SPEAKER_02
Hello, and welcome to .edu, the higher education podcast from the American Council on Education, and in my opinion, the best higher education podcast from the American Council on Education. I am your host, John Fansmith, here in AC's government relations office, and I am joined by not my regular co-host, Lorella Spinoza.
So I guess this would make you my irregular co-host. Something like that, yeah. A regular, sort of, is a good general descriptor for you, I think.
I appreciate that. Yes, and as always, I haven't even mentioned your name yet, John Turk.
SPEAKER_01
Yes, remember, we're going to try to make Turk a thing.
SPEAKER_02
Right, I was just about to mention that, and especially yelling it out as an exclamation, Turk! Exactly. Yes, trying to make that happen. It does not seem to be happening, despite my efforts to shout your name at people in the building, but I have gotten some visits from HR.
Anyway, how have you been doing, John? It's been a while since you've been on.
SPEAKER_01
It has been, no, it's been good. Conference season has wrapped up, traveling has kind of slowed down, just getting back in the groove of things after the holiday break, really pushing hardcore on our race and ethnicity in higher education project. We're gearing up for the release of our second report later this year, so trying to get all of that work done.
SPEAKER_02
When is that? Busy time. Do you have a release date set?
SPEAKER_01
It's a little down in the future still, but we are right in the throes of finishing up the data analysis and working on the report.
SPEAKER_02
It's nice for you that the conference season has ended in a right time about a month out from our annual meeting to go on, so it's a real lull for you. Break into effort. We have a subject that I am very glad you are here joining me to discuss, how we're going to talk about community colleges.
SPEAKER_01
That's my favorite topic, everyone knows that.
SPEAKER_02
You're saying that, you're laughing a little bit, but considering the volume of work you have done on community colleges, much of which I've had a chance to see before we've put it out, laugh all you want. It's a very true statement. Luckily, we're not just joined by you, but we're going to be joined by Karen Stout, who is the president and CEO of Achieving the Dream and is also the president and emerita of Montgomery County Community College.
We have two experts in the room on community colleges, and we're going to discuss a wide range of issues. As always, I'm looking forward to getting better informed and educated up on these issues, but we will be back with Karen just after this break.
SPEAKER_01
Welcome back. Today, we're joined by Karen Stout from Achieving the Dream. Karen, tell us a little bit about yourself.
SPEAKER_00
Well, I'm a first generation college student in some respects. I watched my father graduate from college when I was in the fourth grade, so he got his bachelor's degree at night, eight years working hard, and I did my homework with him. But I'm the first in my family to go right from high school into college, and I know we all have different definitions of first gen, but I understood then the transformational power of education.
You fast forward through college into my first community college position, a position where I was rejected three times. Only three times?
SPEAKER_02
Only three times, and it tells you a little... This was the same position? Same position. The same position.
SPEAKER_00
My, that's an acidity. My mom, it was my mom.
SPEAKER_02
She was clipping.
SPEAKER_00
Now, I'm dating myself, but she was clipping classified ads out of the local paper for an admissions advisor at the local community college. After being rejected three times, I had a call from the person who would become my supervisor who said, are you open to coming in for an interview tomorrow with the search committee? Nothing like time to prepare. I said yes, and left that Friday with a job at a community college and a career and a purpose and passion that has never left.
That particular college, there's a lot of connections, and I think the connections really illustrate the value of community colleges and also why it is so hard to evaluate or to put a metric on our work. That particular community college, I worked for 10 years. My mother went back, did not have any college experience, went to that college to gain a skill so she could get her first job when I went away for college.
I took classes there when I was trying to move from my bachelor's degree in English into an MBA program, and I had to take economics and accounting and all kinds of other pre-rec courses back at that time, which they required.
SPEAKER_02
Which you sound very excited about.
SPEAKER_00
They were very helpful for my work as a community college president. One nephew just finished his bachelor's degree, gained credits at that same local community college. My nephew earned dual enrollment credits at that particular community college.
My father ended up doing some instruction in their continuing education program, same community college. It's tough.
SPEAKER_02
That's an amazing series of connections.
SPEAKER_00
It is. Community colleges have never left me and I've never left them. I think that's what really makes us very unique and that's what fueled my passion for advocating for community colleges.
SPEAKER_01
I think I counted maybe five or six different functions or different roles. This particular community college served very different roles for different people. I think that's some of the absolute, like if I'm going to gush here for a moment, that's part of what really makes this sector so valuable.
SPEAKER_00
It is. I mean, I coached at a field hockey camp there. I had my first date at the community opera in high school.
SPEAKER_02
So now we're up to eight.
SPEAKER_00
If you go into any community with a community college and you start to talk to, and we would do surveys when I was president at Montgomery about how many connections you have as a citizen with your local community college, it is amazing the ripple effect that a community college has in a community.
SPEAKER_02
One community college, right?
SPEAKER_01
It's a great example of just how true that is. Before we make a transition into your role at ATD, I believe your connection with ATD started with your role as president at Montgomery County Community College. Can you talk a little bit about your time in that role and that transition?
SPEAKER_00
So I started at Montgomery County Community College as president in 2001 before achieving the dream started as an initiative with Lumina Foundation funding in 2004. Montgomery was one of the 2006 cohort colleges. So we were very early into achieving the dream.
There were seven Pennsylvania Community Colleges that were selected and funded to come into achieving the dream. For me at that point in my presidency, I was at year five. I had been through one strategic plan that was about building connections with the community and we were moving into another strategic plan that we called Putting Learning First.
The work of achieving the dream really helped me as a leader at Montgomery to bring some substance to what we meant by that, by putting students in the middle of that learning first agenda. And I was hooked on the work of achieving the dream. I was hooked on how the tools from achieving the dream helped me to build stronger engagement of faculty around student success in specific courses and specific programs and how it offered me as a leader a safe place for experimentation.
At that time, the student success work was perceived as a fad. Which is kind of incredible, we think about it. And so the network that ATD offered of other colleges also engaged in experimentation really helped me as a leader create, I think, a stronger culture of innovation and just this really focus on student success, which was so important.
I became very involved in ATD nationally. We were doing some leading work. We earned the Lea Meyer-Austin Award in 2014.
And I believe achieving the dream is an absolutely important organization in continuing to catalyze the work around student success. We're moving into another wave of the student success reform work. And of course, the market, so to speak, of the student success reform is much bigger.
At one point it was just achieving the dream. So we are definitely in a new generation of work. But what I think makes ATD unique and fits me personally as a leader is that this is really reformed from the practitioner level up.
It's not reform being pushed into a college. It's being led on the ground in the field. And I think my experience at Montgomery has really helped me to give ATD a voice and those doing the work on campuses a voice.
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, and I'll say, I work in the government relations idea in Washington and you see so many times federal policy pursues ideas that policy makers think will be great solutions for campuses even if they have never been tried on a campus or they don't come from campuses. So it's actually really refreshing to see things that have been driven at the campus level have been shown to work demonstrated and then replicated across. It's almost sort of a necessary antidote to some of these ideas about how do you fix education? Everybody has ideas about how to fix education without necessarily having practical experience in education.
And it actually segues kind of nicely to what I want to ask you about next. There's all this effort around what do we do in terms of affordability or what do we do in terms of improving skills or preparing a better workforce and things like that. And federal policy has lots of interest and lots of ideas about how to do this.
But I think you touched on the idea of the role community colleges play in their communities is a sort of unique proposition. I should also add I grew up in Montgomery County. I used to I learned to ride a bike in the parking lots of Montgomery County Community College.
And in fact, just last year, my dad was part of an art exhibit at the and I forget the name of the beautiful gallery space on the campus.
SPEAKER_00
It's the Fine Arts Building.
SPEAKER_00
Which was an old art. Well, it was an old art barn. It was renovated.
We really wanted to keep the feel of the barn because that was the campus was a dairy farm. Thank you. Yeah, it was one of its you know, building buildings as a college president is one of those tangible outcomes that you can kind of point directly to.
But building them with a sense of sustainability, which that campus has and this feeling that students are first is really, you know, a hard thing to do. And I think we did we did do that in that particular building, especially.
SPEAKER_02
It really resonates as you walk through. But and sorry, that was a total sidetrack. I got off what was what I was trying to lead you to was a question about talk a little bit more.
I mean, so we've covered a little bit that all these different interactions a community college has with the people in the community, but talk a little bit more sort of about the unique value of community colleges within the higher education space, not just in sort of centers of their community, but also the unique role they play.
SPEAKER_00
Well, we know from some of the data from the National Student Clearinghouse that I think close to 50 percent of baccalaureate degree holders have some community college credits on their transcript. So I think that begins to show you a little bit about the importance of community colleges in this whole ecosystem of higher education. Then you put on top of that that nearly 50 percent of all first time students started a community college and the majority of students who are first generation, low income students of color, working student parents started a community college.
SPEAKER_02
So essentially everyone other than the traditional 18 to 24 year old residential four year.
SPEAKER_00
Well, that's an interesting. That's interesting because when you look at the demographics recently in community college enrollment, our colleges are getting younger in the average age of their students. Interesting.
And we are seeing more traditional students come to our campuses. Now they're not always fully moving through to the degree completion. And some of that's because of the growth, the explosion in dual enrollment, where community colleges are really playing a significant role in dual enrollment.
But it is interesting because we could have a whole nother conversation on the cliff that we're facing with adult students on community college campuses, the enrollment cliff. Not sure whether it's related to the strength of the economy or not. OK. I'm becoming a contrarian on that.
SPEAKER_02
But yeah. And John probably is already aware of this, but I actually haven't heard. So is there a concern that I mean a cliff obviously implies you're going to see a significant drop off in enrollment at community colleges in the near future?
SPEAKER_00
We are seeing across the country drops in. We're seeing currently.
SPEAKER_02
Well, I know there's an enrollment decline across, but is it significantly steeper at the community college level?
SPEAKER_00
It's steeper in adult students.
SPEAKER_02
Oh, in adult students. OK.
SPEAKER_00
And it is steeper in community colleges if you look at the iPeds data. Right. What the iPeds data, the iPeds data includes in the four year college enrollment patterns, any community college that offers baccalaureate degrees as four year colleges. So it's it's it's a complicated question because of the way our our missions are beginning to blur and some respect.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, we're losing what the what a definition of a universal definition of what a community college is.
SPEAKER_00
Yes, yes. There are many forms of community colleges. And I I'm more of a purist around the use of the word community in the in the in the name because of how I started to talk about the community college where I started my career.
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, but I still think you can be a community college and also offer baccalaureate degrees.
SPEAKER_02
So well, and this is kind of this raises, you know, one of the things you're talking about populations getting younger, but also these different pathways for students who are coming to community colleges and sort of the maybe move away from a traditional conception of what a community, the educational role of community colleges can talk a little bit more about that.
SPEAKER_00
The the different programs that community colleges enable community colleges to to serve just about every educational need in their local community. And what I mean by that is there's the the central associate degree that can lead to transfer or can lead into employment. But before that associate degree, there are there are programs that are pre associate degree programs.
And then there are programs that are I'll even call them post baccalaureate degree programs where you see a large number of adults coming back to a community college to collect credits or a certification in something that will advance their professional skill them professionally. And then there are the vocational programs, the apprenticeship programs that the community colleges also offer. So that's that's both the beauty of of community colleges.
And sometimes I think what makes us misunderstood as a sector.
SPEAKER_01
Actually, I want to interject just one thing real quick, because you mentioned apprenticeships. And I always any time I have an opportunity to state this, because I think it gets thrown out kind of in the in the in the kind of public lexicon. And we hear about political candidates and folks that talk about, you know, what we need is less higher education, we need more apprenticeship programs.
But people tend to forget that it's often higher education institutions that are offering apprenticeship programs that are structuring those programs. And so I think it's it's always important to just make a mention that when folks say, well, we don't need more higher education to we need more plumbers, we need more mechanics, we need more this, this and that. Where do you think those people are getting those those educations? They're getting at community colleges.
SPEAKER_00
Right. I think this whole idea that a post-secondary credential is will be required and is required now for 60 to 80 percent of our of our population to to to get a job that leads to a living wage is really important. And we you do hear people say, well, we don't everybody doesn't need to go to to college.
But just about everyone will need some type of post-secondary credential and colleges are offering those opportunities.
SPEAKER_02
Maybe I could say not everybody needs a BA degree, but everybody needs some post-secondary education. And yeah, to your point, John, I mean, you see it time again, especially in Washington, this idea about alternative paths away from higher education. And I think that sort of willfully blind to where those skills actually come from.
SPEAKER_01
I mean, something else and just going back a moment, we were talking a little bit about some of the enrollment trends. So I was thinking about it. So I had a conversation with a community college president in the Midwest, kind of in a rural area, who was talking about how his institution now was about a third of its total enrollment was made up of duly enrolled students.
So these are students that are in high school that are taking credits through their local community college. So even when we talk about community colleges and we often talk about the non traditionally aged students at community college, we are seeing growing segments of the more traditionally aged and even direct from high school students into community college. And one has to begin thinking about how does the community college have to have to adapt to this kind of changing group of its enrollment, even if it's going back to the more traditionally aged students.
SPEAKER_00
The dual enrollment opportunities are significant for community colleges. And I have also heard from colleague presidents that as much of as a third of their new student enrollment would be dual enrollment students. I think the challenge becomes for us as leaders of community colleges to make sure that those dual enrollment courses are clustered into pathways that lead to something significant, that we're not just offering dual enrollment in the high schools to offer dual enrollment, that they are crafted that courses are crafted in a sequenced kind of way that can fit into a program, ideally at the community college.
So ideally you want dual enrollment students to matriculate into your community college, but if not, that they transfer into a pathway at a bachelor degree granting institution.
SPEAKER_01
So you've said a bit of a magic word here a couple times. The word of the day, if there was today, would probably be pathways. Do you want to talk a little bit about guided pathways as really one of the main interventions that we see ATD championing around this?
SPEAKER_00
So the guided pathways movement, it's interesting, has emerged on the shoulders of some other movements and learning along the way around student success. So some of the early, I'll call them the early failures of achieving the dream, I think have led to the guided pathways framework. Some of those early failures for ATD were around letting a thousand flowers bloom.
We, you know, really helping colleges look at their data and then design interventions to try to address the gap that the data that the data was illustrating for them. And then not figuring out a way to help those interventions be scaled and sustained. Now, guided pathways helps to create a framework that does support colleges in scaling and sustaining and organizing interventions.
So it kind of builds on top of a lot of ATD's work and ATD achieving the dream has been a significant contributor to the building guided pathways movement. And many of our achieving the dream colleges use the guided pathways framework to organize their student success work. They use other frameworks too.
So it's one of many frameworks. They also, but I'll say guided pathways is really taking hold. And a lot of colleges are adapting the guided pathways model to their particular context and needs.
SPEAKER_02
Can you explain, John is probably already familiar with this, but a little bit for an individual campus. What a guy, what using the guided pathways framework looks like? Is that a series of steps that are taken? How sort of what is the implementation of that framework?
SPEAKER_00
So there's four pieces of the framework. So working to design systems to get students on a path to clarify the path to keep students on the path and then to ensure that students are learning.
SPEAKER_02
And those are the four pieces. Multiple paths, depending on towards an AA towards a post bachelor or something.
SPEAKER_00
They can. But what I'll say, the central piece of guided pathways is really about making sure that on the front end, students understand what options there are. And they can, they can look at those options and clearly see the career opportunities, the labor market value of the opportunities, the time to degree if they do certain things.
So it's a lot more front loading the student experience. So they have a very clear understanding of what they're going for and what that entails. And many of the achieving the dream colleges and the colleges engaged in pathways are taking apart their their programs and rebuilding them in ways that ensure that they are aligned with labor market needs and also clearly aligned with transfer needs.
So so you see some you not streamlining, but you will see some of the programs move from what may have been 68 or 72 credits into 60 credit pathways because that's the associate degree.
SPEAKER_02
Right. That's it. Yeah, seems very seems very common sense.
But yeah, it's obviously a valuable adjustment.
SPEAKER_00
And then the metrics that underlie guided pathways are really important early momentum metrics to try to to try to encourage students to complete 24 to 30 credits in their first year, not necessarily that everybody has to register for 15 credits each semester. And that's what gets really interesting about the innovation. Some of our colleges are moving forward with where they're deconstructing the semester format so that students can accumulate.
SPEAKER_01
Work a little bit more about that, right? Because I mean, John was kind of talking about this and how some of these ideas kind of take hold in Washington, right? But you see some interventions that are out there that are built around the idea that all students have to enroll in at least 15 credits a semester. You were just talking about moving those early momentum measures of at least getting closer to 24 to 30 credits across the whole year. So when you say deconstruct a semester, what does that mean?
SPEAKER_00
Well, the traditional fall, spring, in order to get the 30 credits, you have to go 15, 15.
SPEAKER_02
Right. Full time each semester.
SPEAKER_00
This is why it was so important when I was a college president when the first round of summer Pell came out. Oh, sure. That you could work to create a continuous experience for students, that they would be enrolled year round, and that would take the pressure off of the number of credits required in the fall and the spring.
Because summer became one of the semesters, quote unquote. But some of our colleges are going beyond that. I mean, so Odessa College, for example, has moved to eight week continuous semester.
SPEAKER_02
Oh, interesting.
SPEAKER_00
I don't think I don't know what they call them eight week sessions or sessions. And they're finding that and they I think 88% of their sections offered are offered in that eight week format. So they've scaled it.
SPEAKER_00
It's just not nested within a traditional semester, which is what a lot of a lot of colleges do. They've scaled it.
SPEAKER_02
And a lot of federal policy actually a lot of financial aid determinations are based around the idea of a spring fall to semester.
SPEAKER_00
That's right. That's right. So we are seeing some progress from that.
Now, you know, it's mixed because some colleges have moved to that and they aren't seeing the same results as Odessa. So there are there's there are bundles of interventions that have to be scaled and that are pulled together that that that becomes a secret sauce.
SPEAKER_01
And it goes back to what you were saying earlier, right? Like, I think part of what a network like ATD is so useful for is helping to is helping to bring attention to a variety of interventions. You have some key frameworks that outline how you think about ordering or selecting certain interventions, but still recognizing the fact that campus A is going to have a different context than campus B and that you will have to tweak some things from here there to make it work.
SPEAKER_00
And campus A may have different levels of capacity than campus B.
SPEAKER_00
So one of the things that really is important in our work with our ATD colleges, we really work on helping colleges build capacity in seven fundamental areas that and those colleges that are able to build those strong fundamentals plus adopt a framework like guided pathways, plus use some type of unique lever or theory of change. And usually it's something that the leader is very committed to and is unwavering in their attention to. They're the ones that are beginning to see the accelerated results.
They're turning the flywheel, so to speak, using the Jim Collins, good to great language.
SPEAKER_02
And so you have this amazing network with ATD. You obviously beginning to, I think, are not beginning to well in the process of identifying useful interventions for campuses to implement. What else do you have on the agenda? What's coming up? Future projects, things you're working on now?
SPEAKER_00
A couple of exciting things at achieving the dream in addition to really focusing on this whole college transformation. We're working beyond just transforming college. Beyond just transforming college, there's a couple of other things that are going on that are new for achieving the dream.
We're fairly new and I think are important to the field at large, not just community colleges. One is their work with open education resources will be releasing in the next month or so a research report on three years of work with 39 colleges that have built a zero textbook degree pathways. There's some significant findings from that research and will be continuing that work.
SPEAKER_02
And those 39 institutions across the spectrum of sector?
SPEAKER_00
They're all community colleges. They're all community colleges, mostly in the ATD network, but not all of them. We are doing some important work with our tribal colleges and universities, supporting them in building capacity.
We recently partnered or merged with Gateway to College National Network, another non-profit that's helping achieving the dream to build out some supports for our colleges in K through 12 partnerships and dual enrollment, especially for the most vulnerable students in the communities that the colleges serve.
SPEAKER_02
That's fantastic.
SPEAKER_00
We're working on some new metrics work in Florida trying to push this idea that completion is a progression metric, not the end in and of itself.
SPEAKER_02
Can you just talk a little bit more about that? It's an interesting idea.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I mean, my mind is going to, OK, all of the performance-based funding things with Florida, I think about all the different metrics and we try things and we try it again and we go back and forth. You know, Florida is always an interesting case example.
SPEAKER_00
Well, completion is a metric that to me is an inside baseball metric for a college, right? It really doesn't measure student return on investment. And it's not looking right.
SPEAKER_01
Actually, I was a little, I didn't say anything because I was just like, no, actually, that's exactly right.
SPEAKER_00
And it doesn't really measure community return on investment. So we're trying to move from this completion arc to the student return on investment arc to this community return on investment arc. And it's a philosophical framework, ATD is working with now, but we're hoping that this work in Florida will help us build that out a little bit.
SPEAKER_02
A lot harder to quantify.
SPEAKER_01
Yes, yes. And by no means do I want to get in the nitty gritty of that. But when you were thinking about student return on investment, I'm assuming that is more than just financial return, right?
SPEAKER_00
Yes, it's well-being, a lot of well-being factors. We did a report two years ago with Gallup and Strata on measuring what matters. And we have a hint of where we want to go with this work based on that piece.
And then, you know, achieving the dream is also very deep into this work around holistic student supports, which helps its technical assistance, coaching supports for our colleges to help them bundle together academic and non-academic supports for students. Part of the guide, a pathways framework, part of the part of the work around getting students on the path and keeping them on the path. It also blends with a lot of the work from the Hope Center on basic needs, helping students with basic needs, front-ending that identifying what those basic needs supports might be, and then designing to support students with that, securing those basic needs supports.
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, and we've had previous podcast episodes about campus mental health and other things that are sort of, we now have a much better understanding of how important they are to things like, does a student, you know, come back to school, do they complete? And, you know, I think certain low-pride experts are on some of the issues around food insecurity on campus, so it's a really great approach. This is all being considered in that light. So a lot of those resources will be available on our webpage.
You know, I asked you what else you had going on, and again, we started with transforming all of higher education, and then you went on an expansive list of other projects you're working on that, you know, at least from where I said, kind of comprehensively touch on all of the interactions a student might have with the campus. Obviously, you have a lot of work ahead of you, so we're going to let you get back to that. But before you go, was there anything else you wanted to bring up with our audience, or just sort of raise or sort of add to what you've already said?
SPEAKER_00
I'd just say that since I'm here with ACE and you do so much important work around advocacy, that what we're learning from achieving the dream around student success, we are not a policy shop at achieving the dream, but we can inform, I think, a lot of the emerging legislation and give it a lens from the student success perspective and what we're learning. And we're happy to be doing that and recently became part of the secretariat. So we're, oh, great.
SPEAKER_02
That, that for those who don't know, the secretariat is a group of the heads of different higher education associations that meets to talk about what's going on in Washington, a whole range of other things too.
SPEAKER_00
So I'm hoping to bring a new voice to that group around.
SPEAKER_02
That is fantastic. I did not know you joined and that's great. And I will say I sort of started by saying this point, but as somebody who does engage on the advocacy side, having actual functional working examples of what should be driving federal policy.
So I imagine you and I might be having some conversations going forward. Frankly, the whole moving away from completion thing is worth a long conversation, a lot more exploration. So, you know, I would say for people who are listening, if you want to continue this conversation, we actually have on the ACE Engage platform.
A two year colleges discussion group. And there's other relevant or resources available on ACE Engage. So check that out.
But I most want to say thank you very much, Karen, for coming on.
SPEAKER_01
Thank you. Thank you.
SPEAKER_02
This is a really great conversation. Like I said, looking forward to continuing this off a recorded format and going forward. We'll be right back after a break.
And we're back. And, you know, I always sort of say this to the point that people who listen to this podcast, probably think it's a cliche, but let me guess you learned a lot. I did. That's exactly right. I learned a lot.
And, you know, it probably does come through the fact that this is a continuing educational experience for me. Maybe ACE can get me some sort of credit for it. Could evaluate it.
Yes. That's we have some opportunities for that. But it was an incredible conversation.
Karen, obviously very engaging, very interesting. And just again, she's left, but thank her for being on. I think one of the things that sort of came up in that conversation is the sort of the different pathways and sort of the new thinking about higher education and how that manifests in community colleges.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01
I mean, what I always I get struck by is it is kind of a cliche, but people always say, you know, higher education is a very important thing. It's a cliche, but people always say, you know, higher education doesn't change or higher education is slow to change. And I think having a conversation like we did with Karen and learning more about what a whole segment of higher education is doing and not to mention the fact that she was talking about programs and initiatives and linkages between K through 12 and higher education.
The linkages between community colleges and four year colleges as well. I don't know how you could listen to that a Nazi that colleges and universities are actively changing and they're changing for the better.
SPEAKER_02
I'm changing in fundamental ways. Yeah. And I think it's an interesting point too, because we are approaching the Iowa caucuses. Yes, we are.
I bring this up with a, I don't know, what do we call you a transplanted, Iowan and Iowan.
SPEAKER_01
Yes. By birth. Yes. And Iowan afar right now.
SPEAKER_02
Oh, and Iowan afar. That sounds so literary. I enjoy that.
And one of the big things, one of the big policy issues in the Democratic primaries is. Free college.
SPEAKER_01
Right. Yeah. So can you believe that higher education now is a top level topic and a presidential, like a national election right now?
SPEAKER_02
You know, it is a funny thing. So I've been doing government relations for AC for about 15 years now. And when I started, I remember how shocked we all were when President Obama made the idea of expanding Pell grants.
Yeah. Sort of a central part of his platform in 2008. And that was huge.
And now we're at the point where every candidate has to weigh in on the idea of college affordability. And, you know, particularly, I think what's been interesting is this idea of free college. Yeah. And, you know, it's a concept. Everybody has a different idea of what that means.
SPEAKER_01
And yeah, I mean, it's definitely a concept. And I think the beginning line is what does anybody mean by free college? Because, I mean, I think you see some of the plans or you hear what some folks are proposing and free college is free. Quote unquote, free tuition and fees.
Students wouldn't have to pay for tuition and fees to attend the institution. Doesn't really talk about all of the other costs associated with going to college. And so is that free college? If we're just talking about tuition and fees? I don't know.
But yeah, it's certainly the concept of free college is certainly on a lot of the candidates minds. And frankly, it's a lot of states minds. We're seeing a lot of programs in that space.
SPEAKER_02
Yeah. And most of those speaking of community colleges have been at the community college. So I think there's been a wider acceptance of the idea of free community college at the state level.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah. I mean, Tennessee kind of kicked things off with with the Tennessee promise. That program that was really aimed at direct from high school first time college students to attend a Tennessee community college tuition and fees free.
But it's starting to expand now to, I mean, Tennessee again, Tennessee seems to be a leader off the times. Right. And a lot of that a lot of the higher education policy space, state level space. But now designing programs that are aimed for for adult and returning.
So non first time students, Tennessee reconnects and that program. But we're seeing some of those programs spread other places as well.
SPEAKER_02
And I think New York with the Excelsior program is probably the only statewide four year free college.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah. I mean, the Excelsior program is unique in that exactly that it's targeted for any of the of the the four year level SUNY and CUNY institutions, institutions there. But yeah, I mean, like there's we could get into the weeds and all of these and a lot of there's a lot of there's a lot of semantics.
There's a lot of details to these programs. I think, you know, the biggest thing that I think will will need to be to really discussed critically moving forward are, you know, really how these programs are financed. A lot of the programs we see right now in practice.
So we were talking about Tennessee. We were talking about the New York program. They're all what we would call last dollar programs.
So a student first has their Pell Grant applied any state or other federal grant aid that they would have. And then those programs cover what's left. So the remainder of the last dollars.
Exactly. And so those questions again about how do you pay for all of the other expenses of college.
SPEAKER_02
And I think one of the other covered by that. Right. No. You know, there's that, which obviously has a big impact on how much these programs would cost at a national level. The other thing and it has come up somewhat in the debates is, you know, who is benefiting from these programs and who should be benefiting.
And I think that's another one we tend to look at. Certainly the current federal financial aid system is very much geared towards need. And, you know, there are philosophical arguments, if you believe education at the post secondary level is a right.
Then free college makes sense regardless of your family circumstances. If you are looking at this as a tool to incentivize low income families or low income students to access and complete college, well, then maybe you should have income restrictions. Maybe it should phase out based on family income.
There's a lot of, you know, and it gets thorny because it's not just as you pointed out, how do you pay for it? The other thing is, we've done a lot of research and we've seen a lot of people say that they're not willing to get a program of education. So you know, they would be willing to get a program of education, you know, just like we did with the Nuts and Bolts of implementing a program, but some of these philosophical considerations about what is the appropriate program. What goal are you trying to serve? Exactly.
Exactly. So we'll find out basically, obviously, I think you and I can safely say that the entire outcome of the Iowa caucus will be dependent on candidates college proposals. Right. I think, I think that's right. I think it'll be interesting to see.
I should say thank you, John, for joining us today. Still not making turkey thing, I see. You know what? As much as I want to do it, it does seem a little aggressive.
SPEAKER_01
That seems a little rude. It's that German last name. It just naturally sounds kind of weird.
SPEAKER_02
We have that in common. Do you have a nice short German last name? Fansmith doesn't really get yelled out that easily. Doesn't really even get pronounced that easily.
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