colleges and careers, ensuring a brighter future for millions of students across the nation. 

Related: OPINION: It’s time to put the brakes on student debt and give more students a shot at higher education

We’ve seen bipartisan support deliver dynamic education and economic growth before, most recently when Democrats and Republicans in both the House and the Senate united behind Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer’s CHIPS and Science Act.

That act mobilized efforts to restore American leadership in the semiconductor industry while creating good-paying jobs and reducing the cost of automobiles, refrigerators and computers.

The CHIPS and Science Act, with bipartisan support, also included a huge investment in education research, and became a model for the progress that can be achieved when parties come together to better the lives of the people.   

Now is the time for more bipartisan progress. Passage of these two critical education bills would be a fine start, fueling job creation and bettering the skills and future incomes of our nation’s students, who need our support now more than ever. And the bills’ passage would provide a model for how to eliminate gridlock and address our core economic challenges in a positive manner.

Most polling suggests that the top-of-mind topics for most Americans are the proverbial “kitchen table issues,” led by the economy and its effect on working-class Americans.

These bills address those issues. Americans with the education and skills to be employed in growing industries will earn higher wages, and the increased tax revenues from those wages will support our nation’s schools at all levels. And these bills’ prioritization of our community colleges will help them become an even stronger engine for jump-starting and sustaining America’s growth.

In recent years, it’s begun to seem that dysfunction is the one thing that Washington can be reliably counted on to provide. But let’s not simply accept that Congress can no longer come together to support initiatives that meet our needs and provide enhanced opportunities.

For many years, education issues have divided Americans; these core education bills can unite us. They deserve prompt action.

Stanley Litow served as deputy chancellor of schools for New York City and as president of the IBM Foundation. He now serves as adjunct professor at Columbia University and as trustee of the State University of New York where he chairs the Academic Affairs Committee.

This story about breaking political gridlock 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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Dear Reader, 

Saying it’s been a wild year in higher education news seems like the understatement of the century. (I think even non-education nerds would agree!) Thank you for sticking with The Hechinger Report as we tried to make sense of it all. 

The first half of the year felt like we were all collectively holding our breath, waiting for the United States Supreme Court to rule on two massive cases, one on student loan forgiveness and another on affirmative action in college admissions. As we waited, I wrote about the poster child of the anti-affirmative action movement, Jon Marcus broke down federal data that shows the gap between Black and white Americans with college degrees is widening, and Meredith Kolodner reported, as she has before, about the fact that many flagship universities don’t reflect their state’s Black or Latino high school graduates. 

The court ultimately ruled against student loan forgiveness and against the consideration of race in college admissions. 

Shortly thereafter, led by Jon Marcus and Fazil Khan, our team began working on The College Welcome Guide, a tool that helps students and families go beyond the rankings and understand what their life might be like on any four-year college campus in America. Jon’s reporting made it  clear that the culture wars are beginning to affect where students go to college, and we wanted to help ensure people had the many types of information they needed to make the best choice, regardless of who they are or what their political orientation is. 

All the while, we continued covering the country’s community colleges. Jill Barshay wrote about how much it costs to produce a community college graduate, and why some community colleges are choosing to drop remedial math. Jon covered the continuing enrollment struggles at these institutions. I reported on a new initiative to target job training for students at rural community colleges, as well as a guide to help community colleges make this kind of training more effective. 

We also examined some of the many routes people choose to take instead of going to college. I reported on what happens when universities get into unregulated partnerships with for-profit tech boot camps, and Meredith and Sarah Butrymowicz reported on risky, short-term career training programs that exist in a “no man’s land of accountability.” Tara García Mathewson exposed the tricky system that formerly incarcerated people have to navigate if they want to get job training and professional licenses once they’re out of prison. 

And though we love to dig deep into subjects and understand exactly how these big issues affect the lives of regular people, we also zoomed out this year. Meredith, working alongside Matthew Haag from The New York Times, discovered that Columbia University and New York University benefit massively from property tax breaks allowed for nonprofits (they saved $327 million last year alone). After their story was published, New York state legislators proposed a bill that would require these two institutions to pay those taxes and  funnel that money to the City University of New York system, the largest urban public university system in the country.

In 2024, we will continue to cover equity and innovation in higher education with nuance, care and a critical eye. Is there a story you think we should cover? Reply to this email to let us know.

For now, we hope you have a warm and restful break. See you in the new year. 

Olivia

P.S. As a nonprofit news outlet, The Hechinger Report relies on readers like you to support our journalism. If you want to ensure our coverage in 2024 is as extensive and deeply reported as possible, please consider donating.

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