Lawmakers these past few years have emphasized structuring the higher education system to ensure that a higher percentage of students earn degrees or certificates in a more timely manner.
Commissioner of Higher Education Raymund Paredes spoke last week to the Texas Association of Business and detailed his proposal to include a merit component to the awarding of previously need-only TEXAS [Toward Excellence, Access, and Success] Grant scholarships to state universities. In a conversation with LSR, Paredes elaborated on his ideas.
LSR: Tell us how a merit component to the TEXAS Grant Program would look.
Paredes: Right now, the TEXAS Grant program functions primarily as a need-only [component]. The only merit component is [taking] the recommended high school program.
I feel very strongly, and the research we’ve done supports this position, that hard work should count for something. Right now, the way universities typically handle their TEXAS Grant allocation, it’s first come, first served, and it’s based on the poorest students who show up at the door first.
What the Coordinating Board is proposing is that we introduce merit criteria that would simply be used to give students priority. For example, the student who is needy and has performed at relatively high levels would receive funding before the student who is needy and hasn’t performed as well.
We would allocate the same amount of money to all the institutions that they currently get, and that would only change depending on levels of state funding. And we would take into account the academic performance of the students, and we would give them priority. Once certain institutions fund all the students who meet the merit criteria, they would then have the rest of their allocation available to students who do not meet the merit criteria.
And the merit criteria are simply thresholds. They’re not onerous. They’re not extremely high. That would phase out or eliminate a lot of poor students from consideration.
The four criteria are [as follows]: standing in the top third of one’s high school class, having a B or a 3.0 average on a 4-point scale, taking the distinguished curriculum — which means taking [Advanced Placement] and dual-credit courses [college coursework for high school credit] or taking the International Baccalaureate curriculum, and then the fourth component — and notice, this is the only one that is not school-based — and that’s hitting the state-mandated college readiness score on either the SAT or the ACT. But three out of the four criteria — and students only have to hit two of them — are school-based. So students, for example, at LBJ High School in Austin will not have to compete against kids at Westlake High School. They’ll compete against their peers.
We know that 70 percent of the students who currently receive TEXAS Grants would meet two of those four merit criteria. Furthermore, we also know that if we actually adopt the merit criteria to assign priority to students who achieve at relatively high levels, we would improve graduation outcomes by 200 percent.
LSR: I believe a similar proposal was floated in 2009 and some lawmakers expressed concerns. Have you made any changes to the proposal?
Paredes: Yes. We paid careful attention to legislative feedback. There were some people who were concerned that schools would receive smaller allocations of TEXAS Grant money because — if these were eligibility criteria instead of priority criteria, some institutions that are open admissions [institutions] and don’t attract a lot of relatively high achieving students might receive a reduction in their TEXAS Grant allocation. That’s why we stipulated after listening to some of these concerns that these should be priority criteria not eligibility criteria.
LSR: THECB has done some research on how TEXAS Grant recipients performed in higher education. What does this tell us?
Paredes: We did research at two levels. First of all, we took a look at the national data on student achievement, and we took a look at the research which shows what are the high school indicators of success in college. For example, we looked at the work that Cliff Adelman had done at the U.S. Department of Education that showed that probably the most important indicator of college success is the rigor of the high school program, and that is more important that the grades that you get. That’s one of the reasons that we used as one of our four criteria taking the distinguished versus the recommended high school program. The more rigorous the curriculum, the more prepared you are to do college work.
The second body of research that we looked at [examined] grade point averages, and it found, for example, that students who had an A average — regardless of the rigor of the high school itself — had a 75-80 percent chance of completing a university curriculum successfully, whereas students who had a C average had under a 20 percent chance of ever completing their degree programs. And that’s why we came up with the B average criterion.
A lot of data that suggests if you’re below the top third of your class, your likelihood of being successful drops off dramatically. For example, in California, you have to be in the top third of your high school graduating class just to be eligible to attend one of the state universities. You have to be in the top third of your class to attend the Cal State System. You have to be in the top 12.5 percent of your class to attend the University of California.
These are well-established practices.
In addition to looking at the national data, we also applied these criteria to the 2003 class of entering [TEXAS Grant] freshmen. And we looked at the number of students who would have met the criteria who received TEXAS Grants. That’s where we came up with the figure that 70 percent of the students who received TEXAS Grants would meet these criteria.
And then we looked at their retention and graduation outcomes over five and six years. Students who meet the merit criteria and received the TEXAS Grant graduated at the rate of about 60 percent, whereas those who received TEXAS Grant and did not meet the merit criteria, six years later, graduated at a rate of 30 percent.
LSR: The coordinating board has proposed a shift in university funding from paying for enrollment to paying institutions based on courses completed. Why?
Paredes: The primary reason I want to move in that direction is that I want to place more emphasis on retaining students and indicate to campuses that enrolling students simply isn’t sufficient; that our priority should be not only enrollment but success. I want to create incentives for institutions to place more emphasis on academic counseling, tutoring, having faculty give more emphasis to the quality of their instruction, encourage faculty to meet more regularly with students and to do what we can to help students actually become successful and complete their programs — whether a credential or certificate in a community college or a baccalaureate in a university.
We don’t have the kinds of graduation outcomes that we need. We spend an awful lot of money on courses that are uncompleted. About four years ago, we were spending about $300 million a year on courses that were not completed.
A lot of data show that universities and community colleges can take some very basic steps that will dramatically improve retention. And if institutions take those steps, they won’t experience any decline in their formula funding.
We know, for example, that strong orientation programs when students first arrive on a college campus have a significant impact on retention. We know that having students draw up an academic plan not only leads to a decrease in drops, it leads to a significant increase in retention.
We know that faculty contact with students has a significant impact on retention. We know, for example, if students are struggling and faculty reach out to students and say, “May I help you?,” or even insist that the students come in and talk to them about how to improve their performance — we know that that has a big impact on student retention.
So our hope is that this new policy will create incentives for institutions to focus more on student retention, and the ultimate result will be that no institution will receive lower levels of funding, and we’ll get much better outcomes.
There’s already evidence for the fact that when we started talking about going to funding on completed hours about three years ago, that institutions have already made adjustments in their academic policies and student retention rates are going up.
It’s true that if some institutions did nothing, they would experience some decline in formula funding. But if everybody responds to this changed policy with more attention given to student success, then there shouldn’t be an impact at all. O