Increasing access to higher education in Virginia

by Edward L. Flippen
and Farrah S. Graham
Virginia Business
November 2005

During the past 20 years, the U.S. has experienced a significant increase in the number of people seeking higher education. Total enrollment in degree-grant-ing institutions increased 17 percent from 1988 to 2000, from 13.1 million to 15.3 million. The U.S. Department of Education projects an increase from 15.3 million in 2000 to 17.7 million by 2012. This trend is also evident in Virginia. The State Council of Higher Education for Virginia (SCHEV) predicts that between 2004 and 2012, 55,106 additional students will seek admission to higher education institutions in the commonwealth.

Given these projections, legislatures and colleges around the country are examining this growing demand with a sense of urgency. In Virginia, former Attorney General Jerry Kilgore convened a task force to address the issue of access to higher education. The task force focused on expanding opportunities to gain a higher education through nontraditional venues, specifically two-year institutions and distance learning.

During the 2004 Virginia General Assembly session, two bills based on the task force’s recommendations were passed and signed into law. The first related to the “transfer module” between two- and four-year institutions. The bill instructs SCHEV to develop a transfer module that designates the general education courses at public two-year institutions that can be transferred for credit or admission with standing as a junior at public four-year institutions. The module also includes other measures to help ease the transfer process. Since the legislation was signed into law in April 2004, Virginia’s public and private institutions have agreed upon the transferability of approximately 60 general education courses. SCHEV has compiled the list into an online tool that will be released by the end of 2005.

The other bill involves the development and use of distance learning. The bill requires each public institution of higher education to include in its strategic plan a description of the extent to which it will use distance learning. The plans would include information on the degree to which distance learning will be incorporated into the curriculum, benchmarks for measuring the integration of distance learning, and a schedule for evaluation of the courses. Together, the two laws represent a commitment to providing a greater number of alternatives for students to obtain a college education.

Another possibility for addressing the increasing demand for higher education is to provide substantive, high-quality information on the alternatives available to state residents.

To determine what type of information parents and students need, the Center for Public Policy at Virginia Commonwealth University polled 800 Virginians. Survey respondents were asked what information they use in deciding where to attend college. They also were asked what they knew about higher education alternatives in Virginia.

The results showed that the public mostly relies on family and friends (90 percent), university Web sites (89 percent) and high school guidance counselors (80 percent) to gather information about colleges and universities. About 75 percent of respondents also said they would use publications, such as U.S.News & World Report rankings or college guidebooks, to make their decision. And 64 percent said they would use the SCHEV Web site to gather information.

Respondents also were asked about their familiarity with postsecondary education alternatives. They ranked their familiarity on a scale of 0 to 10, with 0 being not at all familiar and 10 being completely familiar. The results showed that the public is most familiar with public four-year institutions and community colleges, which received a mean score of 7.44 and 7.43, respectively. However, specialty technical colleges and distance-learning or online degree programs received the lowest mean scores of 4.93 and 3.84, respectively. These findings show that, while distance learning may be a very viable alternative for many Virginians, most people are unfamiliar with the opportunities.

There is, of course, plenty of information available about higher education institutions, but this information is generally focused on the inputs to the educational process (e.g., an institution’s funding, faculty/student ratio, student SAT scores and GPAs), instead of the true outcomes of getting an education. In short, there is a real need for information that is consumer-focused, answering questions that parents and students have in choosing a college. Taking all these issues into consideration, the commonwealth may want to consider a way to provide more information on higher education opportunities instead of assuming that publications, such as U.S.News & World Report, fill the need. In addition, policymakers should take note of the fact that distance education is a somewhat unknown resource. If the commonwealth intends to focus on distance education as one remedy to the access problem, then efforts need to be made to better inform the public of the benefits of this resource.

Ed Flippen was chairman of the Attorney General’s Task Force on Access to Higher Education. Farrah Graham is a faculty member in the Center for Public Policy and a doctoral candidate in public policy at Virginia Commonwealth University.