Alicia C. Dowd

From Access to Outcome Equity: Revitalizing the Democratic Mission of the Community College:

By expanding higher education’s enrollment capacity, community colleges are understood by many to play an important democratizing role in the American postsecondary system. As public institutions, they also face demands for accountability, productivity, and efficiency, which in recent years have led to a greater market orientation. This article analyzes the ideology of efficiency and its effects on the acclaimed democratizing mission of the public two-year sector. It argues that open access in the traditional sense of nonselective, low-cost enrollment has been eroded by the stratification of educational opportunity and by declining college affordability. Technical and economic efficiency are discussed as concepts having meaning and application distinct from the ideology of efficiency and that are not inherently at odds with equity goals. Performance accountability is explored as a mechanism to collect and examine detailed student outcome data and balance efficiency concerns with a focus on equity.

Dynamic Interactions and Intersubjectivity: Challenges to Causal Modeling in Studies of College Student Debt

Loans are a central component of college finance, yet research has generated a dearth of strong evidence of their effect on student choices. This article examines challenges to causal modeling regarding the effects of borrowing and the prospects of indebtedness on students’ college-going behaviors. Statistical estimates of causal effects are confounded by dynamic interactions between the decision to borrow and the characteristics of borrowers (endogeneity), their degree and earnings expectations (self-selection bias), and cumulative debt (temporal and threshold effects). Furthermore, interpretive research illustrates that college counseling is highly intersubjective, with application and financial aid advice predicated on perceptions of student socioeconomic class and degree prospects. These studies indicate the need for an interdisciplinary research agenda more inclusive of sociopsychological perspectives.

The Impact of Undergraduate Debt on the Graduate School Enrollment of STEM Baccalaureates.

While student loans provide college opportunity for many, undergraduate student debt resulting from typical and heavy borrowing hinders future investments in human capital. Propensity score matching analysis of the NSF’s 2003 National Survey of Recent College Graduates demonstrates that debt negatively affects the graduate school enrollment of bachelor’s degree holders in STEM fields, where debt is measured by a student’s cumulative undergraduate debt relative to the mean debt of his or her baccalaureate graduating cohort. The findings support recent changes in financial aid policy that seek to reduce undergraduate borrowing by increasing means-tested grant aid.

Transfer Access from Community Colleges and the Distribution of Elite Higher Education

This study investigates the contribution of community college transfers to the socioeconomic diversity of elite colleges and universities. We find that elite institutions enroll few transfers and, among them, few are low-income students from community colleges. Transfer primarily serves middle- and high-income students as a route to elite institutions.

Accountability, Assessment, and the Scholarship of “Best Practice”

Research for this paper was conducted with funding from Lumina Foundation for Education. Earlier versions were presented at the Northeast Association for Institutional Research (NEAIR) annual conference, Portsmouth, NH, November 2004 and at the Measuring What Matters Symposium of the University of Massachusetts Boston’s Community College Success Project (CCSSP), Roxbury Community College, Boston, MA, October, 2004. The authors appreciate insightful discussions and feedback on earlier drafts from members of the CCSSP’s National Advisory Council and New England Resource Center for Higher Education (NERCHE) Think Tank (Fall-Spring 2004–2005), the Cultivating Communities of Inquiry Symposium ( January, 2006, Los Angeles, CA), and participants in the “New Era of Accountability” seminar at the Institute for Community College Development, Cornell University (August, 2006). The authors recognize valuable research assistance provided by Susan Dole, Shelley Fortin, John Grant, Linda Kent Davis, and Randi Korn. Insightful conversations with Estela Mara Bensimon, Robert Rueda, and other researchers at the Center for Urban Education at the Rossier School of Education were particularly valuable in informing our views. Ozan Jaquette and three anonymous reviewers provided extremely helpful critiques. The arguments expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not represent those of Lumina Foundation, Community

Equity and Efficiency of Community College Appropriations: The Role of Local Financing

This study analyzes the equity of community college financing and demonstrates intrastate variations in appropriations to community colleges. The ratio of 90th to 10th percentile values ranges from 2.0 to 2.8 in half of the states analyzed, levels which are considered high in comparison to K-12 finance inequities. In 10 states with high revenue disparities, the direction of revenue deviations is more often progressive in state-funded than in local-share states, suggesting that the local role may undermine equity. This paper explores differences in economies of scale, geographic costs, and program costs as factors determining funding disparities.

Transfer Equity for "Minoritized" Students: A Critical Policy Analysis of Seven States.

Using critical policy analysis focused on racial-ethnic equity, this study analyses state policy documents and accountability instruments governing transfer from 2-year colleges to 4-year institutions in the following states: California, Florida, Texas, Michigan, Minnesota, Washington, and Wisconsin. Based on data collected in 2009, the findings indicate that state transfer policies are largely “color blind.” In contrast, accountability reporting, including data indicators such as those for underrepresented students, may serve as proxies for monitoring progress toward transfer of racially minoritized students. Recommendations are proposed for creating racially equitable state transfer policies and accountability instruments.

EQUITY EFFECTS OF ENTREPRENEURIAL COMMUNITY COLLEGE REVENUES

This study conceptualizes entrepreneurial forms of community college revenues as undermining finance equity and examines their distribution through a single-state case study. The hypothesis that colleges serving wealthier communities will be more successful in obtaining revenues from performance funding and private fundraising is tested. Based on a Spearmans correlation analysis of college rankings of community wealth and revenues received from governmental and private sources, the findings show that wealthier colleges in Massachusetts are not more or less successful in garnering funds from performance incentive programs or fundraising. The potential effect of these forms of revenues on finance equity is considered. The study provides a model for replication in other states.

Familiar Paths and New Directions: Inaugural Call for Manuscripts

In the summer of 1994, Murray and Raths issued their inaugural call for manuscripts as the incoming editors of the Review of Educational Research (RER), the American Educational Research Association’s premier review journal. In so doing, they offered a beautifully crafted analogy regarding the nature and purpose of the review article. In short, they suggested that the scholarly literature forms the brick and mortar of the walls of education research, while the purpose of the review article is to study or investigate the very nature and composition of the wall. Just 5 years later, Franklin (1999) challenged such a view by proposing that the review article serves an even more substantive role—Franklin argued that the authors of review articles serve as masons of the architecture of our field. The discursive practices and epistemic frames invoked in reviews of literature shape a view or vision of the state of a field of research. Thus, reviews of research literature, particularly those published in prestigious, highly ranked outlets like RER, serve as “venues where fields of inquiry are constituted, reproduced, and over time changed” (p. 347). As an editorial team, we embrace both of the aforementioned views on the role of reviews of research. That is, we agree that review articles represent efforts to look deeper into the edifice of education research to the bricks and mortar with which that structure is built. Simultaneously, we contend that through these examinations authors are necessarily composing a view of the field that has the potential to shape the future of research and practice. In light of these complementary and influential roles, we feel that the review article must be rigorously held to the highest conceptual and methodological standards with an eye toward openness and transparency. At the same time, those rigorous standards must allow for the epistemic and intellectual diversity that is at the heart of critical analysis. Our interest in serving as editors of RER is in direct response to these contentions. In short, building on the successes of the editors who have preceded us, we are committed to cultivating RER as a central source of conceptually rich, methodologically rigorous, and intellectually provocative reviews of literature that will shape the future of education research and practice in meaningful ways.