Student Success as a Social Problem

Abstract

In the United States of America, a significant proportion of the age-cohort enroll in higher education but only about one-half of students who start a degree program graduate. Given low completion rates, comprehensive reform efforts seek to improve student success. This article considers the social foundations and policy conditions that shape the student success reform movement in the USA. It argues that the American social compact, which relies on hard work and education as a pathway for social mobility, decentralized governance structure, and the role of philanthropy in the higher education sector all influence the student success reform movement.

“Student success” is shorthand for a broad higher education reform movement in the United States. Lately, the student success movement is tied closely to the “completion agenda,” a program advanced by state and federal policymakers to increase the number of degree holders in the United States. 1 Research about student success most often addresses pedagogical and social-psychological questions as well as their implications for learning environments. 2 Educational design for improving student learning and outcomes 3 is another prominent component of the student success literature.

In this article, I consider the student success movement from a macro- sociological and political economy perspective. I argue that the student success movement is a manifestation of the social, policy, and organizational problems associated with high levels of participation in higher education. 4 Context-specific features of the US higher education system and American society help to explain why student success has become a significant reform movement in the US. I propose that social and economic inequality, stratification of the higher education system, and decentralized governance and policy structures frame the student success problem in the United States. I do not claim to advance an account of the social consequences of high participation beyond the classical 5 and contemporary 6 literature on the topic. Instead, this article invites scholars to consider student success and other important questions in the field of higher education studies not only as social-psychological, pedagogical, and organizational problems but also as points of entry into an analysis of the social role of higher education. To that end, this article does not claim to be a definitive or exhaustive accounting of the question but does intend to establish the board outlines of an argument about the social significance of student success in US higher education.

1 What is Student Success?

Higher education studies in the United States has a long history of examining the determinants of student success. The study of student success assesses the determinants persistence, retention, and graduation among tertiary students. Vincent Tinto’s Leaving College 7 was an early and influential study of tertiary student departure. Subsequently, scholars such as Alexander Astin and George Kuh 8 developed models to predict college student success, theorizing students’ engagement or involvement with the campus environment as pivotal variables.

By the late-1990s early work on student success attracted criticism. Critics identified excluding the experiences of ethnic and racial minority students 9 and a notion that students were deficient 10 as problems with the research. Partly in response to these critiques, the research community and higher education institutions have shifted attention to institutional responsibilities. Student success is now understood to be an institutional imperative. Success is a problem for colleges and universities to solve rather than the burden of individual students. Nevertheless, individual outcomes establish success. While there is no single definition, student success entails year-over-year retention, degree attainment, academic achievement, and holistic development. 11 Post-graduation outcomes including employment rates and earnings are sometimes also considered aspects of student success.

2 The Student Success Reform Movement

Education researchers and social psychologists have studied student success for decades. The movement to reform higher education in the United States to achieve higher levels of success is a more recent development. The United States was the first country in the world to enroll more than one-half of the age cohort in higher education and once lead the world in degree attainment. While participation levels remain high, the US is no longer distinguished when it comes to achievement. For young people, degree attainment levels are higher in Australia, Canada, Ireland, Israel, Japan, South Korea, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, the Russian Federation, and the United Kingdom. 12 Erosion of the country’s global position in higher education attainment prompted concern that a “skills gap” 13 and “innovation deficit” 14 threatens its economic standing and could deteriorate living standards. Tertiary participation rates in the US are high, but rates of attainment are low—about 60 percent nationally. As a result, student success attracts attention.

The underpinnings of the campaign to promote student include support from the Obama Administration’s Education Department, philanthropic foundations, and numerous higher education policy and advocacy organizations. The Lumina Foundation and the Bill and Malinda Gates Foundation are especially notable in promoting the student success reform movement. The Lumina Foundation’s goal of achieving 60 percent degree achievement rate by 2025 has been widely taken up by policymakers, and the Gates Foundation identifies “postsecondary success” as one of its priority areas. Both foundations understand tertiary attainment as central to economic growth and competitiveness.

During the first decade of the 21st century, the Lumina and Gates foundations reshaped philanthropic activity in higher education, with a strong influence on policy and university administration. In that period, both Lumina and Gates increased higher education grantmaking. Rather than investing in traditional educational activities, these so-called “activist” foundations make “high-leverage” grants that to promote policy and organizational outcomes. 15 Gates and Lumina’s efforts proved to be influential among foundations. Older, more established philanthropies, such as the Kellogg and Kresge foundations, followed suit by investing in outcomes-oriented grants. Furthermore, Lumina and Gate’s officials became prominent advisors in the Obama-era Department of Education. College completion and student success were the primary outcomes of interest for both grantmakers and policymakers. 16

Conventional measures of status such as rankings and research income remain essential benchmarks in US higher education. Increasingly, student success measures are also used to evaluate colleges and universities. The US Department of Education’s College Scorecard 17 was designed to allow students to select institutions based on factors such as retention and graduation rates and post-graduation salary. Many of the American states have implemented performance-based-funding schemes that channel public funds to institutions with high graduation rates to incentivize student success. 18 Institutions of higher education now devote considerable energy and resources to identifying practices that promote student success, often benchmarking themselves to peer institutions. Foundations facilitate these efforts directly through grantmaking and indirectly by supporting intermediary organizations such as Achieve the Dream, Complete College America, and the University Innovation Alliance that promote the student success reform agenda. 19

Early student success research emphasized individual characteristics, placing the responsibility for succeeding mainly on the students themselves. Today, student success is an extensive reform effort propelled by federal and state policy, the initiatives from foundations, policy and advocacy groups, and implemented on individual college and university campuses. Institutions of higher education, increasingly, are held to account for student success. Success, in other words, is a responsibility of the higher education system. What explains the shift from success as an individual problem to a system problem? One obvious answer is that it is fairer to demand that higher education support students that to expect students to fend for themselves. There is nothing objectionable about asking institutions of higher education to do well by their students, and one might reasonably argue that the shift was overdue. Regardless of its merit, the sift itself is worthy of consideration. Any explanation about why student success has become an influential reform movement in American higher education should take into account the macro-context.

The US system of higher education is a high participation system. 20 High participation systems meet (HPS) Trow’s definition of universal higher education by enrolling half or more of the age cohort. Massive participation and stakeholder engagement shape the dynamics of such systems. High participation transforms systems. Higher education institutions serve heterogeneous student populations, and a broad set of social interests take a stake in the system. Under HPS conditions quality assurance and the allocation of students to places are perennial problems. As a result, HPS tend to stratify, offering a set of seats with differential social value and, as a result, unequal outcomes. 21

National political culture and economy condition the secular tendency to inequality among higher education institutions within HPS. 22 Countries with egalitarian social systems moderate the stratifying bent of high participation, whereas nations with higher levels of inequality tend to experience high stratification. Social inequality in the United States, which stands at levels that are extreme for a wealthy country, complicate problems of quality assurance, the allocation of students to seats, and differential outcomes from higher education. While few students are formally locked-out of higher education in the United States, students from privileged social and economic backgrounds have uncommon access to the best value places in the system, which confer better opportunities to graduates. 23

The student success reform movement may be understood as a response to the problems associated with high participation. By attending carefully to the success of students in higher education, stakeholders seek to correct problems related to interlocking patterns of stratification. In particular, I argue that social inequity and organizational stratification and multi-level governance and accountability structures are conditions that explain the emphasis on student success. By considering these factors I address three broad questions:

1. Why is student success a meaningful social problem in the United States today?

2. What about US higher education explains why student success is considered a systemic rather than individual problem?

3. Why has the student success reform movement been advanced by a broad constellation of foundations, policy and advocacy groups, policymakers, and institutions of higher education?

3 Social Inequality

The United States is among the unequal high-income countries in the world and over the past several decade’s inequalities have grown. 24 The result of growing inequality has been dwindling economic and social mobility. The vast majority (90 percent) of American’s born in the 1940s had higher incomes than did their parents. For the cohort of Americans born in the 1980s, however, as many people saw downward mobility compared to their parents as enjoyed upward mobility. 25 At the same time, participation has soared; many more Americans go to college now than did in previous generations.

Growing inequality, limited mobility, and high levels of participation in higher education present a political and ideological challenge in the United States. Along with hard work, education is a critical plank in the “American Dream,” a guiding ideological principle that promises skills and effort determine success, rather than heritage and pedigree. The higher education system has provided access, and students have taken up the chance by choosing to participate, but the payoff is, for many, unrealized. 26

None of this is to suggest that students are better off not participating. For most people participating in tertiary education is a good option, if only because the outcomes for non-participants are poor. 27 But growing inequality and weak upward mobility do present a problem for a social contract predicated on education as a route to success. For this reason, it is not surprising that student success has become salient. Student success is important for itself (all students deserve the opportunity to learn and succeed). But as a reform movement, student success is a way to shift the burden of a faltering social contract onto students and higher education institutions. 28 Inadequate student success as the impediment to upward mobility accommodates the theoretical cannon and enjoys some empirical support. Human capital theory, 29 which establishes a link between education and skills with productivity and earnings, explains the relationship between education and economic well-being. However, if students fail to learn, 30 learn skills not demanded in the labor market, or do not consolidate (and signal) their learning by graduating then it is possible that lack of success among students explains unrealized gains from participation. Student success, therefore, is a plausible link between participation and successful life outcomes.

In the US, the Gross Tertiary Enrollment Ratio stands at approximately 90 percent. 31 Given this high level of participation, degree attainment is rather modest. Only about one in four adults in the United States have earned a college degree. 32 As these figures indicate, many who enter the higher education system do not complete a degree program. Given the awkward problem of high participation and low mobility in an increasingly unequal society that is predicated on rewards for individual achievement (meritocracy), the gap between tertiary participation and completion is ripe for social attention. It is right to entertain the idea that student success (or lack thereof) is a meaningful social problem given the political culture and political economy of the United States. If the legitimacy of the social system partly rests on the ability of those who work hard and get an education to do well, but a majority of people who strive for a higher education fail to attain one, then enhancing student success may be necessary to maintain the social contract.

4 Unequal Higher Education

Student success may be a significant social problem in the United States, in part, because of the country’s political culture and economy. But the culture and political economy do not explain the aspects of American higher education that make student success a problem for the system. To address this, I turn again to recent work on high participation systems and, in particular, stratification in the US higher education system.

High participation systems tend to increase stratification. 33 As has long been observed, when a relatively small share of the population participates in higher education, participants are mostly social elites, and most universities are both exclusive and enjoy high social status. When participation broadens, often social demand is absorbed by a growing set of institutions that are less well-resourced, have lower status, and cater to non-elite students. System stratification is expanded by conditions common (though not universal) among high participant systems. Families with financial and cultural capital compete intensely for the most valuable places, crowding out less privileged students from the best-resourced segments of the system. Variable (and high) tuition charges create financial barriers for lower-income students, while at the same time providing additional resources to institutions that are already advantaged and can command higher fees. Similarly, competition between institutions intensifies when participation is high, prompting universities to aggressively seek students with the best academic credentials and ability to pay high prices. 34

The HPS dynamics described above, of course, have long existed in US higher education. What then explains the recent emphasis on student success? Changes to the system following the Great Recession of 2008 have steepened inequality and have increased the pressure to achieve positive student outcomes. Volatile revenue, especially in the public sector, coupled with growing costs and seemingly immutable inclination of higher education institutions to respond to environmental uncertainty by engaging in status-seeking activities, created drag that compromised the ability of many institutions to maintain good-value seats. 35

Taylor and Cantwell 36 recently studied the dynamics of the entire public and not-for-profit, four-year US higher education system between 2004 and 2013. Over that period, a significant number of public colleges and universities in the US became overly-reliant on tuition to fund core operations, prompting them to shift resources away from education and to use tuition funds to cover non-academic expenses. In 2004, public colleges and universities derived 29% of total revenue from tuition fees, but by 2014 that figure had climbed to 47%. Today, public institutions in 15 states depend on tuition for 60% or more of total income. 37 Substantial tuition dependence leads public higher education institutions to spend more on research and seeks the status needed to attract students able to pay fees. Students with high levels of social and financial capital occupy the vast majority of the most valuable and desirable seats in the system, leaving students from marginalized social backgrounds with access to lower-resourced, often tuition dependent, places. This observation is reinforced by a recent report showing widespread underrepresentation of Black and Latino students at public flagship universities. 38

Asymmetrical allocation of students to places within the system at least partly contributes to the disparate outcomes—regarding rates of graduation, for example—observed between institutions and groups of students, resulting in what Taylor and Cantwell call “unequal higher education.” What is more, growing inequality in the US higher education system came with ballooning debt burdens. 39 While many students can manage their student loans, those who attend lower-status institutions, and those who do not graduate are more likely to find repayment difficult. 40

Variable quality, problems equitably allocating students to places within a stratified system, low-rates of graduation, and ballooning student debt all eroded public trust in higher education, especially among political conservatives. 41 Insufficient success among students in higher education one cause that critics have identified for the uneven outcomes experienced by students. For example, a 2015 opinion article in Forbes magazine declared “Higher education is failing our students and our employers.” 42 Because student success is associated with structural aspects of the US HPS, which in recent years have included amplified stratification, many observers, including scholars and casual critics, now understand the problem as systemic rather than an individual failing.

5 Understanding the Composition of the Reform Movement

As described above, the student success reform movement has propelled a complex of individual and collective actors including institutions of higher education, non-governmental policy and advocacy groups, philanthropic foundations, federal and state agencies and policymakers. The constellation of independent and coordinated efforts on the topic indicate that student success reforms can be understood as a social movement. 43 This social movement, I contend, is activated in part by the nature of HPS governance and particularities of the US higher education system.

In high participation systems, the boundaries that separate higher education from ordinary social relations recede and numerous stakeholders are activated. As a result, system governance tends to be multi-level, and multi-centric. 44 The complexity of governance in the US is increased by the federal structure higher education and the systems long-history of in the sector by foundations and other non-state actors. The US Department of Education influences the sector, but it has only indirect control, primarily through setting conditions to participate in federal financial aid programs. Each of the states is responsible for the provision of public higher education within their boundaries, and there is a substantial private sector, consisting of both not-for-profit and proprietary institutions. Significant decentralization coupled with stakeholder activation allows for sets of actors to band together and drive reform movements from both inside and outside of the sector and the state.

In the case of student success, it appears that two foundations—Gates and Lumina—have a high capacity to stimulate and shape the movement. 45 These foundations used grants, lager in absolute terms but relatively small when considering the size of the US higher education enterprise grant-making, to great effect. By making grants to institutions of higher education, along with policy and advocacy organizations, Gates and Lumina appeared to have been able to stimulate a full set of policy and reform activities and to mobilize resources from other foundations in allied efforts. 46 Foundation championed policies include a suite of performance-based funding initiatives that allocate state funding based partly on metrics like graduate rates.

The diffusion of policy ideas in US higher education occurs through a network of intermediary organizations that link together foundations, policymakers, and institutions. 47 It is this decentralized form of governance that permits mobilization by stakeholders for particular outcomes, such as student success. The possibility to mobilize is the product of history and structural decentralization of the system. But the intense interest to intervene in the higher education sector held by a broad set of social stakeholders seems necessarily prompted by high levels of participation. In other words, student success only matters because high numbers of students participate and because massive systems are stratified and produce uneven student outcomes. If a relatively small number of students participated in higher education, it would matter little to society as a whole if they succeed or not. Likewise, if students on the whole mostly succeed, as is closer to the case in egalitarian countries like Finland, 48 then student success would be a problem for individuals more so than for the higher education system.

6 Conclusion

In this article, I argued that student success is a meaningful social problem in the United States. Particular features of the country’s political culture and economy can help to explain the salience of student success as a reform agenda. I further claim that elements of the system make the student success problem systematic rather than a question of individual failings. A constellation of actors has driven the student success reform movement. The student success movement has been lad by the Lumina and Gates foundations with high-leverage grant-making has activated a broad set of stakeholders both within and outside of higher education. It is possible to enable such a reform movement because of the multi-level and multi-centric governance structure of American higher education. Recent work on the dynamics of high participation system of higher education help to frame these arguments.

Unaddressed in this article is why the Gates and Lumina foundations, as well as others outside of higher education, have taken up student success as a problem to solve. I cannot offer a complete explanation (in fact, all of the arguments advanced here are just that: arguments). That said, I observe that interest in student success reflects a long history of understanding US higher education as an instrument for achieving social efficiency and, to a lesser extent, social mobility. As David Labaree 49 famously explained, there is a long social debate over the purpose of education in the United States. Three common goals are democratic equity, social efficiency, and social mobility. While democratic equity indicates education is for citizenship formation, social efficiency understands education for workforce development, and social mobility understands education as a pathway for uplift. Often, policymakers and other stakeholders have preferred social efficiency motivations, and to a lesser extent social mobility. Student success may be attractive to actors like the Gates and Lumina because it fits well with social efficiency understandings about the purpose of higher education. To put it another way, it is plausible that its champions understand student success efforts as a means to technically optimize a critical social process.

Indeed, even the early scholarship on student success by researchers such offered hints of technocratic solutions. Tinto argued that students would be more likely to succeed when they broke from their home communities and embraced the social reality of their university community. Subsequent scholars sought to identify ways in which college and universities activities could be redesigned to facilitate academic integration and promote student success. In other words, student success is a topic that could readily be taken up by efficiency-oriented reformers because its scholarly roots are compatible with the notion that higher education can be technically optimized.

Most academic writing about student success seeks to identify ways in which to improve outcomes for students. In this article, I consider why student success has become a broad reform movement in the United States. Such an approach allows consideration of the macro-social conditions that make student success a significant social problem. Improving student learning and educational outcomes is, in my view, a worthy goal in its own right. Whether or not the student success reform movement can help to redress social inequality is an open question.