Massachusetts is now a couple years into its experiment in rolling back the clock on college policy—and not in a good way.
At a time when higher education policy nationwide is shifting to focus on the value students receive from their education, Massachusetts and its relatively new free community college law—MassEducate—is instead focused squarely on access to college.
On that dimension, the Commonwealth seems to be succeeding. According to figures, enrollment rose 14 percent this year—roughly 9,500 new students. That’s on the heels of an 8.7 percent rise in students the year prior. These increases follow a decade-plus of enrollment declines.
But it’s less clear if the enrolling students will benefit from their educations.
With surging numbers of students, fears are mounting that community colleges don’t have the faculty and staff in place to support their diverse needs.
That’s only increasing the cry for more resources to an underperforming system in which roughly two-thirds of students don’t graduate within six years—a number that has remained constant for years.
Some are quick to point out that graduation rate may not be the best number to judge the success of a community college or even the wisdom of enrolling.
Given that some students may gain the skills they require for better jobs and leave school early, the argument has its merits.
But what the paltry graduation rate does is highlight the biggest problem with the MassEducate law: it’s incentivizing the wrong thing.
Instead of aiming only for enrollment regardless of outcome, a better policy wouldn’t just subsidize student attendance. It would tie state resources to student outcomes.
This doesn’t mean linking funding to graduation rates. Other states have done this with meager results, as a litany of studies show that these sorts of output-based policies don’t improve student performance in the labor market.
Part of the reason is that improving grades or graduation rates can actually be easy problems to solve. An institution need only inflate grades or print diplomas.
But becoming a diploma mill and graduating students regardless of what they’ve learned doesn’t serve students or society.
Funding should instead be tied to the labor market value students receive from enrolling—regardless of whether they earn a degree.
Texas has adopted this approach for the Texas State Technical College and seen promising results, according to a white paper by The Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity (FREOPP).
Starting just over a decade ago, 100 percent of Texas State Technical College’s state funding became determined by student earnings after leaving the school. In essence, the state provides the college a percentage of the additional direct and indirect state tax revenues that students generate as a result of their attendance.
The outcomes for students have been clear.
Former students’ wages have increased by 45 percent over the eight years. Whereas wages for Texas State Technical College’s exiting students ranked lower than the state average for two-year colleges prior to the policy, they now outpace first-year earnings for the state’s schools. Before COVID, graduation rates were also consistently rising.
The result isn’t because the College has become more selective or is skimming its students. Fifty-six percent of its students now receive Pell Grants—federal aid for low-income students—which is the highest share in its history.
The College is, however, sunsetting programs that aren’t working for students and focusing its resources on those that have a positive return on investment for students. That means paying attention to the needs of regional employers.
What’s more, thanks to the incentives built in to state law, the college now puts much more effort into supporting its students’ job searches.
It’s not just students who are benefiting. Thanks to the college’s success, it’s seen an increase in state funding—up 63 percent over eight years.
Massachusetts could learn some lessons.
Although research does suggest that Massachusetts community colleges boast a positive return on investment for students, not all programs at its community colleges do.
For example, according to FREOPP’s research, an associate degree in Fine and Studio Arts from Bristol Community College has a negative return on investment of $118,395. An associate degree from Greenfield Community College in Liberal Arts and Sciences, General Studies and Humanities nets out to a negative return of $48,056.
Shifting who funds the enrollment at programs like these from students to taxpayers doesn’t make much sense.
As Massachusetts seeks to support learners entering community colleges under the MassEducate policy, it should make sure it isn’t just helping students afford a community college, but that the programs have real value.