Colo. fumbles on higher ed

Though the Centennial State boasts the nation’s most educated populace, it has dropped the ball in sending its own to college as only 39 percent of high school students are university bound

By Dave Curtin, Denver Post Higher Education Writer

(Thanks to Al Jones for passing this along)

Angel Anderson has seen firsthand how difficult life can be without a college degree.

"I’ve seen the effects of not graduating from high school and not going to college. In my family, they’ve all had to struggle," Anderson says.

So the Smoky Hill High School senior insists she won’t be caught in Colorado’s great irony.

While the state is touted as the most educated in the nation because of its imported workforce, the truth is ugly: Colorado is lousy at sending its own children to college.

Indeed, 33 percent of Coloradans older than 25 have at least a bachelor’s degree, and nearly two out of three have some college education, according to the Census Bureau.

Yet Colorado sends only 26,000 – 39 percent – of its 66,000 high school freshmen to college within four years.

Advertisement
Click Here!

North Dakota sends 59 percent of its high school freshmen to college. Massachusetts and New Jersey each send 54 percent of their children to an accredited college, according to the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education.

But Colorado ranks 30th in sending its own to college. Suddenly, the luster of being dubbed "most educated" begins to dull.

The reasons are as varied as the 40,000 Colorado ninth-graders annually who will never make it to college.

Twenty to 30 percent will drop out of high school. Another 5 percent will join the military. Many of the rest are victims of financial and cultural barriers.

And then there’s the lifestyle. It’s more fun to ski than go to college.

"How many go to work at the ski areas or REI?" asked Joan Ringel of the Colorado Commission on Higher Education. "We’re not so hung up as in the East on putting one foot in front of the other and getting on the conveyor belt."

"You have a rockpile out there that’s extraordinarily distracting," says Tom Mortenson, a senior scholar at the Pell Institute for the Study of Opportunity in Higher Education in Washington, D.C. "Given the distractions, if you bulldozed the Rockies you’d be better off."

But Mortenson recognizes the reasons go deeper than the Rocky Mountains, and it starts with the state’s steadily declining high school graduation rate.

"It’s a mystery because the educated workforce wants to send their children to college," CU president Betsy Hoffman says. "But we have a problem graduating children from high school, including low-income children. It’s a deep-seated problem."

About 20 percent to 30 percent of high school freshmen don’t graduate their senior year, depending on whose statistics are to be believed.

The National Center for Education Statistics places Colorado 30th in the nation in graduation rates, saying it has declined from an 81 percent graduation rate in 1984 to 69 percent in 2001.

The Colorado Department of Education puts the graduation rate at 82 percent.

"The trend is particularly problematic because the fastest growing population in Colorado is Hispanic and 61 percent don’t make it to graduation," says Van Schoales, vice president of the Colorado Children’s Campaign, a children’s advocacy organization.

When the Children’s Campaign tracked 13,000 Hispanic ninth-graders in 1997-98, it found that only 5,000 graduated in 2001. The reasons vary from cultural barriers to high mobility, Schoales says.

"Ten, 20, 30 years ago, it was OK that kids did other things than go to college, and now it’s not OK both for the kids individually and for society in general," Schoales says. "The cost of kids on (welfare), of the prison system, of the lost tax base, is a huge societal cost."

A bachelor’s degree holder makes $17,000 more a year than a high school graduate – about $1 million more over their lifetime, according to the Census Bureau.

That’s not lost on Smoky Hill’s Anderson or classmate Michaela McKenna.

"In this day and age, it’s really hard to have the life you want to live if you don’t have the education," McKenna says. "I’m motivated now to go to college."

That hasn’t always been the case. Both Anderson and McKenna were considered middle-achieving students wallowing in academic apathy with no desire to attend college.

Then they joined a state program pioneered in Cherry Creek School District known as AVID – Advancement Via Individual Determination – which takes unmotivated middling students, places them in advanced courses, supports them with college tutors and opens their eyes to college and careers.

Since it was piloted at Smoky Hill and Prairie Middle School seven years ago, it has spread to 45 Colorado middle schools and high schools in 13 districts. It has a 96 percent success rate in sending former non-college track children to college.

"I became excited about school," says 16-year-old Angela Sidhu, a junior at Smoky Hill. "I went from thinking school was something I had to do to something I want to do. In AVID, you have a bond with other kids. You don’t feel like an outsider because you like school."

They all tell of meteoric rises in grade point averages – despite being enrolled in advanced courses – from 2.0 to 3.5. Or 1.6 to 2.9. And they all credit their teachers for taking an interest in them and boosting their confidence, both in school and in life.

"I wasn’t doing well in school. I wasn’t focused or paying attention, and I didn’t care," Smoky Hill senior Brenda Vasquez says. "I got into AVID, and I realized, yeah, this is important. My teacher helped me see what’s good for my own life."

Students with low-to-middling grade-point averages and average to above-average achievement-test scores typically enter the program between seventh and ninth grade and are placed in a college-prep curriculum.

"These are students who are capable of more than they are giving us," says Robin Withers, AVID district coordinator.

They agree to two hours of homework nightly, community service and extracurricular school activities – qualities that college admissions officers like. And they agree to apply to a four-year college.

They learn to negotiate the maze of financial aid and scholarship deadlines and how to write admissions essays. They also practice taking admissions tests.

"We surround them with the expectation of going to college," says Brooke Gregory, executive director of student success and multicultural services for Cherry Creek School District. "It’s our goal to say that every child is prepared if they want to go to college, now or down the road."

The AVID program is an example of the new way schools are doing business.

"In the old model school, you had to actively choose to pursue college," Schoales says. "In the new model high school, you have to actively choose not to go to college."

Gov. Bill Owens was so worried about Colorado’s lackluster college participation rate that he commissioned a blue-ribbon panel of lawmakers, community leaders, college presidents and higher education experts in 2001 to figure out a solution. Their plan – to show every high school sophomore that college is possible by creating a state-subsidized college fund in their name – failed in the legislature. It may be resurrected this year.

"When you have a state growing like ours, we need to look carefully at why people aren’t going on to college," Owens says.

It’s helpful that Colorado has risen from dead last nationally in sending its poorest students to college to No. 45, says scholar Mortenson, who publishes the trade newsletter, Postsecondary Education Opportunity.

But that’s not good enough, CU President Hoffman says.

"Parents who haven’t been to college aren’t in a position to know what college is like, what college-prep curriculum you need to take in high school or how to get financial aid," Hoffman says.

CU’s precollegiate program has a 97 percent success rate in sending attendees to college, she says.

"The program costs us $1.5 million a year, and it’s a budget I won’t cut," Hoffman says.

Mortenson points to declining state appropriations to to higher education and the unwillingness of Colorado’s educated newcomers to fund it.

"There is a influx of college educated people from elsewhere, and there is a lack of funding for state higher education because those people tend to be more conservative, and they don’t want to pay taxes while enjoying the benefits of the state," Mortenson says.

Colorado ranked 42nd in state appropriations in 2003 prior to mid-year budget cuts. In 1971, it was No. 5 in college funding. Before that, it floated between 10 and 15, Mortenson says.

"Far more than any state, Colorado has turned away from funding higher education," Mortenson says. "You clearly have a problem."

The lack of funding creates disincentive for enrolling resident students when nonresidents pay more than six times the tuition. At CU-Boulder, that’s $3,192 versus $19,508.

"Recruit nonresidents, charge ’em an arm and a leg, and they become profit centers," Mortenson says. "There’s an economic benefit to recruiting out-of-staters who have fond memories of Colorado from their family ski vacation."

That’s true, but nonresidents are not taking the seats of the local kids, says Lou McClelland, director of institutional analysis at CU-Boulder. Since 1994, nonresidents have been capped at 45 percent of freshmen enrollment at state public universities.

The college-going rate for Colorado youth is not as bad as it is being made out, McClelland says.

"These measures all deal with students who start college immediately after high school, and it’s not clear that’s the only goal for a good state (college) system to have," McClelland says. "Colorado happens to have a pretty large number of new freshmen who aren’t three months out of high school who aren’t being counted."

Her 2000 study tells a far different story.

Colorado fares well for high school graduates who start college within 12 months – 53 percent – just below the U.S. median.

Colorado is 15th in the nation for enrolling its high school graduates in college, regardless of length of time since graduation. (86 percent)

Colorado rates very high – 12th – for sending graduates to in-state colleges (64 percent), well over the U.S. median.

"If a goal of the state system is serving students at home, we’re a success," McClelland says. "This tells a completely different story.

(Please see the article for a very revealing chart on the value of a college education- Russ)

http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36~53~1609345,00.html