The Edge: Old debts keep millions from returning to college. Is this the solution?

Early results from an eight-institution experiment in Ohio are good enough to keep it going. ADVERTISEMENT [The Edge Logo]( You can also [read this newsletter on the web](. Or, if you no longer want to receive this newsletter, [unsubscribe](. I’m Goldie Blumenstyk, a senior writer at The Chronicle covering innovation in and around higher ed. This week I report on results from an experiment to help indebted students re-enroll in college and rescue their “stranded credits.” I also highlight a traditional accreditor’s first steps into the alt-ed arena. ADVERTISEMENT SUBSCRIBE TO THE CHRONICLE Enjoying the newsletter? [Subscribe today]( for unlimited access to essential news, analysis, and advice. Did an experiment help students re-enroll and rescue their “stranded credits?” Eight colleges in Ohio have been experimenting with a new model to re-enroll students whose debts left them with “stranded credits,” and I recently got an early look at [the results](. At first blush, it didn’t seem like a winning model. Of 9,109 eligible students, only 156 re-enrolled during the 2022-23 academic year. But in this case, a single number really doesn’t tell the whole story. With this population, context matters. People with some college, no degree typically don’t re-enroll at high rates, even without pre-existing debt or withheld transcripts. Seeing any traction among those facing the tandem challenges is good for both the students and the participating institutions’ bottom lines. Enough so that the three foundations that initially financed the pilot with $595,000 are doubling down with an additional $1.3 million, and planning to expand the experiment to at least five more states by 2025. So how does a 1.7-percent re-enrollment rate qualify as a success? I’ll explain. But first a little background. As [I described in August 2022]( the Ohio College Comeback Compact, developed by the nonprofit consultancy Ithaka S+R, was designed to chip away at a problem affecting an estimated 6.6-million students who, because of outstanding debt they owe to their colleges, are prevented from gaining access to their transcripts or re-enrolling. In the pilot, former students with $5,000 or less in debt and a GPA of at least 2.0 were eligible to re-enroll, and eventually have their debt erased. The participating colleges also agreed to reimburse one another, up to $750, for students who enrolled at a different institution than the one to which they owed money, a feature that distinguishes the compact from other debt-forgiveness programs around the country. I didn’t think much of the compact’s re-enrollment rate until folks at Ithaka S+R reminded me that the National Student Clearinghouse recently reported the national re-enrollment rate for all students who stopped out. It’s been falling — to 2.1 percent in 2021-22 from 2.4 percent the year before. And again, the 1.7-percent rate in the compact is for students with the baggage of old debts to manage — plus the responsibility of required advising to take part. Problems with outreach also hampered efforts. While all eight colleges and a nonprofit college-access group, College Now Greater Cleveland, were involved, contact with eligible students happened in a “pretty DIY kind of way,” said Ithaka S+R’s vice president for educational transformation, Martin Kurzweil. Only 9 percent of the eligible students ended up connecting with an adviser. As a point of comparison, [North Carolina Reconnect]( a somewhat similar program, hit a 30-percent contact rate. Still, the Ohio program enrolled almost a fifth of students who connected with an adviser, a slightly higher percentage than in North Carolina. More resources for marketing and outreach will be a focus during the next phase of the project, Kurzweil told me. With the additional money from the three foundations — Lumina, Joyce, and Kresge, — Ithaka S+R has hired the company ReUp Education, which specializes in recruiting students who have left college without a degree, to complement the colleges’ own efforts. Already ReUp’s work, which began in early August, is showing some success, Kurzweil said. The eight participating colleges are also trying to streamline some of the administrative barriers that may have deterred students from re-enrolling. While we can’t draw too many conclusions from a pool of 156 students, we know that in the first year back, a majority of them didn’t switch to another college when re-enrolling, while nationally 64 percent do. And more students returned to community colleges than to four-year institutions. Ithaka plans to conduct follow-up interviews with students to better understand why they did or did not re-enroll, and I’ll share those findings. Holds placed on transcripts disproportionately affect students of color and those from low-income families. During the experiment, students of color and those receiving Pell Grants were both significantly overrepresented among those who did enroll. Meanwhile, I’ve written before about how some states and systems are using employment-opportunity data and other information [to show potential re-enrollees the economic value of returning to college](. That apparently wasn’t part of Ohio’s strategy in this first phase, but could be in the next iteration. Financially, the program was a win for the colleges. In the first year, the eight institutions canceled $135,000 in student debts owed to them, and took in $200,000 in tuition. If one considers that institutions typically recover only about 15 percent of that outstanding debt, the return looks even better. That’s a point Kurzweil was quick to highlight, especially as Ithaka looks for more institutional partners and tries to turn the philanthropy-backed effort into a self-sustaining model. States and systems “have the clearest incentives” to support a project like this, he said. “I would love for this to be part of the plumbing.” A traditional accreditor considers expanding its focus In a sign of the times, the Higher Learning Commission is [looking to develop a service that would accredit educational providers that aren’t colleges](. While the HLC Credential Lab is still “at a nascent stage,” as the commission’s president, Barbara Gellman-Danley, described it last week, the organization hopes it could ultimately become a model for evaluating educational providers that offer nondegree programs. “Accreditors need to reflect the marketplace,” Gellman-Danley told me. The commission has been studying the alternative-education ecosystem for several years, and believes there’s a market for independent evaluation of education providers. Colleges, among others, “want some kind of imprimatur” on organizations they might forge partnerships with, Gellman-Danley said. Colleges must be accredited to take part in federal student-aid programs; other providers that don’t receive such aid are not. The new service could be an added source of revenue for the commission at a time when colleges are no longer bound to obtain accreditation from the agency that historically served their geographic region. Gellman-Danley said it could become “a parallel business model” for the commission, which now accredits about 1,000 colleges. Survey results [published in July]( showed that 86 percent of commission members said they wanted more information on metrics they could use to evaluate the quality of outside organizations’ offerings. Other organizations are also active in this arena, including Jobs for the Future, which is working with the Burning Glass Institute on its own evaluation model. Gellman-Danley said there’s room for more players. The first tests of the new service could begin as early as this spring. Two announcements of note - CodePath, a nonprofit whose co-founder and chief executive, Michael Ellison, I featured in an [Innovation That Matters podcast]( has just been [awarded $15 million from the philanthropist MacKenzie Scott](. The diversity-focused organization provides curricular and peer-to-peer advising to college computer-science departments. - IBM has [committed]( to train two million learners in artificial intelligence by the end of 2026, with a focus on underrepresented communities. As part of this effort, the company plans to expand its AI-education collaborations with universities globally. Got a tip you’d like to share or a question you’d like me to answer? 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