Interesting Reads This Week

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Apart from a couple of big survey releases, it's been a rather slow week, unless you work in higher education in the UK where the publication of A-Level results and Clearing would have kept you busy. But among the slow trickle of things coming out this week, what did I read, and what was interesting?

What students want, part 8751

Third Way published the results of an interesting survey on high school students' thoughts about higher education. It was an interesting read, even though it started with a strange statement.

I have no idea what trapper keeper means. Is it one of those science fiction references I don’t get? It sounds serious, and I went to school in small-town Zimbabwe where we had armed guards accompany us to every away field hockey game. Maybe trapper keepers would have been more effective. But I digress.

Earlier this year, Third Way and the Global Strategy Group surveyed just over one thousand high school students about their post-graduation plans. This is a critical issue, especially given the growing discourse questioning the value of post-secondary credentials compounded by the ongoing FAFSA fiasco that has increased uncertainty among students.

Based on the data, Third Way created a segmentation of the sample based on whether and how strongly students were considering higher education, as well as their plans to pay for it.

There are three segments.

• College-going base (36%). These are students who almost certainly will attend a four-year institution.

• Cost-pressured (35%). This group will probably attend a four-year institution but is worried about the cost.

• Cost-dominant (13%). This group is interested in higher education but is questioning the value of a credential because of its cost

The different segments break down along some interesting demographic lines, but I found two of these to be especially interesting - gender and region.

I found the gender breakdown interesting because of the predominance of male students in the Base group (almost certain to attend a 4-year institution). In general, women are more strongly represented in higher education, comprising around 58% of all enrollments (up from 29% in 1947). From the Third Way survey, we see that men are either likely to go to college or very sensitive to cost. Women are much more likely to be in that missile cost-pressured tier.

The regional breakdown is also interesting given our understanding of demographic shifts where much of the fall off in college-going traditional-age students is happening in the Northeast and Midwest. There is not a great deal in it, but students in both regions are more likely to be less worried about cost. Students in the West and South are more likely to be very concerned about cost.

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