Building Support for Student Parents

One out of every five college students is a parent. As with most students, student parents are balancing many and often competing demands on their time, including classes, studying, and work. Unlike their peers without kids, student parents also have to manage the complex scheduling puzzle of childcare responsibilities on top of everything else they handle each day.   

Parenting students are trying to succeed, while receiving limited support from higher education and financial aid systems that were not designed with them in mind. It is long past time for policymakers to recognize the need for targeted support to help this group flourish. Decision makers must pay more attention to parenting students with inclusive and specialized efforts. It will take better data collection, holistic wraparound services, and building trust through consistent action over time. 

This is especially important as colleges face enrollment challenges created by changing demographics. By supporting parenting students, and adopting student-centered policies, colleges and universities can become environments where student parents feel welcomed and supported to succeed—a win for student parents and for colleges trying to alleviate the enrollment crunch. 

Supporting parenting students is more than just a matter of fairness. It is also an issue of economic development and mobility. After all, when we ensure student parents succeed, we ensure their families succeed. As policy leaders are considering supports to retain historically undersupported students, student parents should be at the top of the list. Juggling the responsibilities of parenthood and being a college student is hard enough, the way in which our systems and policies are structured shouldn’t make it even harder.

Several states, including Texas, California, Illinois, and Oregon, recognized the need and enacted legislation to support parenting students in higher education. These state-level policies aim to dismantle barriers by mandating data collection, support services and accommodations on college campuses. And, while progress has been made, more needs to be done in acknowledging and addressing the unique challenges faced by parenting students.

Why support parenting students?

The landscape of higher education is rapidly evolving, and institutions must adapt to the needs of the increasingly diverse student body encapsulated by the incredibly diverse student parent population. Student parents are more likely than non-parent students to be people of color, women, and veterans, all groups that are entering higher education at increasing rates but often face barriers to success.

Research from the Institute for Women’s Policy Research and Ascend at the Aspen Institute shows that parenting students face significant challenges in completing college compared to their peers without children. Only 37 percent of parenting students graduate with a certificate or degree within six years of enrollment, in contrast to nearly 60 percent of students without children. 

Parenting students encounter obstacles related to childcare, basic needs insecurity, time constraints, financial insecurity, and mental health, which can disrupt their path from enrollment to graduation day. We know that one of the fastest paths to economic security for a family is for a parent to gain a degree or other credential. Given these statistics, supporting student parents is not just the right thing to do—it also makes economic sense by creating opportunities to increase household incomes, reducing reliance on public benefit programs and ensuring a well-educated workforce to help drive economic growth and development. 

Supporting parenting students is good for colleges and states

Targeted support for parenting students can also help states meet their postsecondary  attainment goals. States need to increase the proportion of individuals with postsecondary credentials, such as degrees or certificates to help provide the skilled workforce that drives economic growth. State and federal governments should invest in students because that investment confers important community and societal benefits as well as individual benefits.

Without addressing the barriers faced by parenting students, states risk leaving behind a substantial portion of their population and falling short of their attainment targets. By creating a more inclusive and supportive environment, colleges and universities can attract and retain a diverse pool of students, thereby mitigating persistence barriers.

Mitigating persistence barriers for parenting students starts with better data collection at the state and federal levels. Evidence suggests that targeted support can enhance the success rates of parenting students. However, the lack of comprehensive data on this group creates a significant gap in colleges’ ability to address their needs effectively. The absence of data is a missed opportunity for the federal government, states, and institutions to improve student outcomes and underscores the need for greater attention to the unique challenges faced by students with children.

Parenting students encounter obstacles related to childcare, basic needs insecurity, time constraints, financial insecurity, and mental health, which can disrupt their path from enrollment to graduation day.

Targeted support needs for parenting students are equally important for mitigating persistence barriers. In our work at Generation Hope, we have seen targeted and direct services and supports make a massive difference in the success of students. This is why federal policymakers should integrate wraparound support services, such as counseling, mentoring, and access to resources like housing assistance and healthcare, to address the holistic needs of parenting students to help them increase degree attainment. 

Moreover, recognizing parenting students’ diverse backgrounds and experiences is crucial in designing effective support programs. Federal and state policy leaders should employ culturally responsive and trauma-informed approaches that consider the unique needs and challenges faced by parenting students, creating inclusive and supportive learning environments where all individuals feel valued and empowered to succeed.

If policy leaders and influencers do more to provide support for groups with the most complex needs, they can also make life easier for all students who face similar challenges like managing conflicting work and school schedules and struggling to provide for their basic needs. When we smooth the path to college completion for student parents, we make it just a little bit easier for other historically under-supported populations to get from enrollment to graduation day.

Brittani Williams, Director of Policy, Advocacy and Research at Generation Hope.

Generation Hope engages education and policy partners to drive systemic change and provides direct support to teen parents in college as well as their children through holistic, two-generation programming.

Edward Conroy, Senior Policy Advisor, New America Higher Education Policy Program. 

New America’s Higher Education team focuses on creating a higher education system that is accessible, affordable, equitable, and accountable for helping students lead fulfilling and economically secure lives. New America’s Student Parent Initiative conducts research, policy analysis, and advocacy work in the student parent space.

Pledging Well

In a 2022 study published in the Journal of Sorority and Fraternity Life Research and Practice, sorority- and fraternity-affiliated college students reported higher positive mental health and lower rates of anxiety and depression. While the analysis indicates the need for further research to fully understand this disparity, it is reasonable to observe that fraternities and sororities offer members several key requisites for wellbeing: a sense of belonging, purpose, identity development, and social support. 

The study’s findings are promising and highlight the Greek system’s potential to build positive outcomes for students, alumni, and institutions. But most fraternities and sororities do not open their doors to all students. Many have rigorous recruitment protocols that make pledges compete for limited spots in the most elite organizations. Dangerous hazing rituals, substance use and sexual assault have damaged Greek life’s reputation, which obviates its many benefits. So how can colleges and universities keep the good and discourage the bad when it comes to sororities and fraternities? A look at the systems’ storied history suggests that its expansion into culturally-based organizations may be Greek life’s redemption.  

If Greek organizations cultivate a sense of community and belonging for members, they also dictate who is afforded the social capital of belonging. That social capital and its lifelong reverberations are staggering: 40 of 47 male U.S. Supreme Court Justices since 1910 have been fraternity men, as well as 85 percent of Fortune 500 executives and 76 percent of all Congressmen and senators. It is clear sororities and fraternities offer a range of benefits, including community, networking opportunities, leadership development, social events, and philanthropy. But Greek affiliation does come with a number of drawbacks. Joining a sorority or fraternity costs money in the form of membership dues, event fees, and other expenses, which can exacerbate their exclusivity and may be prohibitive for some students. Critics of Greek life argue that sororities and fraternities can perpetuate social exclusivity, social conformity, and elitism, creating divisions within the campus community. That elitism may even be a contributing factor to positive mental health among members: the 2022 Journal of Sorority and Fraternity Life Research and Practice study notes that “The social class that exists within fraternity and sorority communities is built on social capital that may indicate that the positive mental health experiences of fraternity and sorority members could stem from a community of students who come from more privileged backgrounds.”

A culture of elitism and antiquated gender norms dominates the most public depictions of Greek life, from 1978’s Animal House to TikTok’s “Bama Rush.” But the preppy, chauvinistic, boozy side of sorority and fraternity life is not the whole picture. Since the mid- to late-twentieth century, culturally-based organizations have emerged as sites of belonging and social development for students historically excluded from or underrepresented within predominantly white sororities and fraternities.

If Greek organizations cultivate a sense of community and belonging for members, they also dictate who is afforded the social capital of belonging.

Dr. Crystal Garcia is an associate professor in the College of Education and Human Sciences at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Her research includes critical analysis of culturally-based sororities and fraternities and anti-racist practice in sorority and fraternity life. Garcia says she looks at sororities and fraternities as “microcosms of the greater university.” As an undergraduate student at Texas A&M University-Commerce, Garcia joined a historically white sorority and was an active presence in sorority life on her campus, even being awarded Greek Woman of the Year. As she progressed in her studies and began conducting research on higher education, Garcia found herself questioning why she, as an involved member and leader of her undergraduate institution’s Panhellenic community, never knew about the culturally-based organizations on her campus. That realization prompted a career of academic inquiry into culturally-based sororities and fraternities and the experiences of minoritized college students within those groups.

As an ethnographic researcher, Garcia is interested in the role of “narratives, storytelling, and the power of individual voices and perspectives” to bring light to lived experiences within environmental and cultural contexts and “the ways that power, privilege, and oppression take effect” in student organizations. “At predominantly white institutions, culturally-based sororities and fraternities can provide a space where students’ voices are affirmed, often for the first time within their campus communities,” she says. Garcia also notes that the support systems embedded in culturally-based sororities and fraternities help students persist to graduation by cultivating social, academic, and personal development, all of which contribute to positive mental health and wellbeing. 

The process of joining a culturally-based sorority or fraternity looks completely different from the rush process of historically white organizations, Garcia explains. The Panhellenic recruitment process is formalized, receiving attention and support from the university, while culturally-based organizations typically do not receive the same institutional or financial support.

Garcia has worked alongside Dr. Antonio Duran, a professor of education at Arizona State University, to examine minoritized students’ experiences in campus life. Anti-racist practice in the context of sorority and fraternity life, Garcia says, means “taking intentional steps to recognize historical and contemporary ways that race and racism play a role in our society — and, in turn, in the organizations that we’re a part of.” Garcia urges all student organizations, Panhellenic or otherwise, to think deeply about their practices of recruitment, the events they host, and their membership criteria, interrogating places where race and racism may be embedded into the organizational culture. “The purpose of sororities and fraternities is to foster community and connection,” she says, “and we can’t do that if we are harming our members.”

“At predominantly white institutions, culturally-based sororities and fraternities can provide a space where students’ voices are affirmed, often for the first time within their campus communities.”

Sexual violence is more prevalent among Greek-affiliated students than their non-affiliated peers, with both fraternity men and sorority women reporting higher incidence of sexual assault compared to non-members of the same gender. “For historically white sororities and fraternities, the issue of sexual assault is particularly salient, given that we have created a culture where sorority members are essentially dependent on fraternities for spaces to consume alcohol, since they are usually not permitted to do so within their own houses,” Garcia says. In culturally-based sororities and fraternities, those structures tend to look quite different. 

Often, these organizations do not have formalized housing designated to their members. “Whereas historically white sororities and fraternities were able to purchase land and build homes — more than a century ago in some cases — culturally-based organizations largely did not have those opportunities,” Garcia says, adding that by the time cultural sororities and fraternities had opportunities to purchase homes or land, the price tag made doing so virtually impossible. The conditions that led to the prevalence of binge drinking and predatory sexual behavior in historically white Greek organizations were largely absent from the making of culturally-based ones; however, Garcia adds, no student organization is without flaw, and those harmful behaviors can and do exist in every area of campus life.

Dr. Robin Zape-tah-hol-ah Minthorn is a professor and chair of the Educational Leadership and Policy Studies Department at the University of Oklahoma. A citizen of the ​​Kiowa tribe of Oklahoma and a descendant of the Umatilla, Nez Perce, Apache, and Assiniboine Nations, Minthorn co-founded the University of Oklahoma’s first Native American sorority, Gamma Delta Pi, Inc., as an undergraduate in 2001. “We didn’t have a sorority that honored our culture and our ways of being,” Minthorn says. “We did some research on another Native American sorority, Alpha Pi Omega, Inc., which was founded in North Carolina. The tribes are different in North Carolina than they are here, and the tribal composition of our founders was different. We decided to create our own sorority that represented our tribal community and culture.” Students were receptive to the new sorority, Minthorn says, reflecting the need for a cultural space dedicated to belonging and connection among Native American college students. In the decades since its founding, over 300 Native women have joined Gamma Delta Pi. “The impact extends beyond our undergraduate years and into our professional lives,” Minthorn says, “because we develop a lifelong bond of sisterhood that we carry throughout our lives.”

Historically Native American fraternities and sororities (HNAFS) like Gamma Delta Pi have the potential to transform student lives and foster whole-person wellbeing. “We have always been intentional about connecting to the local tribal communities,” Minthorn says, noting that civic and community engagement provides cultural connection on and off campus. Gamma Delta Pi’s philanthropy has previously included organizations working to support Native women experiencing domestic violence and addressing Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) in Native American communities. Today, their philanthropic work focuses on missing and murdered Indigenous people. “That visibility helps our sisters feel seen, both collectively and as individuals.” 

For the twentieth anniversary of Gamma Delta Pi’s founding, Minthorn and her sister/colleague Dr. Natalie Youngbull and doctoral students James Wagnon and Amber Silverhorn-Wolfe conducted talking circles with sorority members, as well as interviews with the Elders who serve as advisors of the sisterhood. The founding chapter at the University of Oklahoma has had the same advisors since its founding in 2001, an uncommon occurrence in sorority and fraternity life that speaks to Gamma Delta Pi’s dedication to “fostering intergenerational connection.” Minthorn and her colleagues also collaborated with Phi Sigma Nu, the nation’s oldest and largest Native American fraternity, and Iota Gamma, Inc., a Native American fraternity founded at the University of Oklahoma, to conduct research into the impact of HNAFS on students and communities. Minthorn says their survey data found that “members’ involvement in HNAFS fostered not just leadership, but whole personhood. They create a space of belonging where Native men and women can explore what Indigeneity looks like in sorority and fraternity life and develop a sense of culture on campus — which is, for us, often missing.”

Culturally-based sororities and fraternities, such as National Pan-Hellenic Council (NPHC) organizations, were created in response to discriminatory practices at a societal level, including exclusionary clauses that barred students of color from belonging in historically white Greek organizations. “They were founded on the principle of access and supporting students who were denied support from the larger institution,” Garcia says. “They have long histories of leading activism efforts, including during the Civil Rights Movement.” 

Garcia says she hopes that today’s students will continue to call upon those histories as they push for inclusivity at their institutions. In order for all students to thrive in their colleges and universities, she says, “Culturally-based sororities and fraternities have to be resourced to ensure that students within them can enjoy their experience. Often, our research finds that these organizations don’t receive the same level of institutional support in terms of personnel; they certainly don’t always have the same financial resources; they simply don’t have the same alumni networks that predominantly white organizations often have.” 

“HNAFS create a space of belonging where Native men and women can explore what Indigeneity looks like in sorority and fraternity life and develop a sense of culture on campus — which is, for us, often missing.”

Additionally, she warns that ongoing legislative efforts to undermine diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs in some states may compound the problems of under-resourcing. “Sometimes, culturally-based sororities and fraternities are not housed within a ‘Greek Life’ or ‘Fraternity and Sorority Life’ office,” she explains. “Often, they are designated within a cultural center or an office of diversity and inclusion. In states that have banned those offices, I am very concerned that these organizations will be further harmed and left with even fewer resources, losing the support systems they have in place.”

To Pledge or Not to Pledge

Advocates for banning sororities and fraternities often point to Panhellenic organizations’ history of hazing, substance abuse, discrimination, sexual assault, and academic neglect. Daniel R. Schwarz, a professor of English Literature and Presidential Fellow at Cornell University, wrote in a 2022 op-ed for Inside Higher Ed that Greek life is “an antiquated, sexist, classist, elitist, discriminatory system” that “contributes to long-lasting physical and emotional injuries.” Schwarz echoes some sentiments from Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) CEO David J. Skorton in a 2011 op-ed for the New York Times

Despite efforts to eradicate hazing, incidents still occur, leading to injuries and even deaths. Additionally, as Schwarz highlights in his evaluation, Greek organizations continue to be criticized for perpetuating discrimination based on factors such as race, ethnicity, gender, and socioeconomic status. This can contribute to a campus culture that fosters inequality and marginalization. Excessive partying and alcohol-related incidents are more common on campuses with active Greek communities. And, because sororities and fraternities are often perceived negatively in the public forum, the media attention they receive reinforces stereotypes about privileged, elitist, and irresponsible behavior. These stereotypes can harm the reputation of both individual members and the institutions they represent, though they tend to ignore the existence of culturally-based sororities and fraternities altogether.

It is crucial to recognize that not all sororities and fraternities embody these negative qualities, and many members find valuable social development, leadership opportunities, and lifelong friendships within them. Some argue that instead of banning Greek life altogether, efforts should focus on reforming and regulating these organizations to address their shortcomings while preserving their positive contributions to campus life — and, importantly, universities’ financial incentives to keep them.

For those who get to belong, sororities and fraternities can be a ticket to flourishing on campus and in post-graduate life. Alumni networks, job placement services, and mentorship programs can set members up for career success. Philanthropy encourages nurture civic engagement and finding meaning beyond oneself. But perhaps the most enduring benefit of sorority and fraternity affiliation is the opportunity to form lasting friendships that extend past college and, Garcia says, serve as a “place of joy.” In a system that still shows signs of its troubled past, culturally-based Greek organizations are making joy a place for everyone.

The Jed Foundation/SHEEO Mental Health and Equity Initiative

In 2023, the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association (SHEEO) and The Jed Foundation (JED) launched a learning community across state higher education agencies and systems  to better support college student mental health and determinants such as equity and belonging. In late April, SHEEO and JED will host a convening in Minneapolis, “The Wellness Blueprint: Cultivating Foundations for Statewide Student Mental Health Policy,” with the purpose of continuing the development and implementation of state- and system-wide policy recommendations to advance student mental health and wellness. The hope is after a year-long collaboration, states will have moved the needle on a problem that lies at the intersection of each organization’s area of advocacy and expertise: mental health challenges remain the number one reason students stop out or consider stopping out of their post-secondary programs.

Dr. John Lane is the Vice President for Academic Affairs and Equity Initiatives at SHEEO, where he leads policy and project development in educational equity, academic programs, and student success. SHEEO works with state higher education officers to promote equitable higher education attainment for all Americans. 

“Whether these challenges are crisis circumstances or are accumulated over time and hidden, students identify mental health as the primary challenge to their academic persistence and achievement,” says Lane. The issue is exacerbated for low-income students, many of whom will never return to school, and are often laden with debt and the result is no degree to show for it.  

Last year, states submitted grant proposals detailing their plans and commitments to mental health as a facet of equity in higher education, as well as their efforts to engage internal stakeholders, such as a state Department of Public Health. Five states — Arizona, Louisiana, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Texas — were selected to receive $25,000 grants to support their work to implement mental health solutions tailored to their unique contexts over a 15-month period. The objective of the partnership was to provide states with the resources to explore how mental health and equity are being addressed and to share their findings through cross-state collaboration. 

The Jed Foundation brings decades of research and expertise in suicide prevention and student mental health to the table. It is also another example of an expanding focus for the non-profit, which has recently added a public affairs and advocacy component to its work with colleges and high schools.  The JED Equitable Implementation Framework and the JED Campus Program will be used to guide state policymakers in creating a space for states to identify best practices, refine strategies, and work toward inter-state collaboration. The Jed Foundation has a longstanding precedent of centering student mental health as an academic issue, making its partnership with SHEEO an opportunity for the organizations to implement robust, research-supported policy change, study best practices as tailored to states’ unique resources and needs, and improve student outcomes by working directly with policymakers. 

“There is no rulebook right now for investing in student mental health at the state level. We are building as we climb.”

Dr. Zainab Okolo is the Senior Vice President of Policy, Advocacy, and Government Relations at the Jed Foundation. Okolo says the mission of the learning community is to help guide state systems in centering mental health in state and federal policy. “What we found at JED was a gap and an opportunity,” she says. “In response to the mental health crisis that was exacerbated during the pandemic, we saw many state-level leaders begin to directly invest in mental health. Governors had clear new line items around mental health — but there wasn’t any guidance on how to actually move the needle on mental health, or whether or not the investments being made at the state level were answering the questions around how we destigmatize mental health, how we expand resources, and how we ensure that students, particularly within school settings, are having their mental health needs met so they can continue to thrive as they pursue their degrees.” In having conversations with their partners at SHEEO, an imperative emerged to ensure that state policymakers had the means to support the work that they were already investing in. The priority was there, Okolo says, but procedural clarity wasn’t: “There is no rulebook right now for investing in student mental health at the state level. We are building as we climb.”

A Just Design

The mental health learning community comes at a time when mental health is a steadfast feature of public discourse and a topic of conversation on the federal stage. “There is a great opportunity here to take advantage of the attention that is being rightly paid to this work, as recently as the President’s State of the Union address,” says Lane.“We are so fortunate to do this work now; we have the Surgeon General whose platform is mental health, and the Secretary of Education who cares about the wellbeing and mental health of college students, and wants to know how to best sustain support for students and for systems that are supporting them.” 

According to Okolo, bringing states together on these issues highlights the similarities of their positions even as they navigate different political landscapes. “They’re all grappling with very similar questions. How do you scale crisis response? What specific policy levers need to be in place in order to continue this work, even beyond this kind of mental health Renaissance moment? How do we flag for our federal stakeholders and leaders that we need harder lines of funding to continue on even beyond these next couple of years? The learning community creates a space for states to collaborate and learn from each other.”

The five states selected for the learning community project — Texas, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Arizona, and Louisiana — represent a diverse range of education policy, resources, and student demographics. “We were deliberate about the variety of states,” says Lane. “The topography of the states is representative of a deeper conversation about how we tailor our work to the unique circumstances of each state. The political landscape varies greatly across these five states. So does the availability of resources, the governance model and the engagement profile. So, states work really hard to build consensus among their stakeholders, and regardless of the model, try to provide direction to help set important way points.”

Texas is one of several U.S. states to implement changes to its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies within the last year. Senate Bill 17 banned all DEI programming from public colleges and universities in the state, creating  potential mental health risks for students who relied on affinity groups and identity-based spaces to cultivate a sense of inclusion and belonging on campus. These changes to DEI policies went into effect after the launch of the learning community, Okolo points out, and only reinforce the importance of adaptability and community engagement. When mental health initiatives find themselves in the crosshairs of fraught political divides, they reveal a unique area of bipartisanship. 

“The interesting thing about working within these political contexts is that this work remains bipartisan,” Okolo explains. “We see clarity around the importance of mental health echoed across states. What’s not bipartisan is the approach to issues around parental access, data, and funding. So the approach is not bipartisan, but the issue and the framing of the issue remains undoubtedly bipartisan. We want to keep it that way and lean into that opportunity by learning about how to do this work no matter the political ground that we find ourselves in.”

The public spirit, Lane and Okolo say, has not changed even where laws have. DEI “is directly adjacent to our mental health work, and it influences the scope of our reach when it comes to identifying needs based on race,” says Okolo. “What I’m happy to see, though, is that Texas made a commitment to making mental health resources accessible to all. What the ban might mean is that the language, how we frame it, what we call it, may change. But it doesn’t change the intent of the work.”

The mental health learning community leans into designing equitable futures within the contexts of each state. This, Lane says, calls for new approaches to address the systemic biases and inequity that are known contributors to the lack of access to mental health supports and can therefore serve as deterrents to student success and degree attainment. As a result, new projects at SHEEO include more dialogue about “just design.” According to Lane, “If you know pre-existing structures, and best efforts in the past have resulted in the need for current work and equity to try to mitigate disparities, then, if we have new solutions without addressing those original systemic circumstances, we could accidentally perpetuate the disparities that equity efforts are meant to close.” 

“The topography of the states is representative of a deeper conversation about how we tailor our work to the unique circumstances of each state. The political landscape varies greatly across these five states. So does the availability of resources, the governance model and the engagement profile.”

In order to address systemic discrimination and avoid repeating previously unsuccessful — and potentially harmful — initiatives, Lane says states must raise questions about designing systems and environments. A just design, he says, is one that centers community engagement, student voices, and adaptability to different states and institutions. The SHEEO/JED collaboration is currently building a student panel to foreground the student experience in policy reform. The goal is to not only amplify student voices, but to give students a seat at the table of changemaking. 

“Our goal to center student voices goes beyond the traditional model, which often includes bringing on students who share a narrative in the first-person,” Lane says. “My feeling is that too often we resume the policy work without taking an important next step, and that next step is giving students a sense of agency so that they are at the table with us as thought partners and are mentored in collaborating around policy in a way that helps us in the present, that gives them development opportunities for the future and really enriches the work that we’re doing.”

Lane and Okolo are looking forward to the late April conference to collectively assess how much has been accomplished and to provide a best practices guide. “What we are hoping to achieve with the best practices guide is a bit of a north star and a guardrail context on what to consider when implementing and scaling mental health work within your state,” Okolo says. “What are the blind spots? Who are the unsung heroes and key stakeholders that should be at the table when making these decisions? What opportunities do you have to triage off campus? What community-based organizations do you have at your fingertips to close the gap between resources on your campus and ensuring that students get the support that they need? Those kinds of strategic levers are what we hope to outline, so that if the state never engages with us directly, they have a way of navigating this work within their state context.”

Interview with Paul Tough, journalist and author of “The Inequality Machine”

The following is a transcript of LearningWell Radio Episode 2: Interview with Paul Tough. You can listen to the episode on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

Marjorie Malpiede: This is LearningWell Radio, the podcast of Learning Well Magazine, covering the intersection of higher education and lifelong well-being, I’m Marjorie Malpiede, the editor of LearningWell and your host today. Paul Tough is an author and journalist, widely known in the education equity space with books such as How Children Succeed and the Years That Matter Most: How College Makes or Breaks Us. Widely read, Paul Tough has become a national voice for making college more equitable, affordable, and accessible to all Americans, and holding up a mirror to higher education asking, “Can’t we do better?” He joins us today from the National Conference of the Coalition for Transformational Education where he delivered a keynote address. Paul, welcome to LearningWell Radio.

Paul Tough: Thank you. Great to be here.

MM: Let’s get started. So your book, the Inequality Machine and your New York Times article last fall and the public’s perception of the value of a college degree have really led the national narrative on this big question, right? Is college worth it? Why is it not for so many Americans?

PT: Well, it’s a great question and I mean part of what is complicated about this question is there’s the reality for whom it is worth it, and when and then there’s the perception that a lot of people have. And I try to stay in the reality though the perception is really important to a lot of families. But I think that what has changed is that the calculus, the sort of economic calculus of when college pays off has grown more complicated in the last couple of decades. So when you look at the sort of big picture number, the college wage premium that economists talk about, they point out the fact that on average people who have a BA in this country earn substantially more than people who only have a high school degree, about two thirds more. So that’s what the college wage premium is. So when you just look at that, college obviously pays off, right? It’s a great deal for everybody. However, a few things have changed. One is the cost of college, which then means that getting that benefit has a bunch of costs to it. But the other that I think is more crucial and is harder to measure is that the variability of the returns to college have changed. So that in the past, a couple of generations ago, didn’t really matter what happened in college. If you graduated, didn’t matter what your major was, even sort of where you went, those things mattered somewhat, but you were going to do just fine. But now because college has become more expensive, because higher education is more stratified, there are some people who with a BA, who are making a ton of money. And some people with a BA who aren’t making much more than a high school graduate, in fact some who are earning less than the average high school graduate. It’s additionally complicated by the fact that a lot of people don’t finish their college degree. And the numbers are really clear that when you start a degree and you borrow money and you don’t finish, you are not doing well at all. Economically, you’re probably earning less than the average high school graduate and about 40% of people who start a degree don’t finish. We can predict somewhat who’s going to and who isn’t, but for any one student, there’re just all these factors that make going to college a real gamble. And that just isn’t the way we think about college and certainly not the way we should think about it or want to think about it. We’ve been trained to think about it as this investment. That’s what we tell kids. It’s an investment, it’s like a treasury buying a treasury bond. In fact, for a lot of families it’s more like going to a casino. So you could win big but you also could lose your shirt. And that kind of uncertainty is emotionally, psychologically really unpleasant, painful for a lot of families, but financially it’s a real true risk.

MM: So I think this information that came to the fore is incredibly important. If you are thinking about this investment, don’t take this the wrong way, but it’s a bit of a downer, right? When you think-

PT: It is true.

MM: … about how we think about higher education. So in your book, you tell amazing stories about families who actually still believe that this is going to give them a better life. And in fact, the data show that in terms of public opinion of the value of college, a recent Gallup survey showed that 66% of Hispanics and 65% of Blacks said that a college education was very important compared to just 45% of whites. So I could read this through the lines that you’re rooting for these people and you hope that we get back to a place where we can still hold a college degree out as the ladder to upward mobility. But I guess my question is, Paul, what would be the two or three things that you would change about higher ed to keep that dream alive for these people you wrote about?

PT: Well, I mean I’ll talk about two or three, but there’s one that’s really the biggest.

MM: Go with the one.

PT: Which is cost. I mean, I think that is really what is so hard for these families. So yes, absolutely. I wrote about a lot of low-income students, including a lot of Black and Latino and Latina students. And for individual students it is still amazing how higher education, how completing a degree can change your life. I saw it happen again and again where students would just go from a really difficult economic background, four years of college, they have these opportunities that open up to them that are going to change their lives and change their children’s and grandchildren’s lives for generations. You can see this is what higher education is supposed to do and it does work absolutely for individual students again and again. The problem again is that the overall calculation now just has all this risk in it for a lot of families

And especially for low-income families, the risk has to do with cost and costs have absolutely gone up. I understand the economics that we shouldn’t just look at list price, that there’s financial aid, there are ways to save money. But for a lot of families, even the cost of public college with some good financial aid, it’s a big deal for those families. And going into 20 or $30,000 worth of debt, which is sort of what we tell students is totally reasonable. You’re going to earn that back. That’s really scary. And so I think that’s where we have to do better. We’re creating a system where those families, in order to achieve the American dream and in order to achieve their goals, it’s not enough for them to just work hard. They also have to invest a lot of money and it shouldn’t be that way. We don’t have that kind of risk in high school. There’s not that idea of like, “Well, you go to high school but you’re rolling the dice about whether it’s going to be worth it or not.” And so this is not a problem that any institution can change on its own, though I think institutions can do a lot to make a degree more affordable, to make the finances and tuition more transparent. But I think this is something we need to take on as a country to figure out how to make college much more affordable for millions of students. And that’s the way it always was, right? It’s the way it is in other countries. It’s the way it was in this country 50 years ago. We have just created this new model where higher education is suddenly this high stakes high risk game and it doesn’t make any sense and it doesn’t work for a whole lot of families.

MM: And you do a phenomenal job of unpacking the history around that. And I know we don’t have time for all of that, but people should read the book to get those kind of details. But I don’t want to simplify, but is the number one thing reinvesting from a public funding perspective in higher education? And I know that you do a lot of comparison to countries in Europe which are actually doing the opposite of what we’re doing, instead of sort of questioning the value, they’re kind of doubling down. So yeah, is that really what we need to be doing?

PT: Is what we need to be doing in terms of public investment?

MM: Public investment,

PT: Yeah, I think-

MM: And we saw that dip right after the recession, the Great Recession of 2008, 2009.

PT: Yes, there was a dip then, but I mean it started back in the late ’60s. Ronald Reagan who I think was the first to sort of say like, “Well, wait a second. The benefits from college go to a student. They don’t go to society. So why are the rest of us underwriting this college wage premium? Why are we paying for these certain people to be able to earn more than the rest of us?” It’s a very powerful sort of populist message and it’s made more powerful when a lot of students, a lot of families feel excluded from higher education. And that began this process of disinvestment in public higher education. Before that started in the ’60s and ’70s, the cost of going to the University of California, to any good public flagship institution was a few hundred dollars tuition and fees for a year. It was something you could work a minimum wage job in the summer and you could pay for your tuition fees. That seems like a good model. And again, that’s true in lots of other countries. And then there was this sort of progressive disinvestment in public universities, public higher education beginning sort of late ’70s and ’80s. And what public colleges found is that if they didn’t have money coming in from the state, they needed to charge more tuition. If they charge more tuition, people would still show up. And at the same time, we made debt easier get for students. And this sort of happened gradually over time. You’re right, the recession of 2008, 2009 sort of turbocharged it and continued that process, but there was a bit of a boiling frog quality. There was no one year where everything suddenly changed, but over time, the shift in public higher education just went from the public paying for it to students paying for it. And I think, I’m not clear, I think economists are not clear why the same thing happened in private higher education, but I think the two things are linked. As it became clear that people were going to pay more for public higher education, private higher education said, “Well, we need to and can do the same thing.”

MM: Right, right. So again, this is very concerning and disturbing because it leads to implications that could be pretty dire in terms of… to the extent that you care about things like equity or a civically engaged society, some of the things you talk about in your book. I’m going to ask you something more specific about the business model and have you stick with that for a minute. But I want to come back and also talk to you about some solutions. So one of the things that I think in terms of disturbing consequences is this idea that because of the higher education business model, which you described, if I got this correct from reading your book, it incentivizes schools to attract more high income students oftentimes over performance. But given that, what are we supposed to be doing about high performing low income students? You talk in your book about people as an academy having an interest and a desire to reach those students, but because of this business model, it’s complicated, right?

PT: It’s really complicated.

MM: That may be a complicated question.

PT: It is. I mean, in some ways that’s what the whole book is about. And what, it took me a decade to try to understand. I mean, when I started reporting the inequality machine a little more than a decade ago, it was what I felt was going to be the interesting story to track was the way that colleges changed the way they attracted high performing low income students. It was this moment, it was during the Obama administration, it was this moment, there was this big study that had come out that was on the front page of the New York Times by Caroline Hoxby in which he said that if you just send a packet to high performing low income students saying, “Here’s where you should apply, here’s a voucher for your waiver, for your application fees. They will go to more selective institutions and they will succeed.” And this was a big deal.There was a ton of philanthropy that got put behind it. College board got involved, but it was all premised on this idea that the problem was in the students. That the problem was that students and their families were making mistakes in how they were applying, that they just weren’t… they didn’t understand enough about college. They weren’t enough like us, the college people, and they were blowing it. And so all you needed to do was just nudge them. Let’s just remind them how much it would pay off and things would change. And that underwrote just many years of efforts by both colleges and nonprofits and the government to do things differently. And it did not work and it has not worked. And I think why it didn’t work is because that really wasn’t where the obstacles lay. There were some of that. Sometimes I think students didn’t know enough. Sometimes they didn’t have the right advising, all true. But really the obstacles were in the institutions that these selective institutions weren’t admitting these students, if they were admitting them, they weren’t giving them the aid that could make it reasonable for them to come. If they did come, they weren’t making them feel welcome and create a sense of belonging for those students. And so over 10 years after all of these institutions and government agencies got together and said, “We’re going to flood the campuses with low income students.” The reverse has happened. There are fewer low income students at highly selective institutions than there were a decade ago. And so it’s clear what has to change. What has to change is those obstacles that exist within institutions. And a lot of it I think is financial. I think that it is very difficult for institutions to admit students who can’t pay full freight. If you’ve got two students to choose from and one’s going to pay full tuition and one’s going to pay zero, it’s a lot easier to admit the one who’s going to pay full tuition. And I think a lot of those institutions are not in great financial shape. Some of them obviously are in fantastic financial shape, but a lot of them aren’t. But I think there are all of these institutional pressures that is making it hard for those colleges to do what they really want to do as individuals, which is to admit more of those low-income students. And what’s frustrating to me as a journalist and as an American is that I feel like we wasted this decade with a lot of rhetoric about what it was going to take to admit more of these low-income students and nothing really changed. And so what my hope is what can happen next, is that we really take seriously the question of how to admit more of those students because they’re out there, they’re applying, they’re just being rejected or not being given enough aid to attend.

MM: Remind me, I know you go into this in the book and you give some really good examples, particularly around how they show up and how to receive them. And that makes a big difference in how they stick because as I think you point out, the absolute worst case scenario is for someone to take on debt, go to school, and then drop out with absolutely nothing to show for it. So a little bit more, Paul, for our listeners who are mostly in higher ed and mostly care about these issues, I would say not mostly. But if they’re listening to our podcasts, they care about these issues.

PT: Yep, yep, yep.

MM: Some words of advice then, I mean the economic model is one thing, but what more can they do other than when people show up and they can create welcoming environments for them, which is big. Any other advice?

PT: Yeah, so actually I don’t think we’ve made great progress in admissions, but I do think we’ve made great progress in student support over the last decade. So I did a lot of my reporting at the University of Texas, which I think has made great strides in creating communities that are really welcoming for first generation low income students. And creating not just emotionally welcoming, but actual that make it easier for those students to get the courses they need to negotiate the university bureaucracy in ways that will get them to the finish line. So I think we’re doing a better job with a lot of that. I think for your listeners, they’re at a level of expertise where it’s useful to know exactly which programs work. And what strikes me as more of a journalist and a lay person is that it’s not rocket science. It really is about removing obstacles, institutional obstacles, and then it is about the sort of emotional, psychological work of creating belonging. And sometimes that’s like ice cream socials and pizza parties, and it’s just the stuff that when you’re 18 makes a difference and makes you feel like you belong in summer programs, that let you get oriented before the first day of school. That stuff really matters and really makes a big difference to students. I’ll just say one other thing, which is that I still feel though I do think we’re making strides in that sort of student support world, there’s still this obstacle that admissions creates, which is just numbers. If you are a Black student on a campus that has five or six or 8% of the population, student body is African-American, it’s great if there are steps taken to make you feel welcome, but you’re still going to feel like a very small minority on a large campus. And so I think that’s true for some racial minorities, but I also think it’s true for low-income students, for Pell eligible students. I also think it’s true for rural students. I think it’s true for conservative students. I think it’s true for lots of students who just don’t fit the mold of-

MM: Feel like I belong here.

PT: Exactly. And so again, that’s partly a question of how you create a sense of belonging. It’s partly a question of how you do admissions.

MM: So I want to ask you a little bit more about the big question, is college worth it? And some of it is economic, some of it is PR. It’s this public perception of the value of college. Now this question is a little bit of a personal perspective, but so much of the public discussion on the value of higher ed is about cost, logically so for all of the reasons you’ve just described. I wonder if we who sort of work in higher ed and are cheering for the students, I wonder if we are not doing a good enough job talking about the other benefits that come from a college experience, right? So in our world, so LearningWell covers a lot about re-flourishing and mental health. We cover opportunities colleges have to improve students’ lifelong well-being and their engaged learning. So I don’t want to be in these two different worlds where we’re not actually acknowledging that if we don’t crack the affordability nut, we can’t do all these other great things. But I’m going to sort of challenge you to think about it in the reverse. So how do we work those benefits to the extent that you agree with me, that come from the years that matter the most? How do we work that into this public narrative? Do people care about that stuff? Do we need to talk about it more?

PT: Yeah, my perspective on it, I think maybe different than other people’s, and I wonder, I’m not sure if it’s supported by the data that’s out there. And I keep going back to the same themes, but I think it has a lot to do with cost, that I think that when college is expensive and creates a lot of debt, it’s very difficult for students to think about it any other way than what am I going to get out of it? And there is this sort of a cultural social expectation that sort of snowballs around that. But yeah, when I went to college, I was not thinking about what my first job was going to be. I wasn’t thinking about how I was going to make money. I wasn’t thinking about what the payoff was going to be. I majored in religious studies and I’m really grateful for all of that. I think that was the right way to go through college. For me, I think that it helped me, it helped create skills that turned out to be marketable later. I’m a big believer in the humanities and the arts. That was what everyone I knew was studying. And so yeah, I think that’s a really important story to tell. And again, even beyond what I was studying, I think that the social experiences I was having, emotional, psychological, cultural experiences I was having were a big part of what was going on in those years. So I think it’s important to tell that story, but I don’t think actually that eighteen-year-olds don’t get that. I just think they were like, when we’re handing them the bill, it’s really hard to say now, “Just go goof around and have fun, major in religious studies.” Because they know they’ve got to pay that off and their families do as well. So until we lower the stakes, it’s hard for them not to think about the high stakes.

MM: Yes, I think that is such a great point. And we talk a lot about the vocationalism and why it’s out there and how we might work against it, not against getting great work. We talk a lot about purpose in work and aligning one’s work, the people go to college to get jobs, right? So we can’t dismiss that, but we’d love obviously to see a little bit more fusion of the both. So the last question, and Paul, you’re just such a fantastic journalist, I can’t help but bring politics into this discussion.

PT: Great.

MM: So you point out that political ideology influences the public’s view of higher education clearly. So state legislators obviously are now making curriculum decisions. 80 some bills have been filed to eliminate DEI offices. I guess my question is what do you make of that in terms of how this affects what you wrote the book for, which is to try to enact some change to this formula that’s not working for anyone? And I guess my follow-up to that is, to the extent that you agree, is there a way to depoliticize this so we actually get to work on the real issues? What do you think?

PT: I think it’s a really, really important question. I think it’s a hard one to talk about in higher education. I think my take on it is probably not going to be totally popular among people in higher education. So when I was reporting, not the book, but this magazine article that came out last fall, I was interested in the political angle. So I talked to some conservative thinkers and tried to understand from their point of view what was going on politically in terms of college. And what really struck me, I talked to this one guy named Rick Hess from the American Enterprise Institute, who I disagree with on all sorts of ways. But when he talked about what higher education felt like to him and people who think like him, there was a lot of overlap with how I felt and how the low-income students I talked to felt. He just saw it through an ideological lens. He was like, “The game is rigged. It’s just designed to help certain people and create… It’s just this machine that perpetuates.” And so when I talk about how it’s a machine that perpetuates things, I think about it in terms of economic class. He thinks of it in terms of ideology. He thinks that there are these institutions that are governed by liberal elites and that use higher education to perpetuate their thinking, right? I don’t agree with that in lots of ways, but I do understand where it’s coming from. And the data is really clear was I was struck and I wrote about it in that article. College campuses really are really liberal places. And so it is true that if you’re a conservative student or a conservative family, it’s hard to feel welcome in the same way that it’s hard to feel welcome for a low- income student or an underrepresented minority student on a college campus. And so the difference though is that in terms of politics is I think in some ways it’s even more salient.

I mean, it’s debatable how this is going to play out in private colleges, certainly government and political parties are finding ways to interfere, to intervene with private colleges in ways those private colleges don’t always like. But in terms of public colleges, they are supported by the public. And so the public in the United States includes as many conservatives as it does liberals. And I feel like those institutions should reflect that. And of Europe, conservative student from a small town in Iowa, and you’re going to your flagship college, you should feel welcome. You should feel like this is a place where your ideas are respected and you belong. And there’s not going to be some lingo that you’re supposed to know and you’re not going to be accused of things in terms of… based on who you voted for and where you go to church and everything else. And I think that’s often not true on our most prestigious campuses. And to go even more broad, I think that this division that has happened only in the last 10 years or so. If you look at the, I think it’s a 2012 election, I think that was Romney and Obama. And if you look at the educational divide in that election, it was not the way it is now. So college grads were voting more for Romney and non-college people were voting more for Obama, kind of what you’d expect from Democrats and Republicans, but more it was just even, right? What education you had didn’t predict how you voted. Now, it absolutely does, and that’s bad for everybody. I think it’s certainly bad for the Democratic Party to be, I think, associated with higher education and educated elites. I think it’s bad for higher education to be so associated with one party, especially if the other party comes into power. And I just think it’s bad for the country. It’s bad to divide ourselves through education. Education should not be the thing that sort of affects how you vote and how you live your life to the extent that it does right now. So what can higher education do? I think they actually more so than some of the other things we’re talking about, I think they can change that. And I think that it doesn’t mean you have to sell out your principles and you have to give in to conservative politicians, but it does mean that you should think about diversity on your campus in terms of politics as well. And make sure that if there are, especially for public campuses, that I would say for everybody, if you’re a conservative student coming to that institution, there are things that make you feel welcome. And again, that doesn’t mean censoring yourself or not saying what you believe, but I think it really is important that those students feel welcome, that those families feel represented by that institution. And I think that could be the beginning, not only of lowering the political pressure on institutions of higher education, but it could be the beginning of trying to bridge that bigger divide, which I think is a real problem for the country as well as for higher ed.

MM: And that is a great message to folks in higher ed. I’m going to push back a little bit.

PT: Please.

MM: I think there is a movement within higher ed acknowledging this because what you’re describing on its merits, a good majority, I don’t know if it’s a majority, you’re this person who deals with the numbers, would agree with you. Because on its merits, they’re absolutely, they absolutely want each student to have their knowledge grow with facts, not with ideology. My question to you is there are these sort of good faith reasons why higher ed needs to change around, quote, unquote “wokeism”. I’m asking your personal opinion. Do you not though with all your reporting over the years, see that this public opinion around the cumulative effect of professors being liberal leaning is been utilized superbly by politicians?

PT: No, no, I think it’s really true. I mean, I guess I feel like it kind of doesn’t matter. You know what I mean?

MM: Yeah, I know what you’re saying.

PT: But I think at this point, I think there’s enough blame to be placed on higher education and enough solutions that higher education itself can enact, that I mostly… though I absolutely think that’s true. And if I was speaking to Governor DeSantis or something, I would be saying, yeah, much the opposite. And I feel like, yeah, it’s not a good faith effort in all sorts of ways, but the sort of conservative pushback against higher education,.but I think it is based on real public opinion. And so it doesn’t matter that those politicians are politician-ing, right? They’re going to do that and you can’t stop them. If you’re in a state with a governor and a legislature that are pushing on you the way… So I live in Texas, the way it’s happening in Texas, the way it’s happening in Florida and lots of other places. I would encourage higher education to deal with that as best they can, except yes, that a lot of it is politics. But then accept that it’s working partly because good at it, but partly because they responding to something very real in public opinion, that is coming from a genuine sense that higher education is exclusive elitist, not for them and deal with that, right? And so if you change public opinion and create a system we used to have where people who weren’t going to college still felt really proud of higher education of their state’s higher education of their state’s, flagship school. It wasn’t that long ago that there were lots of people who weren’t going to college, who felt like college is great. That it’s not for me, but it’s great that it exists. It’s great that my kids can maybe go there or my grandkids. You want that sort of feeling, right? And so I think changes have happened, some of which higher education itself is responsible for that has made that not happen. And that I think is reversible by higher education. And so the more that they can let go of the aggravation of people taking advantage of it, and the more they can think, “Well, what can I do to change the underlying feelings among Americans?”

MM: And I love a couple of things you’ve said there that I just want to emphasize. One is to ignore this very real public opinion of higher education right now is at your peril basically in terms of higher, is what I’m hearing you saying. And the other thing that I actually love you saying, when I sort of was sticking it to you on the political question, you said it doesn’t really matter. And you know what? I think that’s a really important takeaway because it’s irritating and it’s something to deal with. But if you really want to solve this problem so that more kids that you write about in your book can fulfill the dreams that they have and the stories you wrote about, which were so beautiful, if you really want that, it’s really not the point is it?

PT: It’s not. And so just to take a step back from that, I mean, if you’re at the University of Texas, Austin, where I am, and you’re provost or dean or a president and you’re having a deal with the actual legislature, of course you got to take it seriously, right? And you’ve got to figure out when to give in, when to push back. You have to deal with politics. But for public higher education as a whole, I think the more you can ignore the frustration of those politicians taking advantage of this and start to think like, “Well, how can we change what’s going on underneath,” the better.

MM: Right, let’s solve the problem. So this has been a fantastic interview with Paul Tough. And Paul, I don’t know what more to say other than, thank you so much for being with us today, and we’ll keep in touch with all your great work.

PT: Great. Well, thanks for this opportunity. Really appreciate it.

Ian Elsner: This has been LearningWell Radio, a production of LearningWell. For more information about our work, go to learningwellmag.org. And if you like what we’re doing, leave us a rating or review. LearningWell Radio is engineered by me, Ian Elsner. Thanks so much for listening.

New survey shows stop-out rates remain steady; emotional stress, mental health are main drivers

A new survey report from the Lumina Foundation-Gallup State of Higher Education study shows that the number of students considering leaving their post-secondary positions has remained about the same as last year and that emotional stress and personal mental health continue to top the list of drivers, just ahead of cost. The survey also showed that Black and Hispanic students are more likely than their White peers to report they have considered leaving school (Hispanic (42%) and Black (40%) compared to White (31%)). 

Stephanie Marken, the senior partner of Gallup’s education division and author of the report, says the findings within the more than 14,000-person survey are particularly instructive for colleges and universities keeping a watchful eye on both overall retention and efforts to increase enrollment for underrepresented groups.

“One of the most interesting findings from my perspective is that people are about as likely as they were last year to consider stopping out in general, about 1 in 3,” said Marken, referring to data in the 2023 Lumina-Gallup survey.  The report notes that postsecondary enrollment, although up slightly due to increases for community college and short-term credential programs, have been steadily declining for the past four years. The fact that the number of those considering stopping out has also remained steady, indicates initial losses due to the pandemic may be more of a trend than a disruption.   

“This is alarming on a number of levels,” said Marken. “We know that from a social mobility perspective, from an economic perspective, people who complete a college degree are far more likely to be thriving in their lives. Whether it’s their career, their financial future, or their general wellbeing. The group that is even more disadvantaged is the “some college, no degree” cohort (those who stop out and never come back) who have huge amounts of student loans and nothing to show for it.” 

The report finds that consideration (of leaving) among Blacks and Hispanics has improved slightly but is still higher than among their White peers.  Marken sees the losses among this group as even more problematic when considering the outsized gain disadvantaged groups, including women, receive from a college degree.  

“We know that from a social mobility perspective, from an economic perspective, people who complete a college degree are far more likely to be thriving in their lives.“

“When we think about people who have been historically marginalized in our workplaces, in our communities, in our institutions, as Black and Hispanic individuals have been, we see that the lift those individuals experience is significant when it comes to receiving a college education,” she said.  “They enter the workplace in a very different situation from a pay perspective, even more so than their white peers.”  

Marken says the consistency among all racial/ethnic groups about the primary reasons for considering leaving school (emotional stress, mental health) is particularly concerning. 

“The fact that emotional stress and personal mental health are universal reasons (for consideration of leaving) and have remained as high as they are is a good reminder that all students are struggling and the core foundational need to stay enrolled is to have a strong sense of wellbeing,” she said. “We know that for Black and Hispanic students, because more of them are considering stopping out, it’s a really high need within those communities.”  

The recent survey is the latest in a series within the Lumina Foundation-Gallup State of Higher Education study.  Begun in 2020, the research first looked at the learning experiences of enrolled students amidst the pandemic but expanded to include non-enrolled individuals or those who have left college in an effort to understand what drove them to opt-out or stop out.  Marken says learning more about these dynamics will help colleges and universities better understand how to get them back. 

“This is a good reminder that the core foundational need to stay enrolled is to have a strong sense of wellbeing.”

The latest report surveyed 6,015 currently enrolled students, about 5,012 Us adults who were previously enrolled in an education program after high school but had not completed a degree, and 3,005 adults who never enrolled in higher education.  The survey showed that about six in 10 Black and Hispanic unenrolled U.S. adults report they have considered enrolling in the past two years and that Certificate and Associate programs are most attractive to Black and Hispanic Americans.  

Marken sees this as good news and tracks it to 2019 Gallup research that showed that 66% of Hispanics and 65% of Blacks said that a college education was very important compared to just 44% of Whites.  

“All of this research is really aimed at figuring out how do we keep more of these individuals within higher education – those who want to be in higher ed and who perceive it to be a highly valuable experience — so they don’t stop out temporarily or permanently.”

Transformational Learning

In 2011, a consortium of faculty members at Washington University in St. Louis responded to what they saw as a glaring disjunction between theory and practice. The university was conducting research on mass incarceration, offering courses and hosting guest lecturers on the topic—but no campus program existed to address mass incarceration in their own community. The lives of incarcerated individuals were a subject of academic study, rather than an area of tangible change. Their concerns led the faculty members to found the Prison Education Project, a competitive liberal arts degree program for incarcerated students in the Missouri Department of Corrections. The project launched its first courses in 2014 at the Missouri Eastern Correctional Center, a men’s prison in Pacific, Missouri. 

The United States incarcerates more of its population than any other democratic nation, including those with higher crime rates. Missouri’s incarceration rate is even higher than that of the United States—meaning that Missouri, along with the 23 other states whose incarceration rates exceed the national rate, imprisons more of its population than any democratic nation on earth. Black Americans are overrepresented in our nation’s prisons, making up 37 percent of the prison population compared to 13 percent of the general population. Alongside race and ethnicity, education is one of the most decisive contributors to mass incarceration. 30 percent of incarcerated Americans have not attained a high school diploma or equivalent degree, and fewer than 4 percent hold a postsecondary degree (compared to 29 percent of the general population). High school dropouts are 3.5 times more likely to be arrested than adults who completed high school. The correlation continues in the reverse for those who have been released.  

“We have a huge body of research, decades-long, longitudinal studies that tell us that, yes, people are far less likely to go back to prison if they receive a college education,” says Kevin Windhauser, PhD, the director of the Prison Education Project at Washington University, who noted that students who enroll in postsecondary education programs while in prison are 48 percent less likely to be reincarcerated. 

While much of the discourse on the impact of prison education programs emphasizes reduced recidivism, Windhauser says that the benefits for individuals go beyond crime reduction. “I think focusing only on recidivism is a relatively reductive way to look at it. While we offer something to incarcerated students, incarcerated students make our university better. Our students are admitted to WashU, which means if they’re released and still working on their degree, they can continue their degree. And our students show up on campus bringing new perspectives, life experiences, and personal knowledge. They make the campus richer. They make discussions richer.”

According to Windhauser, prison education programs can improve the mental health of incarcerated students and enrich the learning environments of participating colleges and universities. He began teaching at Taconic Correctional Facility in Westchester County, New York in 2017, when he was a graduate student at Columbia University. He felt that the program was “doing something that I thought a university, especially a big, very wealthy university, should be doing: using its educational mission to reach people who traditionally have been kept out or denied access to those kinds of spaces.” 

“Our students show up on campus bringing new perspectives, life experiences, and personal knowledge. They make the campus richer. They make discussions richer.”

While many state and federal prisons have historically offered vocational training, the Prison Education Project’s liberal arts model sets it apart. “The ethos from the beginning was to create a liberal arts college in prison,” says Kevin Windhauser, “Missouri has, like many states, something of a tradition of vocational education in prisons, trades work in prisons, job training in prisons—but a liberal arts degree, especially a liberal arts degree from a major R1 university, was just not something that was on offer.” 

As an English professor in the program, Windhauser has taught courses on subjects ranging from introductory composition to Shakespeare, Milton, and Melville. Often, he says, reading the Western canon is yet another form of social capital that incarcerated people, often victims of the school-to-prison pipeline, have been denied. In part, he says, incarcerated students enrich discussions of literature due to their distinct perspectives and skills: “People who are incarcerated are often really great noticers, because it’s a space where you have to notice things. Just to stay safe in there, you have to be a very good noticer, and it means that there’s some incredible, intuitive close reading ability. With a lot of the literature I’m teaching, I’m bringing out that skill which is already there, and so I find that really exciting.”

Since 2017, Windhauser has seen higher education in prison expand into larger and better programs. “My first course in 2017, I taught once a week in a three-hour block. My students had nothing but pencil and paper and whatever readings I could print out and give them. It looked as close as I could get it to a college course. In all honesty, it may have looked a little bit like what a college course looked like in 1970.” Now, says Windhauser, his classes at the Missouri Eastern Correctional Center more closely resemble their on-campus counterparts. Students have laptops, Canvas accounts, and utilize research hubs like JSTOR. Windhauser holds regular office hours to ensure students receive individualized attention and support. Class sizes typically range from 10 to 20 students—in part to align with the program’s commitment to a liberal arts education, and also because college in prison requires focused attention on each individual student, who is attending college amid unique logistical, personal, and environmental challenges.

These distinct challenges include limited privacy, time constraints, and loud living conditions. “One of the most common misconceptions people have about college in prison,” Windhauser says, is that incarcerated students “have a lot of time on their hands.” It’s a sentiment he hears often when describing his work to outsiders. On the contrary, he says, “Missouri, like many states, requires every incarcerated person to have a job. So our students, like a lot of students on any given campus, are balancing work with study. They’re often balancing being parents, parenting from a distance, parenting by phone and by visit. They are balancing concern for others. They’re often mentoring other people or doing informal peer support work. They are dealing with environmental disruptions. A lot of people do all of their homework with music blaring in headphones, and that’s not necessarily because they love that. It’s because they’d rather have that than the din of everything going on.”

For some, a liberal arts education in prison can be a step toward healing the trauma of incarceration, giving students a sense of agency in an otherwise chaotic world within the prison walls.

Mental health and the psychological toll of incarceration also affect students pursuing college degrees in prison. “Nationwide, there’s increasing attention being paid to mental health challenges faced by college students. And I think a lot of the mental health challenges faced by incarcerated college students are somewhat similar. Yes, there are a lot of unique challenges to the space and people’s lives and the trauma of incarceration, but there are also a lot of very familiar challenges if you’ve ever taught on any college campus. There are people who are really concerned about academic performance, really worried about their GPA. There are people who are really frustrated to not be understanding something, or anxious about an exam or a particular subject. So you have this pairing with all the familiar concerns, and then they’re back-loaded with all of the unique concerns to that space.” 

For some, a liberal arts education in prison can be a step toward healing the trauma of incarceration, giving students a sense of agency in an otherwise chaotic world within the prison walls. George Putney, an alumnus of the Prison Education Project, is currently pursuing a Master of Social Work degree in the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis. “It gives you a sense of purpose while you’re in school,” Putney says of the program, “and it extends that sense of purpose to when you exit.” 

Putney is a statistical outlier—he entered prison with a Bachelor’s and a Master’s degree. While incarcerated, he began informally mentoring some of the students in the Prison Education Project. The former PEP director asked Putney to join the program, which he did, taking classes and working as a teaching assistant. The program inspired him to pursue his MSW, which he plans to use to work with formerly incarcerated people to try to assist them in some of the major areas of need, including housing, employment, healthcare, and general reacclimation to society. Putney currently works with a St. Louis organization that provides housing assistance, trauma counseling, and substance abuse training to formerly incarcerated women in Missouri.

“I think it allows a person to reach potential that they didn’t know they had. And I only say this anecdotally, but I think it allows people to reintegrate into society in a much more effective manner, where they actually have opportunities and hope of being successful.”

References

Hemez, Paul, John J. Brent, and Thomas J. Mowen. 2019. “Exploring the School-To-Prison Pipeline: How School Suspensions Influence Incarceration during Young Adulthood.” Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice 18 (3): 154120401988094. https://doi.org/10.1177/1541204019880945

National Center for Education Statistics. 2016. “Highlights from the U.S. PIAAC Survey of Incarcerated Adults: Their Skills, Work Experience, Education, and Training: Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies: 2014.” https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2016/2016040.pdf

Prison Policy Initiative. “Getting Back on Course: Educational Exclusion and Attainment among Formerly Incarcerated People.” October 2018. https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/education.html
Widra, Emily, et. al. Prison Policy Initiative. “States of Incarceration: The Global Context 2021.” September 2021. https://www.prisonpolicy.org/global/2021.html#methodology.

Digging Deep with David McGhee

David McGhee has an interesting way of looking at the world. In talking with the Chief Executive Officer of the Steve Fund, it is clear he strives to see beyond popular narratives and predetermined judgements. In his new role, he hopes to bring together “unlikely allies and unusual suspects” to continue to address the issues to which he has dedicated his career – poverty, equity, and the flourishing of young people. 

The Steve Fund is the nation’s leading organization focused on supporting the mental health and emotional wellbeing of young people of color. McGhee believes his previous work in government, community service, and philanthropy prepared him well for this work which he calls “the crisis of our time.” Since its founding in 2014, The Steve Fund has been a major influencer in higher education’s ability to understand better the determinants of mental health issues in young people of color and their unique help-seeking behaviors, with research and recommendations such as the Equity in Mental Health Framework, which they created with the Jed Foundation. 

McGhee plans to strengthen the organization’s commitment to transformational change by focusing on outcomes as opposed to outputs, the former being the more sustainable result. To get there, he wants to expand the Steve Fund’s partnerships with people and organizations that he says need to be part of the conversation but may not have been invited in. He talks of enabling a set of conditions that make any strategy possible. It is an approach that McGhee learned early on as a young black man navigating poverty on his way to achieving his own personal outcomes.  

David McGhee

Marjorie Malpiede: What was your career trajectory before coming to the Steve Fund? 

David McGhee: My background is primarily in philanthropy. It really set the direction for the course of my career. After earning my undergraduate degree in public administration and public policy, I set out to work in the nonprofit and government sectors focusing on child wellbeing and also influencing public policy. Having come from concentrated poverty myself, I bring to this work a commitment to transformational change so that opportunity becomes systemic, not random or transactional. This is where my passion lies. 

Early on, I was an intern in the executive office of Michigan’s first female governor, Jennifer Granholm. I had an opportunity to meet the governor, and we were in her office, and I remembered something she had on her wall. It was a receipt from a lawn care service she had employed when she was running for Governor and the lawn care provider had written on it, “Don’t forget the little people” and she framed it. I was just an intern, but I actually believed I had the most important job in the executive office. From 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM every single day my job was to open every piece of mail addressed to the governor, read it, either route it to their proper department or craft a response on behalf of the governor. That job helped me develop an understanding of rural poverty as opposed to urban poverty. I knew what urban poverty was. That was my lived experience. But this helped me understand residents’ concerns throughout the entire state, which in many ways is applicable across the country. Those things really stuck with me. 

Following my internship, I was offered a job with the governor which I respectfully declined. Many people thought that I was crazy but I came back to my local community in Detroit to work at Big Brothers Big Sisters and I did that for seven years. In the neighborhood I grew up in, if you wanted out, you either played sports or you sold drugs. I had had the opportunity to go to college and it was important for young kids in my neighborhood to see that. From there I had an opportunity to work for a member of Congress and I learned a lot. I knew the amount of money that sat in the federal government and how hard it was to trickle down. I knew what nonprofits needed. And then I found my sweet spot in philanthropy. I worked seven and a half years in private foundations, and spent about a year and a half in family foundations, working for a high net-worth family in Seattle, Washington.

MM: Now that you are at the Steve Fund, what are your main priorities?

DM: The Steve Fund exists to promote the mental health and emotional wellbeing for our young people, and, in our case, young people of color. I’ve also layered in not only promoting, but really protecting the mental health and emotional wellbeing of this population. And we do so in three ways. One is by transforming environments. We know young people will occupy environments, whether it’s college campuses, or employer partners, or the community. How do we make sure that we can support the transformation of environments so young people feel as if they belong? Two, we provide resources and skill-building to ensure that families, caregivers, and young people themselves actually have the tools and resources to navigate this life at this moment. And then lastly, we shape the field by normalizing the conversation around mental health. How are we removing the stigma around it? 

My job is to strengthen these assets by creating a set of enabling conditions that are really ensuring that there’s organizational efficiency and effectiveness. We are one organization in this entire ecosystem contributing to the overall mental health and emotional wellbeing. So how do I make sure that we can manage every aspect of our organization towards a unified whole and achieve the results through performance efforts? How do we commit to organizational learning and agility? We need to be flexible. We need to be nimble and responsive in this moment. 

I think the term diversity has become so politicized that we need to ask the question in a different way: Is there any population that faces a disadvantage in achieving what this institution sets out to achieve?

And then importantly, how are we catalyzing and supporting strategic partnerships? How are we bringing together unusual suspects and unlikely allies? How do we establish, encourage, and engage in partnerships that build continuity, otherwise unattainable on our own? And this to me means being willing to go into places other organizations may not be willing to go, to have conversations other organizations may not be willing to have, and to have those conversations with different audiences that some people may shy away from. 

MM: What, in your opinion, are some of the things young people of color need in order to thrive in these environments? 

DM: What do I believe young people need? If there was a magic wand that I had, then I could identify a handful of things that would contribute to better outcomes – but I might start with agency, readiness and connection. I think young people would benefit from agency to be able to make decisions on their own to feel empowered. I think they need to be prepared to take advantage of opportunities presented to them, and I also think that the environments they go into need to be ready. I fundamentally believe that when we want to work towards the power of achieving outcomes, they’re achieved in one of five ways. Either change behavior, shift attitudes, create better conditions, improve knowledge, or equip people with more skills. If a young person enters an environment that has prioritized these things, at least some of these things, I think that they are set up for success.

To really understand this better, we are continuing to rely on one of our strengths – and that is to use survey research to examine the attitudes of both students and families. We think it’s an important time to ask these questions coming out of the pandemic and the post affirmative action decision. It also allows us to explore different issues within different population groups that maybe we hadn’t thought of before. For example, I’ve become fascinated by the lack of data – or at least what I’ve been exposed to – around student athletes. Have we thought through what it might mean for a young person whose skills and gifts and talents have earned them a college scholarship, but they now find themselves in a campus environment that’s totally different from the environment that they were reared in? What does it mean for an inner city Chicago student to now be at the University of North Dakota? Just using that as an example, or vice versa. What does it mean for a standout high school student in Iowa to find themselves in New York City? Some of it is different by race for sure, but some of it is also situational.

Another area that’s rarely explored is the different generational issues among students of color. There’s some first-generation college students whose families see this as such a phenomenal opportunity that a lot of the skills and the resources and support they have are beyond measure, right? However, depending on your environment, there’s a level of stress and anxiety for non-first generation college students. What if I’m a fifth generation college student and everyone in my family had a history of performing at Yale and then I’m here and my experience is not quite the same? 

I think this notion of “unusual suspects and unlikely allies” can start with identifying the person you think is less likely to contribute to this conversation and creating a reason why they can contribute to the conversation.

MM: You strike me as someone who looks beyond the obvious or the commonly accepted. Would you say that’s true?

DM: Yes, though it is not to suggest that I’m right, but I actually think it comes from my experience: one, having to navigate poverty, because I always had to find another way. I just naturally had to find another way. But then it also came from my decade or so in philanthropy. Many philanthropic organizations throughout history were complicit or had simply gone along with current conditions. But many of our nation’s wealthiest foundations and their respective namesakes built their wealth by defying the odds — by not going with the status quo. Henry Ford said, “Many, many moons ago, if I would’ve asked the people what they wanted, they would’ve told me a faster horse.” 

How do we strike the right balance between, “yep, this is what’s presented. This is the status quo” to have we thought about, have we considered, there’s also a layer beneath that? If we don’t dig, we run the risk of not getting the full story. I think this notion of “unusual suspects and unlikely allies” can start with identifying the person you think is less likely to contribute to this conversation and creating a reason why they can contribute to the conversation. 

MM: Are you hopeful we can bring different viewpoints together in these polarizing times?

DM: One of the best leaders that I’ve ever known and worked for, a woman by the name of Tanya Allen, would often give this analogy around 70, 20, 10, especially when it came to coalition building and alliances. It was this notion of 70% of the things that we want for children, even if we’re on a different perspective or different side of the aisle, we can agree on. There may be 20%, depending on the day or the context, that we’ll never agree on, right? And there may be 10% that’s negotiable depending on what the conditions are. The problem is – oftentimes we start at the 20% as opposed to starting at the 70%.

MM: Issues related to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) obviously impact the mental health of young people of color. What is your opinion on the way this is being debated in higher ed today? 

DM: I actually don’t think it’s a diversity issue that we need to solve. I actually think it’s a disparities issue, because the minority today could be the new majority tomorrow. I think the term diversity has become so politicized that we need to ask the question in a different way: Is there any population that faces a disadvantage in achieving what this institution sets out to achieve? In a college environment that exists to provide a high quality education, is there any population here that suffers from some type of disparity in their ability to receive that? And can we get to a place where we agree on minimizing those conditions?


To learn more about the Steve Fund, visit stevefund.org

Can Belonging Be Designed?

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After Adrienne’s first year on full scholarship at an Ivy League university, she just wanted to go home.

She knew she should be grateful, though she also knew grateful was a complicated and somehow inappropriate response to the placement she’d earned through hard work. She couldn’t put her finger on why she didn’t feel at ease at the school; she certainly wasn’t the only mixed-race first-year student from a lower-income family. She didn’t particularly want to return the following year, but her mother wouldn’t let her consider transfer options. This was a full ride at an Ivy. A Wonka golden ticket.

Now a senior, Adrienne says school is “fine,” with the enthusiasm of someone settling for an overcooked burger. Her mother can’t help wondering if she would have been better off somewhere else. “But who’s to say whether it was the school, or her shyness, or the fact that she’s majoring in the classics and philosophy—probably not the easiest place for a Black woman to feel like she belongs,” she said.

Psychologists call belonging a universal human need, a critical component of wellbeing and success in all arenas of our lives—academically, professionally, socially, and so on. When a student struggles to understand course material, there are visible red flags, and any number of pragmatic supports. When a student struggles to connect to a place and thrive, vague euphemisms don’t really flag a solution. It wasn’t a good fit. Things didn’t resonate. It was fine. 

For his 2019 book The Inequality Machine: How College Divides Us, journalist Paul Tough looked at the role of elite colleges in economic mobility for low-income students. And then he examined the interventions that haven’t quite succeeded in getting them to go, even if they very likely could have been accepted with a great aid package. And then, importantly, to stay.

One of the most impactful examples Tough highlights is the University of Texas, where student retention and four-year graduation rates had been an area in need of improvement. UT’s efforts were initiated in 2011 by then-president William Powers, Jr., whose graduation task force produced a report “that showed the institution to be deeply out of balance.” It illustrated significant gaps in retention and graduation rates between different demographic groups on the Austin campus: the students whose families had higher incomes were mostly graduating on time, and the kids from lower-income families mostly weren’t. Thirty percent of first-generation students at UT dropped out or were dismissed before they could complete their degree.

Chemistry professor David Laude dedicated himself to raising graduation rates among Pell-eligible students. His approach: introducing multiple programs to orient freshmen, provide summer supports, expand mental health services, and customize tutoring. 

“Laude’s kitchen-sink approach did make a difference for students at the University of Texas—and the evidence for its success comes not just in the stories of individual students. The data support it, too,” Tough wrote. “Those campus-wide four-year graduation rates were the numbers that led the press releases and earned headlines at UT in 2017 and 2018. But what made David Laude proudest was the fact that the biggest gains in UT’s four-year graduation rate came among the categories of students whose rates were the lowest. Pell-eligible students at UT improved their four-year graduation rate from 40 percent in 2012 to 61 percent in 2018.”

By 2023, the rates had soared to 75 percent. Dr. Laude’s student success initiatives were based in part on community-building, which he found to be a critical component for those who experience “belonging anxiety.” Schools trying to understand troubling retention statistics — particularly in under-represented populations, lower-income families, and first-generation students — typically look to a wide range of data while reading between the lines of SATS and GPAs. They may be equally well served by asking, “What do we have in place to make all students feel like they belong?”

Belonging by Design

Stanford’s Hasso Plattner Institute of Design, more casually known as the d.school, is no stranger to applying design thinking to solve problems that, a generation ago, might have been called intangible, squishy. In terms of design, problems refer to challenges that get in the way of products, services, and systems meeting people’s needs. Those needs could be building anything from better public policy to a more effective vegetable peeler. At the d.school today, it can also be the engineering of spaces, events, and practices that are better designed to evoke a sense of belonging.

​Susie Wise is an educator at the d.school who specializes in designing equity into the educational and social sectors. When the school decided to roll out a series of books on design insights and creative approaches—small inspirational tomes like Drawing on Courage and Creative Hustle—Wise was asked to contribute Design for Belonging. Published in April 2022, it is a guide to using the tools of design to create greater inclusion within groups of people in just about any setting, including campuses and classrooms.

“Instead of questioning your belonging, you can question the resources to help you — what are they, where are they, who are they?”

​“It was written for anyone hosting a community to show that belonging is something you can think about no matter what you’re creating. It was also meant to be provocative for designers, who I think have responsibility to think about whether their systems create more belonging, or inadvertently creating othering,” she says. “Nowadays it’s very normal in the design space to think about the environmental impact of something you’re creating. So part of my effort was to remind designers that a belonging lens is actually a really important one to think about, and particularly for folks who work on diversity, equity, and inclusion and are feeling stuck.”

​Wise is fully aware that belonging is a feeling, and that you can’t design a feeling. But, she says, you can ask people to think back on the environments and circumstances where they’ve felt most welcome, and drill down into what contributed to it. She’s also well aware that you can’t design away exclusionary behavior. However, you can consciously design environments that lay the groundwork for inclusion.

In her book, Wise identified two umbrella categories of opportunity for inclusiveness. The first is being attuned to moments of potential belonging (or not) – namely, key times when something begins, ends, or is changing in a community. These include some predictable moments, like the way an entrance is made into a room or event, with either a welcoming greeting and signage, or a physical barrier or checking of credentials, a sort of “bouncer” effect. The way conclusions and exits are handled can also leave a positive or negative impression, with someone feeling either valued or uncomfortable. 

​“Think about the difference it makes when you are made to feel awkward or judged for having to leave a class or event early. Now imagine if the professor or moderator mentioned at the outset that if attendees had to leave before the end – because let’s face it, people often have good reason – they can find the materials in a certain place online and are welcome to drop by their office at another time,” said a chemistry professor in the University of California system. “I mean, I’ve been to yoga classes where you’re given the hairy eyeball for having to slink out early. And I’ve been to others where the instructor says, ‘If you have to leave early, please be sure to give yourself a little stretch first and a moment of Savasana.’ What a difference it makes, offering up front that you’re trusting the person’s reasons for doing what they’re doing.”

The list also includes subtler moments that can fly under the radar, such as “code switching.” This is when people have different ways of speaking and behaving in different groups – it could be language, or dialect, a looser bearing, or humor – and is a marker of belonging to more than one culture. When and how it’s used can either include or exclude someone—signaling familiarity and identification, or otherness. 

​“As a moment of belonging, code switching can be both a powerful resource and an added weight to bear, and is likely experienced as both at times,” Wise writes. “By seeking to notice and understand code switching in your community, you effectively give voice to the many groups and subgroups that are part of people’s identity. This is a huge win for belonging.”

Key moments of tension can also serve as an opportunity for positive impact, like instances of disagreement. For someone to dare to speak up in dissent in a community, they risk being ostracized. But if they feel confident of their position, and they remain included and accepted even while introducing conflict, and it’s a strong indicator of belonging.

“This was one example of belonging in the student journey Susie described that really stuck with me,” said Kate Canales, chair of the department of design at the University of Texas at Austin. While working on research and writing for the book, Wise spent time in a “microresidency” in Canales’ department conducting workshops with students and faculty, both collecting information and sharing the principles of her research. “She said a part of belonging was being able to dissent. That if you belong in a community, and feel accepted and valued, you’re able to disagree with that community without being expelled. Since so much of higher education has hidden power and hierarchy, it was very relevant to many who heard her. You could see people thinking, ‘Oh, okay, we really need to rethink the way we perceive certain things.’”

​The second umbrella category of opportunity for belonging is one Wise calls “levers of design,” tools you can use to make it easier to move toward your goal. The trick is creating concrete experiences, environments, modes of engagement, or even tangible objects (such as food, clothing, and devices that have value or meaning to the group). These are things you use, circumstances you manipulate – in the language of design, levers you push – to create a desired effect. 

​The use and architecture of shared space is a critical one. Wise uses the example of a skateboard park to illustrate the many ways the ramps and seating offer a multitude of opportunities to enter, watch, and participate in the space as an insider. Sensory playgrounds are another example of public space designed with accessibility in mind for children sensitive to overload. For educational or professional environments, space designed for belonging could include moveable furniture and walls, lighting options that allow for dimming clusters, bright overheads, and seating near windows and natural light; areas conducive to talking, tables useful for spreading out work, and armchairs that invite more ease and relaxation. Other design features could include media and signage that can be customized, and changeable boards that allow for leaving behind personalized traces of ideas.

“If you belong in a community, and feel accepted and valued, you’re able to disagree with that community without being expelled.”

​“Our design department is one of the new tenants in an old historic building that’s been restored after being vacant on campus for like 40 years. So we were a huge contributor to the design process, and we’ve let the student experience dominate the way it’s set up to behave around collaboration,” says Canales. The resulting space for the design school is at the furthest extreme from, say, a shushed law library. “We mostly have open flexible spaces where everything is movable and the tabletops are butcher block work surfaces, so there’s permission to use your hot glue gun or whatever else you want to do. It really looks and feels different from other spaces of higher education anddispenses with the formality and makes it accessible and welcoming to use the square footage the way you’d like.” 

​Levers of design might have elements of levity, but don’t mistake them for gimmicks. Like most aspects of design for belonging, they are about authentic connection that makes its users feel understood and at home rather than put off by structures and systems that are distracting reminders of “otherness.”

​“I use the book to help people who are training to become teachers so they can think of moments and levers to increase the sense of belonging in their classrooms. That’s not something enough secondary teachers think a lot about—it’s more associated with elementary—but these kids desperately need connection. And many teachers don’t see it as part of their job to connect kids,” says Nora Wynne, an instructor of the secondary education program at Cal Poly Humboldt and a learning specialist at the Humboldt County Office of Education. 

Wynne brought Wise and her book to classes, conferences, and workshops, and led book groups with administrators, faculty, and parents. “No one’s saying this is a brand new or revolutionary idea. They’re saying, ‘Oh my God, of course.’” 

​At Texas Christian University, Jonathan Benjamin-Alvarado works as the chief inclusion officer, and is always looking for ways to move beyond the typical spectrum of DEI matters. “I’d had exposure to design thinking previously, and I thought, ‘These ideas are low-hanging fruit, some real grist to make an impact on campus.’ I want to get past the lip service to have more meaning,” he says. 

When he read Wise’s book, he immediately saw the practical application of the stories and ideas for the institution, which recently hired a new president. 

“We have a mechanism for data collection, and we are already seeing an uptick in people’s reported belonging,” said Benjamin-Alvarado. He calls the book’s reception at TCU a tremendous win. “HR, my department, and the president are all supporting taking a deep dive on liberatory design. For me, that’s hitting the triple word score in Scrabble.”

​For students, particularly those like Adrienne whose marginalized identities make them vulnerable to feeling isolated, Wise’s most salient piece of advice may be about the way belonging is perceived. 

“In a time of difficulty, one of the first things you might do is question your belonging,” said Wise. “But instead of questioning your belonging, you can question the resources to help you — what are they, where are they, who are they? How can I talk to my professors? So it becomes solution-oriented, rather than a first reaction of parachuting out of a place because you assume you don’t belong there.”

Not to Be Overlooked

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For more than a decade, the cost of college tuition in the U.S. has been steadily rising as enrollment continues to drop. Higher ed’s price tag, now averaging $33,000 per year after financial aid for private universities and $19,000 for public ones, is one factor driving away prospective students reticent to bet their degree could one day pay itself off. According to new research taking into account both the earnings and debts of graduates, the wealth gap between college degree-earners and high school graduates is in fact closing. That message is not lost on prospective students of lower income or minority backgrounds for whom the stakes are even higher. 

Among this group of students at greater risk of not realizing the gains of a college degree are those from rural communities. They are often first in their families to go to college and less exposed to the opportunities that surround students in urban economic centers. For university leaders hoping to regain the public’s trust in higher education, one possible avenue to explore is an increase in experiential learning opportunities. By facilitating outside-the-classroom professional experiences for students before they graduate, experiential learning may help raise the value of a college degree, in practice and perception.

“Historically, internships and other experiential learning opportunities have had greater participation among more privileged students with larger networks,” said John Volin, Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost at the University of Maine, who is spearheading an effort to expand student internship opportunities through the newly created Rural Careers Pathway Center.  “Given the value of these programs, particularly in terms of career readiness and attainment, it’s more important than ever to make a greater effort to expose less connected students with these opportunities earlier and more frequently.”

Appearing on more and more college campuses nationwide, experiential learning is a hands-on approach to education designed to allow students to “learn by doing.” It promotes projects, spanning research, internships, travel, and performances, that bring classroom material to life.  

But the practice doesn’t just offer a new, engaging way to learn. It’s many benefits include creating life-long wellbeing, helping with retention, and providing pathways to obtainable careers. 

At the University of Nebraska at Kearney (UNK), students are required to take one designated experiential learning class before graduating, thanks to a mandate by the Higher Learning Commission which is instituting a project to improve campus outcomes. “Experiential learning has been shown to have so many benefits for students,” said Beth Hinga, UNK Assistant to the Senior Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs, who spearheaded the experiential learning course requirement launched in fall 2020. “It keeps them enrolled, so retention rates are higher. Satisfaction rates with their education are higher.”

Career-oriented experiential opportunities may help reassure families concerned about their children’s job prospects after college.

At the rural and smallest campus in the University of Nebraska system, this potential boost for career development and attainment is especially meaningful. Four in ten UNK students are the first to attend college in their families, who tend to come from farming backgrounds. Without many other professional connections but with what Hinga called “a “phenomenal work ethic,” these students often thrive doing independent work and are able to foster positive service-learning or internship experiences that lead to employment down the road.

Hinga said she also notices a correlation between experiential learning engagement and job attainment. “These students tend to get jobs quicker after graduation,” she said. “Or, at least in some cases, what we saw is that our students were being offered jobs at the same locations where they interned.” According to UNB’s outcome data, 48% of college of business and technology students who completed an internship were offered a full time position with the company they interned with. 68% of these offers were accepted.  

As a result, career-oriented experiential opportunities may help reassure families concerned about their children’s job prospects after college. “What I’m hearing from students is that [experiential learning] is a really valuable opportunity for them to show their parents that there are jobs out there that let them do these kinds of things that they want to do,” Hinga said. “The parents get excited because, ‘Gosh, my students do an internship and it’s paid,’ and so they’re able to help pay for their own school and those kinds of things.”

In the rural setting, experiential learning may also be mutually reinforcing for students and the local community. “So many businesses have been great about welcoming students in to do those internships and I think a lot of these students are making a very positive impact on them,” Hinga said. Impressed by how much the young students can offer, employers have continued bringing in more. “Those are the students that they want to hire.”

Moving forward, Hinga said she hopes the university can begin introducing younger students, in their first and second years, to experiential learning. “Students have told us that if they could get those experiences earlier in their college career, it would help them to make sure they know what the proposed career they’re thinking about is all about and make sure it’s really what they want,” she said. 

The University of Maine at Farmington (UMF), another small, rural campus within a larger public university system, has embraced experiential learning as an engagement and retention strategy for some time. In October 2020, a $240 million gift to the UMaine System from the Harold Alfond Foundation spurred a $20 million student success and retention initiative called UMS TRANSFORMS, which centers on experiential learning opportunities, starting with “Research Learning Experiences” (RLEs) and moving onto “Pathways to Careers.” RLEs allow student to pursue research as early as their first semester, while Pathways creates professional preparation and work opportunities.

As early as their first semester, UMF students can engage in professional development through not only traditional work or internship experiences but wider career exploration. In a first-year course focused on sustainability, for example, students visited Maine Hudson Trails and Sugarloaf Mountain to speak with the respective director and sustainability coordinator about each of their job trajectories. In another course called “Popular Horror Narratives,” a unit on horror video games included a visit from one indie video game designer, who spoke about her experience developing a break-out game.

At a school where nearly half the student body comes from first-generation backgrounds, this chance to consider and connect with potential career routes can be transformational. “I think it’s so great for the students to hear from people who aren’t coming from a privileged background, given a lot of our students are coming from rural Maine,” Steve Grandchamp, who taught the course on horror narratives, said. “They can hear, ‘Okay, well, how could you get into this industry?’ Or, ‘how can you kind of forge your own path in all of these different creative ways?’” 

As those who do this work in places like Farmington, Maine and Kearney, Nebraska attest, engaging rural students in real world experiences that can lead to post-college opportunities may also serve to address another challenge for higher ed: letting these students know, “We value you.”

The Long Tether of Student Debt

D’Aubre’ Lewis has always been a good student. That track record is a comfort for the sophomore at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical (A&T) State University when the financial road to becoming a therapist feels overwhelming. On top of her federal loans, she needs to come up with $8,000 of tuition each semester, mostly from summer earnings back home in Baltimore. She can’t work too much during the school year because she needs to keep a 3.5 GPA for her scholarship, and attending part-time isn’t an option her scholarship allows. Her loans will total about $20,000 when she graduates, and then grow with whatever she’ll need to borrow for graduate school.

“It’s a lot of pressure,” she concedes. “I’ll be the first one on my mom’s side to finish college.” Her mother contributes what she can, but also supports several of D’Aubre’s older siblings wholeft school before finishing their degrees. D’Aubre’ is all too aware that if she doesn’t keep juggling the plates just right, she won’t be able to graduate, and will still be responsible for the loans. 

“I’ll be in debt my whole life,” she says with flat pragmatism. “I just want to get the degree.”

Getting the degree has never been so expensive for so many people. Student loan debt in the US has swelled to nearly $1.8 trillion owed by 44 million people. An estimated 55% of all undergraduates finish school carrying debt. And this doesn’t include the number of people who, like D’Aubre’s siblings, didn’t finish—and are still responsible for payments, but with their earning potential unenhanced by a degree. 

Student loans are the second-largest type of consumer-generated debt, just behind mortgages, and account for 9.5% of the consumer debt in the US. But unlike mortgages, they have the stultifying effect of suppressing the progress to adulthood, as student borrowers put off milestones like home ownership andmarriage until they feel more secure.

“The reality of what over-leveraged looks like depends entirely upon who holds the loans, and what other life circumstances they’re juggling that make monthly payments difficult.”

The burden of student loan debt has become a growing part of the national conversation about not just loan forgiveness, but the value of a college degree. While the high cost of education continues to rise—169% in the last four decades—earnings for new graduates in the workforce have not, with wages for 22-27 year olds increasing by just 19% in that time. 

“The math doesn’t add up. The business model is unsustainable,” says Kevin Fudge, a higher education finance executive with 20 years experience as a consultant to schools and families. “People overleverage themselves, and end up hurt by taking on more than they can chew.”

The reality of what overleveraged looks like depends entirely upon who holds the loans, and what other life circumstances they’re juggling that make monthly payments difficult. 

“We think of the ability to pay off student debt as only having to do with student debt,” wrote Mark Huelsman, author of The Debt Divide research paper published in 2015 by Demos, an organization for democratic and economic solutions rooted in racial equity. “[But] we know the ability to pay off your loans has everything to do with wages and the ability to gain secure employment, it has everything to do with housing affordability, it has everything to do with child-care costs.”

In short, borrowers are increasingly stymied by the life challenges they hoped would be made easier by getting a degree.In this way, student loan debt is becoming the long covid of higher education.

The unequal demographics of debt

Looking at data like gender and race, it becomes apparent that not all debt burdens are created equal. Women carry a disproportionate amount of the nation’s overall student debt (66%), are more likely than men to take out loans (41% of female undergraduates, compared to 35% of male), and have parents that are less likely to save for their education (39%, compared to 50%). And since women earn 82 cents on the dollar compared to their male counterparts (60 cents for Black women, 55 cents for Latinas), it takes longer to pay off the loans. The increased time to repay also means that women pay more interest over the life of their loans. Perhaps unsurprisingly,women report higher levels of stress and lower quality of living while they do.

Black graduates have an average of $52,000 in student loan debt—$25,000 more than white college graduates, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Black students made up around 14% of all students entering college but constitute more than 27% of those with $50,000 in debt, and nearly 22% of those with over $100,000. Four years after graduation, 48% of Black students owe an average of 12.5% more than they borrowed.

“In addition, Black Americans are more likely to have a disproportionate amount of parent loan debt,” said Fudge,“given the historically Black colleges’ over-reliance on students who are propped up by parents with PLUS loans.” 

And the parental loans create a multi-generational debt pressure for the sandwich generation. Fudge recalls one woman he’d mentored who took out loans to go to Spellman College. To make up the gap between what she had and what she needed, her parents took out loans, too, as did her grandparents and her aunt. And then she didn’t finish, plunging three generations into debt for a degree that never materialized. The pain points are at risk of increasing from there, as students who leave college without completing are more than twice as likely as graduates to default on their loans.

The temptation is strong for a family to go all in on a relative’s acceptance to college, which is why many end up with a double-decker club debt sandwich. A school will offer aid packages, and present sums that should represent the so-called family contribution, supposedly based upon what the family can afford. But Fudge advises families not to let the college define what’s affordable—and not be tempted to give up their assets. 

“On paper, if you own a home, they treat the home like an ATM to pull money out of,” he said. “That decision, that investment, impacts everyone, not just the individual child.” 

When parents sacrifice everything for their kids to go to college, he says, it may feel like a Hallmark movie, but the reality is it’s a decision with serious repercussions; there are options and avenues available to young people, who have time on their side. There is little in the way of aid and safety nets for older people who don’t have any assets for retirement.

Risky return on investment (ROI)

Undergraduates carrying debt can’t help being affected by the questions and doubts swirling around their choices. Is going to college going to be worth it? Is this degree going to be able to land me a good job? Do I have to compromise what I love to do for something more lucrative? Can I justify majoring in the humanities?

“Today, the reality of student loans definitely informs the choice of majors,” says Beth Throne, senior associate dean of Student Affairs at Franklin & Marshall College.  “Students are 100% mindful of fiscal choices, and if anyone isn’t, it’s because they have the economic luxury of choice to approach it differently.”

Throne is seeing the confluence of several financial factors shaping students’ choices of careers: Pressures among first-generation students to show their degree’s ROI to their parents; students increasingly committing to jobs before graduation to have a “bird in the hand”; and seniors’ reluctance to bind themselves to further debt of graduate school, unless they have access to resources and don’t require aid. 

She believes it’s the job of the school to equip students with the best information to back up choosing the course of study, and career, they love. “If we’re doing our job in liberal arts, we’re showing them how to apply value to their chosen field, to do what they love and find ways to make it monetarily rewarding.” 

Last year Throne worked with a student who was a double major in business and creative writing. The young woman had no passion for business, but as a first-generation college student, was struggling to justify writing. 

“She wasn’t fulfilled in business and was sort of looking for permission to drop it as a major. We helped her secure a very prestigious internship at a literary agency, setting herself up well for the business applications of literature,” says Throne. “She was thrilled, and so were her parents—who of course wanted her to do what she loved, but also to be able to support herself doing it.”

Life, delayed

How much does student loan debt affect the way young adults progress toward their life goals? A lot, as it turns out.

A CNBC/Momentive poll in 2022 found that 81% of people with student loans say they’ve had to delay one or more key life milestones because of their debt. In the breakdown of data, 42% said they’d delayed paying off other loans, 38% didn’t save for retirement, 33% put off buying a home, 16% held back on starting a family, and 12% avoided pursuing a different job. 

Student loan debt was designed to make the impossible possible. Instead, it now prevents people from making decisions about their life, according to Nicole Smith, chief economist at the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce. “Student loan debt was supposed to be good debt—the type that you take out so that you can invest in your human capital formation so that you can live your life afterward,” Smith said,“and it’s morphed into something much more insidious.”

Looking at debt through the lens of age, most of the total national debt belongs to the 25- to 34-year-old age group. But on average, 35- to 49-year-olds owe the most money as individuals, with 50- to 61-year-olds not far behind. When the Biden administration found ways to cancel certain demographics of federal debt, one person who benefitted from the slate-wiping was Chuck Ertel-Hoy, a 72-year-old retired professor in Indiana, who still owed $41,000 after paying his loans consistently whileteaching. “I didn’t know how I was going to keep paying this in retirement,” he said. “This changes everything.”

On the early end of debt chronology are current students like Emma Lamoreaux, a senior at Temple University. An in-state resident from Hershey, PA, Emma chose the least expensive of her acceptances, and has worked throughout her four years to keep her loans as low as possible. But with plans to go to law school, future debt is “a pretty big looming thing” that weighs on her as heavily as getting accepted to the programs.

“When I was younger, my goals were to go to college, graduate, get a house, a job, a dog, have kids. And now I feel like I’m not really sure,” she says. “It feels like my student loans will put all of what I thought I wanted on hold indefinitely. I don’t really have a plan for much else of anything anymore beyond the loans. I’m kind of in a no-man’s-land.”

The degree to which debt causes excessive stress and impedes personal growth creates a disturbing paradox for colleges and universities who view higher education as leading to a life of flourishing. “Colleges and universities seek to empower their students so that they will thrive post-graduation based on the experiences they have had,” said John Volin, executive vice president for Academic Affairs and provost at the University of Maine.  “However, financial wellbeing is an important domain of overall wellbeing. And this is one of the reasons why we must tackle college affordability.”  

Aging into debt

The size of the debt, and the way it’s handled in the first 10 years, determines how it continues to affect later stages of life. K, a 33-year-old financial executive, still carries a loan balance of about $20,000, and her husband has $40,000. They are homeowners with a two-year-old daughter, and would like to have another child. But they are already paying $1,700 a month in daycare. 

“How can we even think about affording her future college? There’s very little we’re able to put aside, let alone start retirement savings,” she says. “It’s a different world than when our parents were doing this. The cost of living has gone up so much, but the wages haven’t caught up to it. None of my friends have pensions, and social security is going to be a much smaller part of our retirement. You plan ahead as much as possible, but you feel screwed no matter what choices you make.”

As the years pass for those whose debt is remaining and compounding, there are the concerns for their own college-aged children whose debt they can’t help shoulder. KK is a divorced mother with three college-aged children, but she can’t co-sign their loans because of the years she fell off-schedule with her own payments, in the early PhD years that she was juggling diapers and debt. Now a full-time associate professor of cultural anthropology, she is still more than $100,000 deep in her own outstanding debt. 

“It’s a constant reality, always on my mind. I’ve tried to raise my children so this isn’t their reality. They have to have the work ethic and be able to do well but there’s not a lot of margin for error,” she says. One of her children is on full scholarship at an Ivy League school. Another was accepted to some schools last year, but without scholarships, has not been able to attend until he can navigate his own loans. “I wish I could help more. But also I kind of don’t. This is how you dig deep to figure out what you really want.”

B, a 44-year-old divorced mother of a college-aged daughter, left being a college professor a few years ago for a more lucrative position as a communications executive. Her PhD is tucked under her bed, both literally and metaphorically, and theslowly shrinking $40,000 debt molders there, too. A few years ago, a man she’d been dating broke off the relationship when he found out she was still carrying loans. “He saw it as a liability,” she says. 

Daily bread

Students like Emma regard their loans as future burdens, an IOU taped to the horizon. But for some others, the future debt loadcoexists alongside imminent need. Without the security of school housing and meal plans, many students live hand-to-mouth alongside peers who don’t think twice about daily mochaccinos. 

In Class, a recently released memoir, author Stephanie Land writes about cleaning homes to make ends meet while she attended the University of Montana as a single mother. The book is a sequel to her bestselling memoir, Maid, which became a critically acclaimed Netflix series about her escape from an abusive relationship with her toddler daughter. Land’s jackpot is acceptance into college in another state, through a combination of scholarships, financial aid, and student loans. But tuition doesn’t cover rent, health care, transportation, or childcare solutions while she attends class and cleans homes. Land relies on food stamps, and she’s often hungry. 

Unfortunately, not being on a college meal plan—and not having money for food—isn’t entirely an anomaly. Today, food pantries are cropping up on more and more campuses across the country, including The Cherry Pantry at Temple University, the Aggie Cupboard at New Mexico State University, and the Ole Miss Food bank. More than 600 campuses have signed on as members of the national nonprofit Swipe Out Hunger, which has served more than two million meals and funded $200,000 in grants to alleviate food insecurity.

“Maybe my college education was an unnecessary luxury,” Land wrote in Class. “Who the —- was I to get a Bachelor of Arts in English? There weren’t a lot of jobs for people with degrees in creative writing. Even now, with loans, grants, and scholarships, there was no way I could pay off the money I had already borrowed. The irony was not lost on me that in order to make enough money to pay off my student loans, I needed to take out more…Given the monumental sum, I knew with certainty that I would have debt for the rest of my life.” 

Land was aware that by the time many borrowers paid off their loans they were easily double the original amount borrowed, and she envisioned never being able to afford a car, house, or to help her own children go to college. 

“The degree to which I was —-ed was overwhelming. But this was GOOD debt, I told myself, a GOOD investment… Beyond college, I’d magically qualify for jobs because of a paper that cost me fifty thousand dollars, and then we’d live happily ever after.” 

She writes this last bit with cheeky irony. But she was one of the ones who, against all odds, did thread that needle less than a decade ago to emerge with work, success, and debt headed in the right direction. Her author’s photo smiles from the book jacket like a billboard of what is possible even when the odds seem impossibly stacked against you. Part of her early success is due to dogged navigation of every bit of available aid, every piece of paperwork, no matter how exhausted she was. 

“There are really high hurdles for people who are poor, and everyone applauds when they have the fortitude to keep going like five Energizer Bunnies with five jobs and finally achieve that degree and that job,” says KK, the anthropology professor and mother of three, who still works in a café on weekends. “But early on, those same people are telling you that you shouldn’t want what you want. It feels like you have to try five times harder and read every single line of small print on any loans you sign. But you do it. Because what choice do you have?”