AUSTIN COMMUNITY COLLEGE BOARD OF TRUSTEES
ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON FINANCE AND BUDGET
REPORT
ON ACC’S EARLY COLLEGE START PROGRAM
COMMENTS FROM INDIVIDUAL ADVISORY-COMMITTEE MEMBERS
Toni Hunter Kim Edwards Pete Palazzari Hunter Ellinger Bob Rutishauser
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Conclusions reached from data
and discussion:
1.
I think the Early
College Start Program (ECS) is a positive program that is good for ACC’s image
and encourages high school seniors to think about college. I believe that it has the effect of starting
some seniors who would not consider college on the path to college at ACC or
elsewhere. I believe, however, that the
statistics presented by the ECS staff on the numbers of ECS students who enroll
in ACC as a result of participation in ECS are inflated.
2. I do not think that ECS has had an effect on annexation. In fact, I think that charging out of area ECS students tuition or some fee for participation may have more of a positive effect on annexation desires.
3. I do not think that zip codes are the best way of gauging the economic groups served by ECS, but I do think, in the absence of better information, they give a fairly good approximation of income levels served. From this information I think we have a working position that suggests that ECS students come from families that are above average economically.
4. The majority of ECS students are out-of-area.
5. ECS students compete with regular ACC students frequently for high demand classes and may be able to register first because they do not have to worry about having money available to pay their tuition as they choose when to register.
6. ECS is not a revenue neutral program. Various methodologies show that the program costs the college anywhere from $300,000 to $400,000 annually. This raises the question of the fairness of asking regular ACC students to subsidize the education of ECS students.
7. Though I understand the arguments in favor, I personally do not put a high positive value on ECS filling a gap in the high school curriculum by offering bored seniors something to do in their senior year or a high value on rushing students through their college experience.
8. High school based ECS classes where the instructor is paid by the school district should be treated differently than high school based ECS classes where the instructor is paid by ACC or ECS classes that are ACC campus based.
9. Charging tuition for ECS classes would not be a major source of revenue for ACC and might cause a decline in ECS participation.
Recommendations:
1. In my mind, fairness and consistency demand that out of area students who take ECS classes that are ACC campus based or where ACC pays the instructor pay tuition or some of the cost of the ECS program. To continue the attractiveness of the program I think the charge to out of area ECS participants should not be full tuition but should correlate to a charge that allows the program to break-even or a set fee of $25.00 per SCH.
2. At the same time, I think a waiver of tuition or costs should be offered to out of area students who demonstrate need.
3. All students who participate in ECS should be assisted in filling out financial aid forms. This will be a service to the student and give ECS a data base to show what economic levels are served.
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Kim Edwards -- ACC ACFB --
ECS Recommendations
Observations:
1. The ECS program serves several policy objectives; some are independent and some are related:
a. Assist and encourage low income or students not likely to attend college to attend college (Currently no financial data is collected from participants. Census data at a zip code level was used as a proxy).
b. Allowing all kids to get an ‘early start” makes their senior year more productive, saves them or their family money, and ultimately, saves the entire public education system money because they finish college sooner
c. Community relations – positive publicity for ACC – for taxpayers and prospective students
d. Annexation
2. The program brings some revenue to the college (State Reimbursement); this revenue does not offset all costs of running the program. There are several ways to calculate the cost of the program, depending on how indirect costs are allocated. Rough estimates are $300,000 to $500,000.
3. Currently, ACC waives about $1.8 million a year in tuition for ECS. However, we have no measure of elasticity of demand. That is, if you started charging full tuition today, many ECS participants would drop out, so it is unlikely that you could actually collect $1.8 million in tuition.
4. The program is relative small right now (in terms of enrollment and the net cost to the college). However, if the program were to grow substantially, the relative size of that cost could change.
Recommendations:
1. The college should adopt a policy that there should be some charge for the program in order for it to be “revenue neutral” or obtain “cost recovery.” This is not an urgent issue now, since the program is small, but it could be one in the future, and you should not wait until the problem develops to address it.
There are several alternatives to make the program Revenue Neutral:
2. The college should start collecting financial information on ECS participants, such as requiring them to fill out a FAF form. This would provide data on the goal of reaching low income students, and assist students with one component of the transition to college life, i.e., financial aid.
Note: I think the committee spent a lot of time discussion two issues that in my opinion should be left to the Board: In-district/out of district and income levels. As I review the objectives of the program, I think you could make a case that these objectives are important to ACC’s long-term goals (get kids to pursue higher education and to enroll in ACC) regardless of the student’s income level and residency. I think we should just provide the board with the data collected on ECS attendance by district/out of district and income levels, and let them decide.
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Here are my
thoughts and recommendations concerning the Early College Start Program.
ECS is a
valuable program that increases the number of college students and is a good
marketing tool for the college. It
should be kept as is for In-District students and also kept for Out-of-District
students with a modification to charge upper-income families $25-33 per credit
hour.
The data is
clear that ECS students are more affluent than average and the program is of
primary benefit to Out-of-District students.
I cannot find a justification to provide free tuition to affluent
students not in the taxing district when this does not increase the number of
college students. In my opinion, these students are going to go to college
anyway.
I believe we
must make sure that financial aid to low-income out-of-district students is
available prior to implementing this change.
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While I am supportive of an early college start for those who are in a position to do so, I do not see encouragement of such students as having higher priority than encouragement of students who complete high school at the standard time or later (in many cases because they need to work during their high-school years). ACC subsidies should be mainly targeted either to those who supply the resources, or to those in clear need. Note that since tuition is the only significant source of discretionary income for ACC, it is the regular students from whom ACC gets the money that it waives from ECS students. The money now used to subsidize ECS could be used (via enhanced or expanded scholarships) to ease the college start of students whose ability to attend ACC depends on such aid. The hundreds of thousands of dollars now used to subsidize non-needy out-of-district students could permit far more new disadvantaged students to attend college than would be diverted by an ECS tuition charge.
Also, I think that it is a disservice to the educational needs of people in the non-ACC-district ISDs in the area to undermine the incentives toward annexation by an open-ended offer of free services, irrespective of need, for which either other taxpayers or other students have to pay. We will be able to add 50,000 new college students in the Central Texas area only by getting each community to accept some responsibility for this task. Giving a free ride to the most prosperous areas in the community does not support annexation.
It is not a failing of the ECS program that the great majority of its participants are students from prosperous families. This is true of college attendees in general, and will be all the more true for students who are ahead of schedule in high school. My reading of the limited data at hand so far is that 90% or more of ECS students come from families that are in the top half in average family income. And I am confident both from the current data and from information from ACC teachers that the great majority of ECS students are college-bound in any case, although I still favor the provision of tuition waivers to those who are in financial need.
But despite my feeling that ECS subsidies are misdirected, I think that it would be better to adopt incremental reforms (such as Option B in the ACFB report) that will generate more information as they are implemented, rather than to make drastic or abrupt changes in the program. Caution is especially needed in changes to the ECS classes that are sited at the high schools, since lower enrollment in each class would reduce the benefits of the program but not reduce its costs, since such classes cannot be combined like those on ACC campuses. These high-school-based classes entail a substantial reduction in actual costs to ACC and include access to free textbooks paid for by the ISD, which is a benefit that other ECS students do not usually get.
While I agree that requiring that financial need be demonstrated has some depressing effect on enrollment even from those who will qualify (I would be glad to see all community-college costs be tax-supported rather than tuition-supported), this applies just as much to regular ACC students, about 30% of whom still follow through and become financial-aid recipients. The earlier students learn to deal with the financial-aid process the better, and the ECS students still have their high-school counselors to assist them.
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If ACC plans
to have a significant role in "Closing the GAP" I hope the Board will
support Option A. The preliminary estimate in the Financial Model is that a $25
per hour tuition charge will result in a 15% drop in enrollment among the
students affected. If true, that amounts to a decline in enrollment of nearly
100 students per semester for those 45% of the students that will live out of
district (assuming the referendum passes) and would be taking courses on ACC
campuses. The students that do not
participate are likely to be those from families with no college experience and
where the student is unsure of his/her ability to perform at a college
level. Yet these are the very
students that we need to attract to college to make progress in "Closing
the Gap."
There is
general agreement in the ACFB that zip code data are a poor measure of
financial need. According to data from TEA, about 28% of the high school
students in currently out-of-district ISDs qualify for free and/or reduced
lunch prices. (The income limit for a family of 4 is about $34,800.) This
understates the real need since many high school students are unwilling to
apply for free/reduced lunch because they do not want to admit that they
need a subsidy. In the two Pflugerville High Schools, for example, about
24% of the students are on free/reduced lunch whereas in the Pflugerville
elementary and middle schools, about 38% of the students are on free/reduced
lunch. If many high school students are unwilling to apply for free/reduced lunch,
will they (in their junior year) apply for the tuition waivers for ECS? I think
the impact on enrollment will be higher than projected in the model, but we
will not know for sure unless it is tried.
There is a good equity case for charging tuition for out of district ECS students because currently there is a subsidy from in-district taxpayers. The subsidy, however, is small - about one dollar per in-district taxpayer per year. I believe that most in-district taxpayers would be willing to contribute a dollar per year so that some out-of-district students could try ACC under ECS. If they continue as regular ACC students, they will pay tuition that is more than double that paid by the in-district students.