Colleges must streamline aid, help students afford to complete degrees

For many years, the focus in federal higher-education policy has been on making and keeping financial promises between students and the federal government. As a result, we’re seeing an economy hindered by over $1 trillion in student debt and a workforce that’s currently 6 million skilled workers short of what it needs.

We’re both big believers in accepting appropriate responsibility. We believe students need to think carefully about their choices in higher education: whether they can afford to attend the schools of their choice, whether the schools they prefer have a programs that will help to launch their chosen careers, and, sometimes, whether or not pursuing a bachelor’s degree is the best choice for them at all.

But what we often don’t talk about is the responsibility that colleges or universities take on when they choose to admit a student.

We are both proud of the universities that bear our states’ names. The University of North Carolina and the University of Kentucky are close to the hearts of our constituents, and not just because of basketball. Both universities are making an effort to live up to their reputations as educational powerhouses as well and want their legacies to show students just how valuable they have been to these institutions’ success.

UK is a remarkable example of an institution that takes its responsibility to students seriously. On a recent visit to Washington, UK administrators shared with us that many freshman students with a B average were not returning for their sophomore year because of a gap in available funds.

It’s a well-known fact that earning a baccalaureate degree in four years is a thing of the past — the new standard for completing a baccalaureate program has become six years. But even these longer completion times haven’t resolved the issue of students dropping out of their chosen programs before completion.

According to the administrators we spoke with, lacking the requirements of merit-based institutional aid, students with a 3.0 grade point average often found themselves at least $6,000 short of the funds they needed to continue their education at Kentucky. For many, dropping out was the only option.

That’s when the university saw an opportunity to show students that UK is committed to helping them finish what they’ve started. With its recently announced UK LEADS program, UK administrators are putting their money where their heart is by redirecting a percentage of institutional aid to students based on financial need, not just merit.

UNC’s Carolina Covenant Program has much the same goal of not just retaining, but encouraging and proactively supporting, low-income students. Since 2003, the program has worked with high-achieving, low-income students to find pathways to paying for school without taking on debt. Now, more than 80 percent of those students graduate within four years, without massive debt, because university leaders didn’t just tell these students they were wanted, they showed them.

This is exactly the kind of message institutions need to be sending their students during a time when more money is not resulting in higher graduation rates. Over the last few decades, the tangled maze of federal student loan, repayment and forgiveness programs has resulted in historic levels of student debt. Yet graduation rates are much lower across the board than they should be, given the level of financial aid flowing out of federal coffers.

When an institution sends a letter of acceptance to a student, the letter should signal its commitment to that student’s individual success, not just the school’s interest in populating its campus.

After years of hearings, meetings, studies, reports and, most importantly, firsthand accounts directly from our constituents, we recently introduced the PROSPER Act to provide much-needed reforms to higher education.

It will rein in the federal government’s outsized and overly complex role in federal student aid, moving to one grant, one loan and one work study program. This model will streamline and help students decide how much they can manage.

It will also open the door for fine institutions across the country to implement their own versions of UK LEADS and Carolina Covenant. The result, we hope, will be an increase in the number of students who don’t just choose to attend the university they’ve always loved, but are also able to graduate, launch their careers and live out their own American Dreams.

This story was originally published December 12, 2017 at 5:43 PM with the headline "Colleges must streamline aid, help students afford to complete degrees."