Some college, no degree, lots of debt: A burden for students, schools and communities

Russ Olwell, left, is director of the Institute for the Study of Children, Families and Communities at Eastern Michigan University. Marquan Jackson is director of the Family Empowerment Program in Ypsilanti.

 

The recent report of the Michigan Postsecondary Credential Attainment Workgroup on college access and completion in Michigan delivers good news about what has been happening in the field. Programs that can help students apply to college, apply for financial aid, enroll and succeed in college are making a difference, and more high schools should adapt them.

Anyone who has worked as a volunteer at college application week events can attest that these efforts can energize and encourage students, and rally the whole community behind the goal of post-secondary enrollment.

However, there is another population, those students who have graduated high school, started college (either two- or four-year) and left before graduation – as the report points out, about 25 percent of Michigan’s adult population. These adults are counted as having “some college,” and their experience has often left them saddled with unpaid bills and student loan debt, but often with nothing to show for their experiences – and without the increased earning power of a college degree.

In our work at Eastern Michigan University with the Ypsilanti Housing Commission (sponsored by the Kresge Foundation), many adults in our community fall into this “some college” category, and their status is an economic drag on their family and therefore on the local economy. When we surveyed public housing residents this year, the largest category of debt was student loan debt, with over half of the population owing money on loans, with many having unpaid college bills in addition.

Addressing the needs of “somes” is a key to improving the economic condition of Michigan and its families. Helping people with some college graduate with a certificate, associates degree or bachelors increases their earnings power, makes them a role model within their own family, and gives people one less discouraging story about higher education not paying off.

Most importantly, when we work with people in our neighborhoods to complete college, we raise the number of college graduates in the area, we add to the average income of the neighborhood, but we do so without gentrifying it. We do not always need to recruit young people or out of state people to boost the number of college graduates in our community, if we work intensively with the people we have who may be only credits short of a college degree.

The Family Empowerment Program has worked over the last three years with residents at Hamilton Crossing, an affordable-housing complex, in similar issues. To address the needs of “somes,” we have advocated with university collections to make sure participants can restart classes, helped students find scholarships, and created an individual development account program that matches participants’ savings. These efforts have given us some victories – students finally able to graduate, pay their bills and move on with their lives – but have also revealed the extent and depth of the problems these students face.

However, with some effort and resources, more could be done to help “somes” become graduates. The following is a short list of policies that might help:

• Colleges and universities can be more proactive and flexible working to get students back into the classroom. Rather than relying solely on collections as a strategy to recoup lost tuition, a more flexible approach would allow some forgiveness of unpaid tuition bills (particularly late fees) if the student can return to class and complete the degree program. Without a degree, many students have no chance of earning enough to pay of unpaid bills and loans. This is in colleges’ best interest, as alumni are better to have than debtors.
• Michigan can invest in programs that help working save for college expenses to complete degrees. Individual development account programs can help multiply the savings of participants, but Michigan has trailed other states (Oregon and Arizona) in accessing federal funds for this purpose.
• Community groups and agencies can reach out to people to help them complete degrees, or find ways to receive credit for their work that have done so far. “Reverse transfer” programs can help students get an Associates Degree for work already completed, but too few people know the options that exist for degree completion.

Higher education is not only good for the graduate – it has benefits for their family and community as well. Successfully graduating college gives families and neighborhoods one more person better able to support her or himself, one more person who serves as a role model and guide to others, and one more example of why completing a college degree is important.

This same message needs to be delivered to adults in our community, particularly parents. Many parents returning to college do so to be a role model for their own children. While we are encouraging all our high school students to think seriously about what they want to do after graduation, we should also encourage many of their parents, uncles, aunts and cousins to finish what they started in college, and to finally gain the economic and other benefits of a completed certificate or degree program.