The Edge: How an Expert on ‘Nudges’ Aims to Help Adult Students

Ben Castleman and his colleagues at the University of Virginia will tap into rich data to improve people’s job satisfaction. [The Edge] Was this newsletter forwarded to you? [Please sign up to receive your own copy.]( You’ll support our journalism and ensure that you continue to receive our emails. --------------------------------------------------------------- I'm Goldie Blumenstyk, a senior writer at The Chronicle of Higher Education covering innovation in and around academe. Here's what I'm thinking about this week: A new project to help adult students improve their livelihoods. Most folks in higher ed know Ben Castleman as the ["nudge guy"]( whose research (with Lindsay Page) has helped colleges reduce rates of "summer melt" among low-income students by sending them text messages to help them stay on top of all that pre-enrollment paperwork. Now he and his colleagues at the University of Virginia's Nudge4 Solutions Lab are turning their attention to another higher-education challenge: helping states identify working adults who never finished college but who stand a good chance of earning more money if they could complete the work for that educational credential. I'm interested, and not only for the reasons that might seem obvious: the project's focus on adult students and those who could improve their livelihoods if they had more skills. Yes, those are topics I've been researching and writing about extensively over the past 18 months. But this new project encompasses another angle that's also been intriguing to me in all its ed-nerd geekiness. That's because the project will be tapping into the rich troves of data on residents' educational attainment and salary history that [that many states are increasingly developing.]( This resource, often referred to as statewide longitudinal data, has been tapped before, perhaps most visibly a few years ago by researchers who used it for [reports on which universities produced graduates who earn the most money.]( Those reports were interesting for what they were, but not necessarily actionable. Castleman's project aims to use the information, along with data- and behavioral-science techniques, to actually help residents improve their incomes and maybe even their job satisfaction. In the process, it may also help local employers find better-skilled candidates for their hard-to-fill jobs. The idea is simple: Say there were 30 students in Virginia who got partway through an IT program at a community college and are now working in jobs where they could conceivably move to a better position, if only they had the needed skills. The project could identify these folks, from their educational and employment records, and then, via the community-college system, encourage them to return to school. Some states and colleges do a version of this now with some of the 36-million adults who have some college credits but no degree. But as Castleman, an associate professor of education and public policy, told me, that outreach "tends to be fairly uniform and fairly general." With this data, the outreach could be more targeted, with information on salary levels for people with particular jobs and credentials. And, he notes, where there was financial aid, the messaging could even say, "and we've got money to help you pay for it." He hopes those messages will be more compelling than the generic ones. Putting the Data to Work The data systems are the key here. While states vary on how extensive their systems are (you can see some of that in this [chart maintained by the Data Quality Campaign),]( Castleman and his colleagues say that for those that have good data, it's like having a Ferrari in the garage — lots of horsepower, waiting for a driver with the know-how to drive it. For this project, backed by the Lumina and Overdeck Family Foundations, the Nudge lab will be working directly with education officials in Indiana, Tennessee, and Virginia. It will also be putting a data scientist to work within each state so the agencies can, as Castleman says, "build the capacity to put data to work for public good." The Virginia Community College system is already making plans for how to use its data. Since the governor there has identified health care, IT, and manufacturing industries as high priorities for the state, Catherine Finnigan, assistant vice chancellor for research and reporting, said it will ask the Nudge lab to find students who began coursework in those fields. It will also tell them about the state's FastForward scholarships for short-term certificate programs, in which the state picks up two-thirds of the tuition costs. In Tennessee, the project will work in consort with the Tennessee Reconnect program, designed to attract returning adults to college. While initially designed as a tool for higher education, Castleman says he could easily see the project evolve in other directions, perhaps even becoming a tool to help students identify good jobs based on their current level of education, or to help people in the work force see if they're "undermatched" in their current job and salary level, based on their education level. As much as I'll be watching this project for these impacts, I'm also paying attention for one more reason, with policy implications. For years I've been following the debate in Washington about whether to create a federal "student unit record" system. For now, that idea remains blocked by Congress. Yet the more states develop their own systems, the more it seems to me that such information is becoming available, to at least a partial degree, in 50 or so separate systems. If projects like Castleman's prove useful, I can't wait to see what that might do to the tenor of that national debate. Sign up for a new Chronicle newsletter. The Edge has a new cousin. It's a newsletter called Campus Spaces, and it's all about how colleges are using their buildings and grounds to advance their missions. It comes out once a month, with longtime Chronicle senior writer Lawrence Biemiller at the helm. And, it's free. To get it in your inbox, sign up [here](. Going to ASU GSV? Next week, I'll be in San Diego at the ASU GSV Summit, along with my fellow senior writers Scott Carlson and Beth McMurtrie. Hard to say exactly where we'll be when — regulars will know what I mean — but if you're there and looking for us, just ask around. I'm pretty sure someone will know someone who can point you toward one of my colleagues or me. Got a tip you'd like to share or a question you'd like me to answer? Let me know at [goldie@chronicle.com.](mailto:goldie@chronicle.com) If you have been forwarded this newsletter and would like to see past editions, or sign up to receive your own copy, you can do so[here.]( Subscribe Today Get the insight you need. [Purchase a subscription]( to The Chronicle for unlimited access to breaking news, expert analysis, tools, and practical advice. 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