The Attainment Agenda: State Policy Leadership in Higher Education

Notes

Notes chapter 1: Improving Higher Education Attainment of All Students 1. Analyses of data from the Organisation for Economic Co-­ operation and Development 2009, as published in Baum, Ma, and Payea, Education Pays 2010. 2. Kelly, “Projected Degree Gap.” 3. BasedonhisreviewofdatafromtheU.S.BureauofLaborStatistics,Mc­Mahon,Higher Learning, Greater Good, concluded: “All thirty occupations growing fastest percentage-­ wise, except for home health care, medical, and pharmacy aides, require a community college or four-­year college education or more. . . . And for the thirty occupations expected to account for over two-­thirds of the numerical decline in jobs, 28 out of 30 are lower skilled, requiring only on-­ the-­ job training after high school” (76). 4. Carnevale, Smith, and Strohl, Help Wanted. See also Zumeta, “Does the U.S. Need More College Graduates to Remain a World-­ Class Economic Power?” 5. Demographers define a generation as “a group of people born over a relatively short and contiguous time period that is deeply influenced and bound together by the events of their formative years”; Geoffrey and Schewe, “The Power of Cohorts.” 6. Anderson and Kennedy, “Baby Boomer Segmentation.” 7. Vedder, “Why College Isn’t for Everyone.” Among those providing persuasive counter-­arguments are Carnevale, Smith, and Strohl, Help Wanted; and McMahon, Higher Learning, Greater Good. 8. McMahon, Higher Learning, Greater Good. 9. Organisation for Economic Co-­ operation and Development, Education at a Glance 2012, 184. 10. Ibid. 11. Acemoglu and Robinson, Why Nations Fail, 78–79. 12. We adopt McMahon’s distinction between inequality and equity: “Equity is a normative term that involves a value judgment. Inequality is not; it is simply a description of the facts about the degree of equality in a distribution” (Higher Learning, Greater Good, 216). Like McMahon, Salmi and Bassett (“Opportunities for All?”), and others, our interest is in equality of opportunity to participate in and benefit from higher education. 13. Organisation for Economic Co-­ operation and Development, Going for Growth. In contrast, in Sweden, the most equitable nation on this measure, only 4.5% of the total pre-­ tax income went to the top 1%. 14. Organisation for Economic Co-­ operation and Development, Going for Growth; Stiglitz, Price of Inequality. 242   Notes to Pages 4–8 15. Stiglitz, Price of Inequality. 16. Haskins, Isaacs, and Sawhill, Getting Ahead or Losing Ground. 17. Stiglitz, Price of Inequality. 18. Salmi and Bassett, “Opportunities for All?” Recent uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, and other Middle Eastern and North African nations suggest the importance of higher education opportunity to political stability and civility. 19. Stiglitz, Price of Inequality, 116. 20. Data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, as reported in 2005, “Education and Economic Mobility.” 21. Analyses of data from the National Center for Education Statistics, as published in Baum, Ma, and Payea, Education Pays. 22. Ibid. 23. Analyses of data from the 2007–11 American Community Survey show that median family incomes were $42,239 for Blacks and $43,374 for Hispanics, considerably lower than for Whites ($72,088) and Asians ($81,268). 24. National Center for Education Statistics, Digest of Education Statistics 2011, table 213. 25. Ibid., table 210. 26. Ibid., table 10. 27. Humes, Jones, and Ramirez, Overview of Race and Hispanic Origin: 2010. 28. Ibid. 29. Western Interstate Higher Education Commission, Knocking at the College Door. 30. Humes, Jones, and Ramirez, Overview of Race and Hispanic Origin: 2010. 31. Acemoglu and Robinson, Why Nations Fail; Salmi and Bassett, “Opportunities for All?” 32. Shapiro et al., “Completing College.” The Digest of Education Statistics published annually by the National Center for Education Statistics shows the percentage of students who first enroll full-­ time who complete a degree from the institution in which they first enroll within 150% of the expected time to completion (e.g., six years for a bachelor’s degree ). Drawing on data from the National Student Clearinghouse, these completion rates reflect the percentage of students who first enroll full-­ time or part-­ time who complete a degree or certificate within six years from their starting institution or from a different institution. 33. Schneider and Yin, High Cost of Low Graduation Rates. 34. Salmi and Bassett, drawing from the work of philosophers John Rawls, Amartya Sen, Ronald Dworkin, and John Roemer, conclude that promoting equity in college access and completion “promotes justice as fairness” (“Opportunities for All?” 6). 35. Baum, Ma, and Payea, Education Pays, figure 1.2. 36. National Center for Education Statistics, Digest of Education Statistics 2011, table 395. 37. Analyses of data from the Bureau...