Dreams Deterred: How Federal Policies Keep the Poor Out of College
Did welfare reform ensure that the poorest among us do not get the same access to higher education as other Americans?
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The school year is nearly over and a swarm of young folks are about to receive their college diplomas. They are fortunate. Mountains of evidence point to the fact that a college degree is the surest route to the middle-class that exists in this country, and is the fuel that we need to power our economy. Support for a college education is strong and bipartisan — indeed both Presidents Clinton and George W. Bush have proclaimed that college should be accessible to all Americans.
But the reality is that America holds a double standard. While middle-class kids have flooded colleges and universities, for some college has become less accessible over the past decade. In particular, two major social policies which had seemingly nothing to do with higher education in fact held serious unforeseen consequences for both schools (particularly community colleges) and their students. The 1996 welfare reform legislation curtailed college access for mothers surviving on the lowest of incomes, and the ironically titled “Workforce Investment Act” of 1998 did the same for both low-income men and women.
I reached these conclusions after conducting research for a book, co-authored with my colleagues Kate Shaw, Jerry Jacobs, and Chris Mazzeo, called Putting Poor People to Work: How the Work-First Idea Eroded College Access for the Poor (Russell Sage Foundation, 2006). Our work included case studies and analyses of college enrollment data in six states (Florida, Illinois, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Washington). Between 2001 and 2003 we spoke with 110 state-level officials, analyzed policy documents, interviewed 96 faculty and administrators at 13 community colleges, conducted 11 interviews and four focus groups with low-income workers, and interviewed 13 welfare and WIA caseworkers.
As we traveled from state to state it became abundantly clear that under both welfare reform and the Workforce Investment Act not only were fewer people accessing postsecondary education or training, but when they did they were directed toward the most ineffective forms of short-term training, rather than toward higher quality college-level education. Moreover, the institutions of higher education previously most focused and able to serve low-income adults — American community colleges — were increasingly unable and unwilling to do so, since the resources and incentives previously provided to them under the predecessor policies (Aid to Families with Dependent Children and the Job Training and Partnership Act) were greatly diminished.
One of the primary goals of welfare reform was to kick women off the rolls — and at that the policy was remarkably successful. Between 1996 and 2001 the number of poor mothers receiving assistance dropped by 65%. This decline contributed to much of the decrease in welfare recipients’ access to postsecondary education, but their rate of entry into college also went down. After 1996, none of the six states we studied enrolled even 6% of its public-assistance recipients in college! This meant that literally thousands of women on welfare lost their ability to attend college. For example, in Illinois the number of women attending college while on welfare declined from 8,674 in 1996 (pre-reform) to 1,204 in 2001. Declines were particularly severe among non-white students; today Latinos receiving welfare are now ten times less likely to attend college, compared to similar Latinos not on welfare.
The aftermath of WIA was even worse. Even though the number of people accessing services through WIA rose nationally in four of our six states, the proportion of clients who received education and training dropped significantly in all six. Under WIA’s predecessor, 91% of all clients received some sort of training. By contrast, the percentage of WIA clients receiving training has hovered around 56% for the last several years.
Let’s be clear — welfare reform and WIA do not directly forbid clients from attending college. Instead, the policies limit college access using a complex set of formal and informal rules, incentives, and signals that work to restrict the range of responses of state and local implementers to the needs of clients by making education and training a less attractive and feasible option. In addition, the welfare legislation narrowed the pipeline to college by restricting the time a mother can receive assistance and by setting work requirements both for recipients and for states. To avoid penalties, states must show that half of all cash assistance recipients are working at least 30 hours a week.
WIA narrows the pipeline to job-related training in part through the establishment of one-stop career centers, which offer a hierarchy of services through a system of “sequential eligibility.” The first level provides access to “core” services, such as unassisted access to the Internet for purposes of job searching. If that fails to lead to employment, clients then can receive “core” services, such as help with preparing a resume. The third level, access to education and training, typically is available only to individuals who cannot obtain employment via the first two levels of services.
Very few clients make it through this set-up to step three, and those who do frequently are hand-picked with an eye toward boosting job-placement records. Caseworkers frequently ‘cream’ the most promising WIA clients and provide them with access to high level WIA services because they believe that these clients will produce the best measurable outcomes. Once again, the most disadvantaged clients lose out. A one-stop career center employee told us that he has been in meetings where it has actually been stated that nobody is ever going to get to training because everybody is going to get a job in core or intensive.
The only piece of good news I can offer is that in February the Department of Health and Human Services published some new rules which slightly improved the situation by allowing 12 months of postsecondary education to count as work for welfare recipients. This at least allows mothers a chance to complete a year of college, if they can get the financial assistance they need to pay the tuition. The new rules go into effect October 1, and it is imperative that states embrace this change immediately.
At the end of the twentieth century it is clear that a curious and disturbing paradox emerged in American thinking about the value of education. Despite the indisputable benefits of investing in human capital through education, somehow the public accepted the notion that the poorest among us did not deserve the same access to college as other Americans. Getting off the welfare roles does not mean getting out of poverty. Because they lack the education and skills needed to obtain a good job, most former welfare recipients have simply been transferred to the ranks of the working poor. If we truly want all Americans to become self-sufficient and productive members of society, the solution is simple — we must provide them with the real support they need to pursue a college education. HHS took a step in the right direction this spring — it’s now time for states to make real change happen.
Sara Goldrick-Rab is assistant professor of educational policy studies and sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
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12 Comments
MikeT:This presupposes that a college education is actually necessary for most jobs in the first place, when it is simply not true. With the exception of technical fields, law and certain business specializations such as accounting, most jobs just don’t require a college education to do them. The only reason that a college degree is thrown into the mix is because of an elitist attitude that sees those without degrees as inferior in social standing to those who do. That is very ironic when one considers that with so many students going to college today, the threshold for being considered college educated barely rises above what used to be considered a high school education with a focus in a certain field of study.
Government regulation is what holds back many of the working poor. Barbers are required to have state licensing in most states I’ve lived in, and taxis are notoriously regulated in most jurisdictions as well. Why the government regulation, except to ensure that health codes are followed in the former, and that the latter has an accurate meter? Why can’t any former welfare recipient who can cut their family’s hair and has a driver’s license perform either of these businesses without getting the state’s blessing?
Most college educations are a waste of time, as they don’t even serve to fundamentally raise up the student intellectually, let alone prepare them for a career that will make rigorous use of what they spent four or more years getting. The poor would be better served with far fewer barriers to entry from the government, something that could be changed in a single session of the state legislature if the legislators agreed to make going through the professional regulations like Attila the Hun their one priority.
With the increasing cost of college today, there is just no serious argument for why welfare recipients should pursue a degree unless it is in a technical field which will pay well. They would be better off pursuing a trade, especially since skilled tradesmen often make more money than their college-educated neighbors.
May 9, 2008 - 6:30 am Silvera:I would strenuously disagree with MikeT’s comments that there is no purpose to a college education. Speaking as a former welfare-recipient and a current college student, college educations are NOT a waste of time.
Yes, after I graduated high school, I could have gone to trade school and learned to cut hair and spent the rest of my life cutting hair and making possibly enough money to survive, though with insurance and cost of living, that’s not likely. But the important thing is that I would have hated it for every minute of every day and that isn’t what I was taught living (or success) is about.
If it is taken advantage of, college does expand the mind and what’s more, it can eliminate helplessness and the feeling that nothing will get better. This feeling of helplessness is in my opinion, the worst thing for a human to feel because it leads to physical, mental & emotional paralysis. Being able to find a job that will pay the bills isn’t enough when that job is a dead end and the person could do more. If all you have is a basic education & the knowledge to cut hair exactly like you were taught, what can you do with that? what happened to the girls at our local trade school is that they are qualified to work at Great Clips or other budget hair places. That’s like flipping burgers for eternity.
I am not saying that trades are bad, just that the level of education we think all people can live on isn’t accurate. Is people being employed in something (anything) so important that we shouldn’t encourage those who want to, to advance themselves as much as they can? What does society lose by saying that it will help an individual become a taxi driver or barber but works against those who want more?
May 9, 2008 - 8:12 am Wolf Pangloss:The real road to the middle class is work, not college education. The perfect way for a welfare recipient to better himself or herself would be an apprenticeship to a plumber, an electrician, a draftsman, a mechanic, or a mason. An apprenticeship pays immediately and leads to a middle class life in the trades. The only requirement (other than personal character) in most cases is a vehicle, which is freeing in itself.
I find it instructional and ironic that a professor in “educational policy studies and sociology” is here acting as a lobbyist for higher education instead of honestly exploring the path from dependence (on the government-extorted money of taxpayers) to independence.
May 9, 2008 - 8:44 am Wolf Pangloss:Silvera, the problem is that many, if not most, college educations qualify the new graduate for jobs that pay less than the job at the local hair place. Journalism pays less. Social work pays less. Useless degrees like “race/class/gender studies” and “physical education” pay less and barely qualify graduates to work at McDonalds while paying off their massive student loans. College educations that pay more, such as information technology programs, do not really require a college to provide them. I went to a top-notch college myself, and while I taught myself how to write well when there, that never got me a job or a raise. What got me jobs and raises were hard work and long hours. The students who understood this during college spent all their time studying in the Library. I didn’t learn it until after.
May 9, 2008 - 9:00 am Larry:Whoever the idiot is that wrote this needs to get a life out from under the umbrella. Obviously, the writer is not middle-class or lower-class. Be a middle-class American and try to get your son or daughter a grant or loan for college!! It is so close to impossible that it will make you sick. The so-called lower class, including illegal immigrants get all the grants they want. Who is this person that does not know this?? An average middle-class person cannot qualify for a grant, their parents must pay, or the student can get a loan payable for the rest of their life. Don’t even try to tell me poor people don’t have a chance, they have a much greater chance than the middle-class. This writer is incredibly disconnected from middle America. What an idiotic thing to write.
May 9, 2008 - 9:03 am Rob:Any middle class parent who has had a son or daughter wend their way through the minefields that are taday’s college application trauma know damned well that the kids discriminated against are those of the college educated and above average incomes.
May 9, 2008 - 10:37 am Anonymous:Tis interesting how today’s wackodemics insist on standing truth on its head. If a students parents make more than a so called median income it’s get lost for financial asistance unless you are from a “protected” ethnic group.
Most interesting is how the disingenuous professor author words feign that she is not aware of those question that far to many colleges and unis slap on applications that require applicants to state the educational levels of their parents.
All we unclever wackodemics know the purpose of the parental education question. It is obvious that wackodemia believes that a student is a privileged group if a parent has a college degree and is less worthy of admission.(For what other reason is the question asked?)
Ms. Goldrick-Rab we the evil middle class understand wackodemia’s doublespeak. That is the offspring of college graduates need not apply to most public tax funded instiitutions unless our kids have far higher SATs and grades than affirmative action privileged groups and that our kids if admitted are not eligible for the no repay grants handed out by government.
Ms.-Goldrick-Rab needs to descend to the ground level from her myopia impaired perch high atop the unreality and insanity that are the ivorty tower dwelling places of America’s academics.
Quit blaming everyone else for your problems and do or do not.
May 9, 2008 - 8:00 pm bob:Staffords are for anyone who applies no matter income.
May 9, 2008 - 8:01 pm klrtz1:Welfare reform is working. “[T]hese clients (hand picked for training) will produce the best measurable outcomes.” Isn’t that success? The people that can make the best use of the educational opportunity are the ones who get it. People on welfare are getting jobs in record numbers and getting off welfare. Isn’t that success?
What needs to change is Goldrick-Rab’s idea that everyone should “have equal access” to higher education. Apply to Harvard or Yale, young lady, and see what kind of equal access you get.
May 10, 2008 - 5:18 am saveliberty:The article blames the feds instead of the universities and colleges that use the monies badly by jacking up infrastructure costs, closing off access instead of genuinely opening up access. Why pay schools more if they are undermining the goals of helping the non upper crusties to gain access to college or university?
There’s also no discussion of the fact that second and third tier schools have learned that by increasing prices greatly, applications increase several fold, even though there has been no change to the academic rating of the school. Again, this closes off opportunity to applicants who have less funding.
There’s also no mention that a working person often works through college. In getting a job, many Americans go to school at night. Lots of companies offer tuition reimbursement. Because this road is so challenging, the people who put themselves through school are more appealing candidates for management jobs than those who who had someone else work for their tuition (that would include students funded by the Mom and Dad Bank).
May 10, 2008 - 10:51 am spudmom:Poor young people usually have (at least) two disadvantages that hold them back: lack of a decent public high school education and the culture of low expectations. Getting a high school diploma and not being able to compute or communicate means an extra year in remedial non-credit college courses to catch up. Having role models who dress for flash instead of success, who view hard work as acting white, or who choose crime or addiction instead of self-discipline make it much harder for a young person to get started on the path to independence. Getting that first college year free may make up for the bad education; the rest should be completed because of hard work and frugality, not government handouts; those are the very skills that will make them rise above their peers. As long as they aren’t making babies or getting drunk, most 20 somethings can handle a job and a few classes, and it makes the degree mean more to them.
May 10, 2008 - 1:14 pm zeke youcha:We have a school in our state that grants scholarships based solely on grades; straight A’s get the next semester free; A- averages get half off. Good incentive to study hard!
Dr. Goldrick-Rab’s piece touched home with me. Coming of age in the Great Depression and serving on a carrier in the 2nd WW I never thought I had a chance of going to college. The GI Bill opened up opportunities for me that I never thought possibe. I and all of the young men who served with me had a chance to live the “American Dream.” Instead of the middle class fighting the lower classes we should get together and see to it that every qualified person has a chance to fullfil their God given potential. Education should be available to all Americans. Knocking Dr.Goldrick- Rab is a cheap shot and surprises me. We certainly should insist that the men and women who are serving us in the military be given the same chances we old timers had.We should all support programs such as those Dr. Rab writes about and also the bill Senator Webb has put forward in Congress. Most of those congressmen and women never spent one minute on the firing line and have no idea what we are putting our kids through.
May 11, 2008 - 7:36 am