Three beers, a can of Red Bull and a large espresso: no big deal, many college students might say. Three beers, a can of Red Bull and a large espresso times three or four, and they still might tell you they’re not intoxicated. Therein lies the danger of caffeinated alcoholic beverages, whose popularity has grown in recent years among college-aged drinkers, drawing the attention of concerned health officials, politicians and college administrators. Experts say that even one is a recipe for disaster, and so do officials at Ramapo College : they banned alcoholic energy drinks on campus this month. Peter Mercer, president of the New Jersey college, said students referred to the above concoction when describing the effects of drinks such as Four Loko, which is particularly popular around the campus. Four Loko is one of a few flashy, canned drinks that take the mixing out of the equation, making it that much easier for students to get dangerously intoxicated, faster. Mercer said concerned students told him the inexpensive 23-ounce, 12% alcohol energy drinks were “all of a sudden very popular,” and Four Loko was involved in a couple of incidents of excessive drinking. Since the start of fall semester, 23 people have been hospitalized with alcohol intoxication. ON THE WEB: Why do students take so long to grow up? MORE FROM INSIDE HIGHER ED: Are prescription drugs “cheating”? Mercer called Four Loko a “cynical product” whose only purpose is to get the drinker intoxicated quickly. Others agree: Glen L. Sherman, co-chair of the Alcohol and Other Drug Knowledge Community for NASPA: Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education, said the drinks are dangerous because of their apparent targeting of underage student consumers and their high alcohol content — drinking one can of Four Loko is the approximate equivalent of drinking four beers, according to an informational page NASPA recently posted on its website. “These beverages are of great concern to us,” Sherman wrote in an e-mail. “Each campus must decide what specific steps make sense to best educate students about and try to protect them from these risks, and to encourage students to make good decisions when they are confronted by them.” Ramapo’s ban is part of a “multi-pronged approach” addressing excessive alcohol consumption, Mercer said. Other measures the college has taken include increasing after-hours security measures in residence halls, tightening visitor policies and holding student focus groups. Those additional steps may be crucial for the ban to have even a shot at success. Kathleen E. Miller, a research scientist at the Research Institute on Addictions at the State University of New York at Buffalo, has studied college students’ use of energy drinks, both with and without alcohol. She said that if the college can’t ban drinks like Red Bull and vodka from local bars, it won’t be able to stop consumption of caffeinated alcoholic beverages. But the college can send a signal. “A college ban will make people take a second look and maybe they’ll be more aware of what they’re drinking,” Miller said. “It’s inherently potentially dangerous to mix caffeine and alcohol because you’re sending your body mixed signals.” The caffeine stimulates the system while the alcohol depresses it, making students feel less drunk than they actually are. Through her research, Miller found that students who consume energy drinks with or without alcohol are more likely to engage in risky behavior like drug use, smoking or binge drinking. That doesn’t necessarily mean the energy drinks cause the behavior, but there is a correlation. Energy drink consumption “isn’t necessarily a gateway behavior, but it is what you might call a red-flag behavior,” she said. In a June 2008 study published in the Journal of American College Health, Miller found that 26% of surveyed public university undergraduates reported consuming energy drinks mixed with alcohol in the past month, while about half said they’d done so more than once. Efforts at Ramapo have curbed and will continue to curb consumption of alcoholic energy drinks, Mercer said, but “it’s unrealistic to assume that it’ll be totally eliminated.” That’s not stopping him from trying, though: At the next meeting of the New Jersey Presidents’ Council, Mercer plans to make his case to other college and university presidents. “The risk for their students is just as high as the risk for mine,” he said. “I’ll tell them what I’ve done and hope that they may want to follow suit.” States such as New Jersey and New Mexico are considering banning the drinks entirely. The drinks are also on the federal government’s radar. Last November, the Food and Drug Administration threatened to ban the drinks if manufacturers could not prove they were safe for consumption. No regulations have been issued yet, but an FDA press officer, Michael L. Herndon, told Inside Higher Ed on Friday that the agency has received 19 responses from 27 manufacturers and distributors, and plans to evaluate those submissions and other scientific evidence “as soon as possible in order to determine whether caffeine can be safely and lawfully added to alcoholic beverages.” Herndon said the decision is a high priority but “could take some time.” But Mercer doesn’t need FDA regulations to deem the drinks unsafe, especially when it comes to students. “I don’t accept that it’s a rite of passage to collegiate life that people put themselves at risk,” he said. “I can’t accept that.”

WASHINGTON — As community colleges take center stage today at a White House summit, a group representing for-profit colleges is taking aim at community colleges. In a report released Monday, a marketing firm working for the Coalition for Educational Success, an advocacy group for several privately held for-profit companies, argues that community colleges engage in “unsavory recruitment practices” and offer students “poorer-than-expected academic quality, course availability, class scheduling, job placement and personal attention.” The report crystallizes arguments from the for-profit sector that community colleges — perceived as the Obama administration’s preferred set of institutions to offer work force training — are ill-equipped to serve the students they already enroll and would struggle in taking on larger enrollments. The document’s release just ahead of today’s summit is intended to tarnish the event’s luster and the praise for community colleges that will come from President Obama and others, and it emerges amid the for-profit sector’s aggressive lobbying, advertising and rallying against the U.S. Department of Education ‘s proposed regulations on “gainful employment” and a Senate panel’s investigation of the sector. ON THE WEB: Is job training a zero-sum game? MORE FROM INSIDE HIGHER ED: Taking the long view “Community colleges play a vital role in the American economy,” said Jean Norris, managing partner of Norton Norris, the firm that produced the report. “However, they are not the only choice. Community colleges have some systemic issues that really need to be addressed and the singular focus on the problems of the career colleges is a waste of time and money and forgets the institutions that serve a much larger number of students.” For one part of the report, Norton Norris sent “secret shoppers” to meet with admissions officers at 15 community colleges and found that none would provide graduation rates, even when asked. In the report, these findings are likened to those identified by the Government Accountability Office on undercover visits to for-profit colleges, where investigators were told they didn’t have to repay loans and encouraged to lie on financial aid forms. The firm also surveyed current for-profit college students who had been enrolled at community colleges, asking them to compare their satisfaction levels at the two different kinds of institution. In all but one category — price — the for-profit colleges came out on top. David S. Baime, senior vice president of government relations and research at the American Association of Community College, characterized the report as “garbage” and said it was yet another attempt by the for-profit sector to fight scrutiny from the Obama administration and those on Capitol Hill. “It probably makes sense as a sort of PR strategy to try to run us down and sort of boost themselves,” he said. Norris insisted that it was not her aim to attack community colleges, but rather to “highlight issues beyond the career college sector that are the same ones the career college sector is being attacked for.” At last week’s Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions hearing questioning for-profit colleges’ student outcomes and student debt, Senator Michael B. Enzi (R-Wyo.) accused the committee’s chair, Senator Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), of examining the sector without looking at how it fits into the broader landscape of U.S. colleges and universities. “I agree there is clearly a problem in higher education — now you’ll notice I didn’t limit that comment to for-profit schools,” Enzi said. “It’s na?ve to think these problems are limited to just the for-profit sector. We’ve been looking at this in a vacuum.” While researchers said that some of the report’s findings could be accurate, the study itself is of questionable value. “We can’t call this research,” said Sara Goldrick-Rab, an assistant professor of educational policy studies at the University of Wisconsin at Madison . “The for-profits are under attack and this report is being paid for by for-profits. We need to be asking many of these questions, but a report like this one isn’t providing meaningful answers.” In the report’s introduction, Norton Norris concedes a string of flaws with the report. The sample surveyed for the study “was one of convenience and may not represent all student experiences,” the report said. The students given a chance to respond to the survey were ones who withdrew or graduated from a nonprofit college before enrolling at a for-profit, admittedly meaning that “bias may be present” among respondents. The response rate was 10%. And the survey was “custom-designed and thereby not previously proven valid and reliable.” Thomas R. Bailey, director of the Community College Research Center at Columbia University ‘s Teachers College, said he saw the report as “a tactic” for for-profit institutions in their battle against greater regulation. “Certainly from [for-profit colleges'] perspective it would be reasonable to try to put out an argument that says there are many problems with community colleges.” Nonetheless, Bailey said, some of its findings are true. “Community colleges have low resources, the counselor-to-student ratio is extremely low. It’s not surprising that students are not very well-informed about their options at community colleges. But, again, I don’t think we can look at this as a reliable document.”

The University of Florida is considering a proposal that would give incoming students the option of taking classes during the spring and summer terms only, bypassing the fall semester, to ease the strain on its crowded facilities. Though most on campus seem to be in favor of providing an opportunity for nontraditional scheduling, a state law must be altered for the university to move ahead with the plan. Joseph Glover, the university’s provost, pitched the idea at a Florida Board of Governors meeting last week; he described it as a productive, efficient way to admit more students to a university for which there is high-demand. “U.F. is a large institution and, basically, in the fall semester the Gainesville campus is full to capacity,” Glover said. “We do have extra capacity in spring, after winter graduation, and lots of capacity in the summer. So the thought came to us, what’s so sacred about fall-spring? What if we offered our students the ability to be spring-summer? We see more and more students who are opting for innovative programs. I think there would be a market for students who would be interested in doing this for a variety of reasons.” ON THE WEB: In the midnight hour MORE FROM INSIDE HIGHER ED: School’s (NOT) out for the summer The idea is still in its nascent stages, but Glover imagines that the university would give applicants the option of stating their preference for fall-spring only, spring-summer only, or either up front. Students in spring-summer format would not be blocked from taking fall classes altogether, just courses in residence. In other words, students on this alternative schedule could do things like study abroad or enroll in distance education courses. This limitation would apply for the entire time these student spend at the university — and thus differs significantly from the way many colleges admit some first-year students for the spring semester, but those students are from then on enrolled on a standard schedule. This year, the university has nearly 6,400 first-time freshmen, and Glover notes that the incoming class size has remained relatively static for the past three years. If the spring-summer option is offered, he said the university would expand its incoming class by about 250 students who would take advantage of it, while maintaining the average 6,400 students in the traditional fall-spring model. Glover added, however, that the university is considering yet another option: limiting the spring-summer scheduling option to incoming transfer students only. In either case, student leaders on campus seem to appreciate the administration’s move to give them more control over their own scheduling. “I think it’s a great initiative to maintain enrollment from our students in these semesters where there seems to be a drop,” wrote Virlany Taboada, senior and treasurer of the Student Government, in an e-mail. “I’ve been a student that has gone to school fall, spring, and summer for my four years here and I can definitely say that taking classes in the summer has helped not only my [grade point average] but it’s a more relaxed environment that I think has contributed to my academic success. My hope would be that by having students not take classes in the fall we’ll see an increase in grade point average and perhaps a decrease in stress and anxiety levels.” Faculty leaders are also open to the idea. “It’s an innovative idea,” said Mary Ann Ferguson, chair of the Faculty Senate and professor in the university’s College of Journalism and Communications. “I’m glad to see the university is trying to better utilize our resources. I have some concerns about how that it’ll work with programs where students take an intro class in the fall and a more advanced class in the spring. Otherwise, I don’t see any serious downsides. I’m sure we’ll work through those issues.” As most university faculty members are nine-month employees, some would have to be encouraged to teach summer classes to help boost offerings for these students. Still, they would be paid on a supplemental contract for their extra work. “I suppose if faculty felt pressure to teach during the summer, there would be issues,” Ferguson said. “But I haven’t heard any strong resistance. We’re always able to find those willing to teach during the summer.” In order for the university to make this offer, however, it will have to ask the state legislature to change a statute. Current state law bars public institutions from requiring students who bring in at least nine credits of college credit upon entry — such as those from Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate classes — to attend at least one summer term. At the University of Florida, “virtually all” freshmen bring at least nine credits with them. Without revoking this exemption, the university, technically, would not be able to require students who voluntarily select the spring-summer enrollment option to take summer courses. “We need to speed student progress toward graduation and maximize use of our facilities,” said Glover, who noted that officials from other state institutions at the board meeting noted their support for institutional control over their own summer term policies. “This change would enable us to create this program.” Kelly Layman, board spokeswoman, confirmed the board’s support of this push for legislative change. She said this, in addition to a rewording of board policy, would ensure that Florida students that have Bright Futures Scholarships — the state’s lottery-funded merit-based scholarship — would still receive funds if they took advantage of the spring-summer scheduling. Currently, those receiving these scholarships are not eligible for funds if they enroll in summer courses. “We need higher baccalaureate attainment in Florida,” Layman said. “If this helps increase that, then the Board of Governors is for it.”

For many community colleges around the country this fall semester, the song remains the same. Yet again, enrollments are at an all-time high, and waiting lists for classes remain long, but the search continues for ways to accommodate the growing demand. In California , where public institutions have struggled mightily amid a well-documented budget crisis, the number of students being turned away from open-access institutions is swelling for a second straight year. Many of the state’s community colleges have had to cut sections, meaning that enrollment is down. Demand, however, is higher than ever. Take Los Rios Community College District, in greater Sacramento , for example. Classes at its four colleges started four weeks ago, but the institutions have a total of 40,000 students on various waiting lists for courses — or about one for every two students actually enrolled in a course. ON THE WEB: Defining the enrollment boom MORE FROM INSIDE HIGHER ED: Access to what? “We had to cut course offerings by about 6% this fall (which equals about 850 class sections) and so our enrollment is down by nearly 5,000 students from last year,” wrote Susie Williams, associate vice chancellor for communications and research at Los Rios, via e-mail. “We have 85,593 students enrolled this year compared to 90,563 who were enrolled at the same time last year. Given that for a number of years we have seen annual growth between 5% [and] 6%, we should have increased enrollment by 5,000 to 6,000 students this fall.” Maximizing class space One state eastward, state budget cuts have made their mark at the College of Southern Nevada, located in metropolitan Las Vegas, but they have not forced the institution to turn away students by the thousands like some in California. Instead, sacrifices are being made in other areas to accommodate for the 5% or so growth in the college’s enrollment. “Nevada, like much of the country, is experiencing a very serious budget crisis (shortfall could be $3 million in the next biennium — 50% of the state budget), thus adding large numbers of new faculty positions to add a plethora of new class sections is simply not possible,” wrote Darren Divine, vice president of academic affairs at Southern Nevada, in an e-mail. “Having said that, we are trying to keep our entire full-time faculty lines already in the budget staffed, and are relying on part-time employees as much as ever to try and squeeze every single class section we can into the schedule.” Divine explained that the college is offering some “specialized courses with lower demands” on a less frequent basis so faculty members are freed up to teach “higher-demand classes.” In keeping with this move, he noted that the college is seeing increased interest in general education classes that are “designed to meet core degree requirements and transfer efforts” in addition to entry-level courses in “more applied” disciplines. Though Southern Nevada does not maintain waiting lists per se — it does not have registration software capable of handling them — it does keep track of the number of “attempted enrollments” past the capacity point of its classes. By this measure, college officials note that their efforts to maximize classroom space are making some progress. Take biology 187, a key “gateway course” for many science majors at the college. Last fall, the course’s 22 sections had 925 students. Another 1,691 tried to enroll but did not get a spot. This fall, the course has 27 sections and a capacity of 1,082 students. The number of students who tried to enroll but did not garner a spot declined to 1,541 — still, of course, more than the total who actually got into the course. There were similar declines in attempted enrollments in some of the college’s other gateway courses, including commerce, sociology, and psychology 101. Some of the new sections offered at Southern Nevada this semester, however, meet at some very nontraditional hours. Last year, inspired by a string of institutions that had done the same, the college introduced late-night classes between 10 p.m. and 3 a.m. Now, enrollment in these sections is up and the college is offering 20 different courses at these unconventional times. Devine said that these late-night offerings are here to stay for the foreseeable future, as at least one way to keep students from being turned away from the college. Temporary fixes Growing enrollment — in many cases continuing year after year — is testing many community colleges nationally. At Central New Mexico Community College, in Albuquerque, enrollment has grown by more than 25% in the past three years. Currently, at 26,689, enrollment is at an all-time high. Interestingly, though, noted Phillip Bustos, the college’s vice president for student services, students are taking more credit hours than they did in the past, by nearly a class or two per semester. This accounts, he added, for some of the waiting lists in the college’s core courses, such as introductory English and math. Sections of these courses during what Bustos calls the “bottleneck times” of 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. and 5 to 7 p.m. usually have about 50 students still waiting at the start of the semester. To accommodate those who cannot get into a section of a course essential for graduation, transfer, or continuance to a higher-level course, Bustos said, the college is getting some faculty and students to work together for something akin to an “independent study” — meaning faculty do additional one-on-one work with a few students. Also, though the college has not done so yet, Bustos said, it may alter its traditional practice of keeping classes to less than 30 or so students before the beginning of spring registration. Meanwhile, at Calhoun Community College, the largest two-year institution in Alabama, students are being advised differently than in the past if they are unable to get into the class of their choice. Recently, the college topped the 12,000-student mark for the first time in its history — up about 6% from last fall. Alicia Taylor, the college’ vice president for instruction and student success, noted that the college is increasingly granting more students the ability to substitute equivalent courses within programs of study for one another if they are a course or two short of graduation or transfer. This offer is never made for “core” or “general education” courses; it is most often used for “prescribed electives” within disciplines. “Let’s say a computer science student missed taking a Java course, we would let them take a C programming or advanced Visual Basic instead,” Taylor said. “These equivalent courses would prepare them for the market, albeit with a slightly different slant. We’ll allow this mixing and matching as long as it’s not impacting students in the overall training.” At Tulsa Community College, in Oklahoma, the answer to meeting increased demand is more adjuncts. This fall, the college had a 35% increase in the number of first-time students. The college’s overall enrollment, now 20,000, is at an all-time high. But, perhaps more telling of today’s economy, the enrollment for its Tulsa Achieves program — which waives tuition for many local residents — is also serving an all-time high of 1,637 students, up 187 students from last year. “So far, we have been able to keep up with the growth,” said Lauren Brookey, college spokeswoman. “Our state budget got cuts last year, the year before and our employees haven’t had raises in two years. But we haven’t had to lay off employees.” The college is, however, relying on more part-time faculty, Brookey noted. The college has seven more full-time faculty members than last year, pushing their number up to 300; meanwhile, it has 48 more adjunct faculty members, for a total of 1,185.

With another summer ending, the time has come to ask the perennial question: Could this be the year higher education finally embraces the e-book? Some think that developments since the last buying cycle, particularly the arrival of Apple ‘s iPad computing tablet, might foreshadow an especially good year for electronic texts. CourseSmart, an e-textbook consortium comprising five major publishers, says it has sold four times more e-textbooks in 2009-10 than it did the previous year (although it would not provide the number of copies). CourseSmart would not disclose how e-book sales are going so far this season, saying it was too early, but that it is optimistic. “We expect triple-digit growth to continue,” says Heather Shelstad, director of the consortium. UNTESTED: Can students learn as well on iPads, Kindles? SAVING MONEY: Rent, don’t buy college textbooks Others are more skeptical about whether e-books will finally boom after years of stalled progress. “They’ve been saying that for the last 10 years,” says Nicole Allen, an advocate for the Student Public Interest Research Groups (PIRGs). One reason it is difficult to parse the prospects for e-books this year is that many other things are happening in the textbook market that make “traditional textbook vs. e-book” a false dichotomy. These days, traditional books have electronic supplements; some electronic texts have print-on-demand options; and for many students, textbook decisions have more to do with renting vs. buying than print vs. digital. The iPad and the e-book It has been a truism for years that e-books are massing at the gates. For the most part, officials are no longer arguing if the college library will transform from a warehouse of bound volumes to a nexus for accessing various digital resources, but when; in last year’s Campus Computing Project survey, 76% of senior campus technology officials predicted that e-books “will be an important source for instructional resources in the next five years.” The explosive growth of online education seems to imply a mainstream acceptance of the computer screen as medium for instruction. And then there is the widely accepted argument that printed textbooks, like other analog vessels, belong to an economic model that no longer makes sense (at least not to many students). Despite the hype, e-books have remained on the fringes of higher education. In 2008, the first year the Campus Computing Project survey started asking about e-book use, respondents said the electronic texts were used in 2.2% of classes. Last year, that percentage “jumped” to 3.5. According to the Student Monitor, a group that does market research on student behavior, e-books accounted for only 2% of textbook sales last year. And while publishers have been increasing the number of titles available in digital, half of students surveyed last spring remained unaware that e-books are even an option. What’s more, the percentage of students who were aware of e-books actually dropped from the previous spring, according to that survey. Digital add-ons, such as Pearson’s Mastering software, have become very popular among professors and de rigueur among publishers. But for the most part, professors are using them alongside print textbooks, not e-textbooks. The only places where e-books are dominant are for-profit institutions such as University of Phoenix , where administrators have required instructors to assign them. (Neither the Campus Computing Project nor Student Monitor data account for students at those institutions.) However, the e-book market has seen some auspicious developments in recent months. In July, Blackboard announced changes to its popular learning-management platform that would allow professors to assign electronic texts more easily — a potential coup for e-books, since Blackboard boasts by far the most popular learning-management platform in the industry and is well-positioned to influence how professors provide course materials to students. ON THE WEB: Blackboard deal aims to galvanize e-texts INSIDE HIGHER ED: ‘The Text Generation’ But the most buzzed-about development with implications for e-books has been the unveiling of the iPad, which, among many other functions, is popular as a reading device. The last version of Amazon ‘s Kindle e-reader was ill-suited for academic reading, according to a handful of institutions that tried it out. But the iPad is touted as a more hip, versatile breed of e-reader — one that college kids are apt to buy for general purposes. And once they own e-readers, they will be more likely to buy e-books, suggested Eric Weil, managing director of Student Monitor, in a July interview with Inside Higher Ed. Half the students who responded to Weil’s spring survey either already owned an e-reader or were interested in buying one. The CourseSmart consortium of publishers, for its part, sees the iPad as a “game-changing” device, equating it to the laptop. “As the iPad captures the imagination of the next generation of students, it will raise additional awareness for the digital benefits and cost savings related to e-textbooks,” says Shelstad. In addition to the iPad’s cachet, Apple ‘s arrival on the e-reader scene portends an avalanche of apps, including ones that could offer academic readers that elusive “added value” that many — including Campus Computing Project director (and Inside Higher Ed tech blogger) Kenneth C. Green — argue are absent from the current generation of e-books. Nick Bilton, a technology writer for The New York Times and adjunct professor at New York University , last week wrote about a new app, called Inkling, that lets students interact around passages of digital text. The app also supports dynamic content from publishers; for example, a three-dimensional model of a molecule that students can navigate via the touch screen. Allen, the Student PIRGs advocate, says that a lack of such features — that is, the tendency of e-textbooks to be “flat representations of print books” — has contributed to students’ apathy toward them in the past. Still, it would be easy to overestimate the effect devices such as the iPad will have on e-book adoption, especially in the short term, says Joseph Esposito, a longtime scholarly publishing consultant. Professors will not assign e-textbooks simply because of the values added by iPad apps, since the majority of students (at institutions that have not arranged iPad giveaways) will not have the iPad, and no professor in his right mind would require his students to buy the $500-and-up device, Esposito says. E-books will probably see a bump in adoption — perhaps a significant one, if CourseSmart is moving as many digital copies as it says it is. But if e-books do win significantly more users this year, it will be primarily because there are significantly more titles available, says Esposito. “We shouldn’t be dismissive of incremental gains by digital text,” he says, “but we shouldn’t be looking for revolutionary gains.” Analog innovations Actually, the textbook-delivery trends that stand to see the greatest gains in 2010-201 have less to do with technological innovation than with economic creativity. Textbook rental services — which give students the option of securing the savings of temporary ownership upfront, rather than taking their chances in the fickle buy-back market — have been around for a while, but they are now viral. The National Association of College Stores says rental programs have increased fivefold among its members since last fall, with about 1,500 campuses now offering the rental option. In a recent press release, the association dubbed 2010 “The year of the rental.” Another novel mode of delivery for dead-tree textbooks that appears to be gaining traction is print-on-demand. Flat World Knowledge, a company that offers digital copies of its customizable textbooks for free and printed versions for relatively low prices, has dramatically broadened its reach, winning over at least one professor at each of 800 different colleges this fall, up from 400 a year ago. Flat World uses generous royalties to persuade “top authors” to write textbooks that subscribing professors can then add to and tweak to their liking; students are then given the choice of getting access to an HTML version of the customized textbook for free, buying a color PDF version for $25, ordering a black-and-white paperback version of the textbook for $30, or ordering a color version for $60. Just like the mainstream publishing houses, Flat World offers a buffet of digital add-ons, such as interactive quizzes, digital flash cards, and the like. These supplements have proven popular among Flat World customers, as they have among users of Pearson and others — a reminder that while e-books might still be on the fringes of academe, e-learning tools have made substantial inroads. This is not to say e-textbooks will fail to become increasingly relevant, even to people like Frank. This fall, Flat World is introducing an e-book version formatted for e-readers. It will cost almost the same as its analog opposite, the black-and-white printed version. Frank says Flat World will be watching with interest to see which option students pick more. As far as how Flat World users have opted to receive their textbook content so far, the least fancy formats have been the most popular. Half have chosen the free, HTML version. Of those who choose to pay, about 70% chose the $30 black-and-white printout, while 15% sprang for the $25 color PDF, and only 3% bought the $60 color paperback. It’s the sticker price, stupid What to make of those decisions? On the one hand, the popularity of the HTML version suggests that students are willing to use screen-borne texts. On the other hand, the HTML version was free. Price, not format, is still the top driver of student textbook-buying behavior, says Allen. E-books have not caught on simply because they are not, in most cases, the cheapest option, Allen says. “From what I’ve been able to tell, the print rental prices are [generally] lower than the e-book rental prices,” she says. And since all e-textbooks are essentially rentals — with access typically expiring after one or two semesters (sometimes less) — they offer no added value over renting a printed textbook as far as permanence of ownership. That, more than a lack of built-in frills, is why rentals are blowing up while e-books are merely slouching toward wider adoption, says Eric Frank, the co-founder of Flat World. “[Textbook companies] are saying, ‘We need all these bells and whistles — then we’ll sell more,’ ” Frank says. But that’s not the key, he says; bells and whistles are fine for the students who are willing to pay for them, but currently that is a decision most publishers are either making themselves or putting in the hands of professors. Students should only have to pay for the frills they want, agrees Allen. Accordingly, Student PIRGs is throwing its weight behind the Flat World model, she says. One major public system is exploring the idea of reducing the cost of textbooks to students by limiting student choice, rather than broadening it. The California State University System announced on Monday a pilot program in which professors in 32 course sections would require their students to buy e-textbooks. As a result, the system would be able to make larger purchases from the publishers at a discount, which would then be passed on to the student. This strategy of buying e-books in bulk in order to save students money on course materials has been used by for-profit institutions such as the University of Phoenix, and community colleges such as Rio Salado have pursued similar strategies with printed textbooks. In effect, students involved in the pilot would not have the choice between print or electronic, but they would be spending less than if they were allowed to choose. For now, the California State move is just an experiment, and a spokesman would not speculate on whether it could lead to broader proscriptions against printed textbooks in the name of savings. But if there comes a time when California State and other institutions decide to address the high cost of course materials by mandating bulk purchases of electronic texts, that would be a bully year for e-books indeed. For the latest technology news from Inside Higher Ed, follow @ IHEtech on Twitter .

If community colleges were to find all the formerly enrolled students whose academic records qualify them for an associate degree and retroactively award them the credential, then the number of associate degrees awarded in the United States would increase by at least 12%. This compelling projection by the Institute for Higher Education Policy is one of the primary reasons why it is working with the Lumina Foundation for Education to roll out the three-year, $1.3 million Project Win-Win. This initiative will financially support 35 community colleges and four-year institutions in six states — Louisiana , Missouri, New York , Ohio , Virginia and Wisconsin — so they can track down and retroactively award qualified students associate degrees who, for whatever reason, never received one. It also will help these institutions identify students who have recently dropped out who are “academically short” of an associate degree by nine credits or fewer and re-enroll them to finish a degree. ON THE WEB: Movement, but miles to go MORE FROM INSIDE HIGHER ED: Why reverse transfer? “Project Win-Win has the potential to make a considerable down payment on increased degree completion goals set by state governors and the Obama Administration,” said Michelle Asha Cooper, IHEP president, in a statement. Last year, nine of the project’s institutions ran a pilot of this program during a seven-month period; they awarded nearly 600 associate degrees and identified almost 1,600 students who were just shy of earning one. The pilot, however, revealed a number of difficulties that institutions face when attempting to retroactively award degrees. “It’s not as easy as it sounds,” said Stephanie Tarver, dean of enrollment management at McNeese State University, which awards associate degrees as well and was part of the pilot program. “We were kind of bumbling around in the dark a bit. When you pull data, it doesn’t always match up like you thought it would. You have to have a lot of staff to dedicate to a project like this to keep it going.” Then, even when candidates for degrees and those just shy of them were identified, reaching them proved just as challenging. “At that point, we don’t have as much control as we do in the other areas because these students have been out for a while,” Tarver said. “We didn’t know if the contact information we had for them was accurate. We didn’t know how to get accurate information without spending lots of money to find it. Also, when we finally did make contact, some of the students were leery of us. ‘You’re calling me out of the blue and saying I’m qualified for a degree and want to offer it to me? What’s the catch?’ ” Eventually, though, McNeese awarded about 15 associate degrees, out of approximately 150 former students who met degree requirements. Officials also tracked down about 300 students who were just short of graduation and are in the process of helping those who wish to complete find a way to do so. “A lot of the students who dropped out of school didn’t realize just how close they were to finishing,” Tarver said. “The success stories we’ve had are truly heartwarming, especially for those who didn’t realize they were qualified for a degree. We made an immediate impact on their lives. Rarely have I felt we’ve impacted students as we did through this project.” Though many of the institutions participating in the project had never before made efforts to retroactively award degrees, a few of them have been doing it for a while and have found ways to integrate this into regular degree audits for current students. Anna Flack, registrar at Suffolk County Community College, in New York, noted that her institution has made it a point to search for these “lost graduates” at least once every year for the past decade. “We did this on a small scale,” Flack said. “It was really part of office procedure. {hellip} We made it part of the daily responsibilities of the degree audit staff.” With students who are just a few credits short of earning an associate degree, Flack said, the college has adopted a no-pressure approach in approaching them. “We’ve just sent letters to students, saying that can finish if they’d like to,” Flack said. ” ‘Here are the different ways you can reach that degree.’ There’s no convincing, no strong-arming, no sales pitch. ‘We just see this, and we’d like you to know about it.’ ” Those pushing the project at the national level argue that, despite some of the challenges in the degree audit process, this is a relatively easy way to boost graduation rates around the country. “This is an issue that hasn’t been raised,” said Cliff Adelman, senior associate at IHEP. “We’re saying to these institutions, ‘Hey, guys, you haven’t paid attention to people based on your criteria who’ve crossed the degree threshold. You’ve been asleep at the wheel.’ There’s all this talk about awarding these degrees, but they’re just making a lot of noise. This is low-hanging fruit.”

ATLANTA — The oppressed conservative student is a regular theme in the right’s critique of higher education. You know the stories — mocked for displaying the American flag or a Ronald Reagan bust, shouted down for suggesting that that Iraq war is just, always in fear of earning a low grade for criticizing affirmative action or some other widely held belief among the left-leaning campus majority. Research presented here Tuesday at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association affirmed that many conservative students feel that way, but also that many do not — and that the latter group in fact thrive on the very campuses that tend to be portrayed as hostile to them. ON THE WEB: New view of faculty liberalism MORE FROM INSIDE HIGHER ED: The liberal (and moderating) professoriate The difference, the research suggests, isn’t the relative size of the conservative minority or the commitment level of the more liberal majority. Rather, campus characteristics — many of them most commonly associated with small liberal arts colleges, and harder to pull off at large universities — may be the determining factor. In fact, one suggestion from the research that might distress fiscal conservatives is that low student-faculty ratios may contribute far more to the comfort of conservative students than would efforts to promote ideological “balance” on a syllabus or in a department. The study presented here was conducted by Amy J. Binder, an associate professor of sociology at the University of California at San Diego, and Kate Wood, a graduate student there. They did in-depth interviews with conservative students at two colleges that they named only in general terms — “Eastern elite,” a small private institution, and “Western public,” a large university. Both are institutions that have been identified by conservative critics as being particularly left-leaning. At both institutions, they sought out as interview subjects the students who are members of conservative groups or who are visibly conservative, and also “in the closet” conservatives — by asking the conservative student leaders for the names of those who had indicated their agreement but who were not involved in public campus discourse. The conservative students at Eastern elite were under no illusions that they were anything but an extreme minority — and the institution’s reputation is such that some were discouraged by friends back home from even enrolling. But almost uniformly, they were happy. They identified their professors as being liberal, but admired them nonetheless. In fact, as Wood noted here, “they viewed the experience of being in the minority as a positive one” in teaching them to examine and defend their beliefs, and “almost every single one said that they received a better education” by being in the extreme minority, a finding “in contrast to the conservative critique.” Further, she said, “not a single one of them said that they regretted not going to a more conservative school.” The students at Eastern elite were clearly aware of the conservative critique and many times answered questions about possible bias by saying that they had heard about that elsewhere but had never experienced it themselves. At Western public, in contrast, many conservative students did feel that they were the victims of bias in interactions with students and faculty members. The research focuses on student perceptions, not the reality of what went on in the classrooms. So Wood said it wasn’t clear whether the bias actually took place, but she said that the researchers wanted to see why it was that some students perceived fairness and challenge, while others felt a bit abused. So what were the qualities that made some conservatives feel so contented, even in their minority status? They were many of the same qualities that elite liberal arts college advocates talk about. “They were proud of their institution. They saw their peers — liberals and conservatives — as future leaders of the country,” and that made the conservatives want to be part of the community and part of the conversation. They also felt that they had very close relationships with faculty members with whom they disagreed on politics. “They viewed their faculty members as professionals, as experts in their fields, as people who would never be biased” based on a student’s politics, Wood said. One key measure of the extent to which conservative students felt comfortable at the college, she said, was that the most popular majors for conservative students were identical to those for liberal students (and all students). There were a small number of courses that conservative students tended to avoid, Wood said, citing “critical gender studies” as one. She also noted that the college has policies that make it easy for students to change schedules at the beginning of the semester, and that this seemed to relieve any students who might be worried about a professor’s politics. It’s not that they left classes they signed up for, but the knowledge that they could try something and change their minds was reassuring, she said. Much of this related to “very small class size” and to a sense that all students and faculty members were part of a common community, and wanted to disagree with one another respectfully. As a result, Wood said, while the conservative students generally said that they didn’t hold back their views, they didn’t describe going to class looking for a fight — and they talked about wanting to disagree with professors in respectful ways, since they felt treated with respect. In contrast, she said, at Western public, with larger classes and much less faculty-student interaction on an individual basis, students were more likely to say that they were the victims of bias — but also that they didn’t really know the faculty members. And at Western, students talked about “trying to get in fights” with professors in class, of “trying to catch their professors in the act of liberal indoctrination.” Another difference Wood noted relates to the role of faculty members on both campuses who were in the conservative minority. In the close-knit environment of Eastern elite, these faculty members were visible on campus, taking part in the debates, organizing lectures and so forth. At Western public, she said, there was a similar cohort of right-leaning faculty members, but they were far less active. The implication of the findings, Wood said, was that colleges of all sizes should focus on the elements of community and civility that seem to make it possible for disagreement at Eastern elite to be welcome in ways that don’t belittle those in the ideological minority. She noted that some elements present at Eastern elite — such as its prestige and traditions — aren’t things that colleges can up and create. “But it’s clear that access to faculty members makes a huge difference, and that anything that creates smaller pools of students” — so that people know one another — has a real impact. Sarah S. Willie-LeBreton, associate professor of sociology at Swarthmore College, was the respondent to the paper, which she praised. She noted that much of the public discussion about conservative students focuses on incidents that take place at certain campuses or claims made by various groups. “It’s nice that somebody is finally asking the students themselves” in a comprehensive way, she said. For faculty members, the research is an appropriate challenge, Willie-LeBreton said, to “celebrate our conservative students’ sense of minority status and to think about what can be learned from that.” Willie-LeBreton said that Eastern elite sounded like it shared many values with Swarthmore, and that she thought that “taking all students seriously” was a big part of a faculty member’s job. But she said that she worried that in much of higher education today, “it’s hard for professors” to engage with students “when faculty members have been marginalized” through larger class sizes that hinder close student interaction.

The American Bar Association is moving ahead with changes in its accreditation system that faculty members fear could erode tenure protections for many professors and further weaken job security for clinical faculty members, many of whom don’t have tenure to start with. A special committee of the ABA last week released the latest version of proposed guidelines on academic freedom — just days before an ABA committee met Saturday to discuss (but not alter) the draft language. In the weeks before the draft was released, many faculty leaders had urged the ABA panel not to do the two key things its draft does: • Remove language from the ABA standards that has been interpreted by faculty members as requiring law schools to have a tenure system. (The ABA panel that wrote the revisions now says that tenure was never a requirement and that it is removing references to tenure for reasons of clarity — although that interpretation of current policy is being met with skepticism.) • Remove specific language requiring law schools with clinical professors and legal writing professors to offer them specific forms of job security short of tenure. The ABA panel recommending the changes has stressed that the accreditation requirements still insist that law schools protect academic freedom, and that many law schools would not necessarily change their tenure or other job protection procedures. The report accompanying the most recent draft characterizes the protections for clinical faculty members that would be eliminated as “intrusive mandates” that “are not the proper providence of an accreditation agency and provide approved law schools with latitude and flexibility to articulate and implement policies to attract a qualified faculty and protect faculty academic freedom.” OSU: Leader of USA’s biggest campus takes on tenure 2010: The year of the education documentary? ON THE WEB: Tenure as a tarnished brass ring Many law professors think otherwise. They are angry not only over the recommendations, but the fact that the new draft came out immediately after so many groups had issued lengthy statements in favor of preserving existing protections. “They are trying to ramrod through an ill-advised proposal,” said Michael A. Olivas, a professor of law at the University of Houston. The proposal is “the worst of all worlds, disguised as administrative tinkering.” Olivas is president-elect of the Association of American Law Schools, although he said he was speaking for himself, not the association. Many of the association’s leaders, however, share his concerns. In recent weeks — just before the ABA committee came out with its new draft — a series of impassioned letters were sent to the panel. Robert A. Gorman, an emeritus law professor at the University of Pennsylvania , wrote to the committee that tenure was particularly needed for law schools. “The research, scholarship and teaching of the law professoriate commonly deal with matters of public moment and controversy, more so than is the case in most other parts of the university; and the style of teaching is typically more challenging, argumentative and indeed on occasion confrontational,” Gorman wrote. “Reliance on tenure as a buttress for academic freedom is thus particularly justified for law faculty.” After Gorman’s letter circulated, another was sent endorsing it — by 11 other former AALS presidents, among them two former deans of the law school at the University of California at Berkeley and a former law dean at New York University ( John Sexton , currently the university’s president). The American Association of University Professors came out against changing the tenure protections. And the Clinical Legal Education Association has come out against the changes and the timing of the latest proposal. (Links to many of the letters opposing the changes can be found on the ABA site .) With all these legal luminaries opposed to change, why is it going forward? The push started several years ago, and was led by David Van Zandt, the dean of Northwestern University ‘s law school. Van Zandt said at the time that characterizing the changes as an assault on tenure was unfair. He said that it was wrong for the ABA as an accrediting group to require a tenure policy — and that institutions should decide such matters. “Sometimes some people portray this as an attack on tenure,” he said in 2007. “The real issue is whether or not you’re required to have tenure by an outside body such as the ABA. Not that we don’t want to have that institution.” After a period of some momentum, the move to change the standards stalled — but now is proceeding with the new draft. The current policies say that for a law school to be accredited it must have “an established and announced policy with respect to academic freedom and tenure….” That language would be replaced — under the new draft — with this: “A law school shall have an established and announced policy with respect to the protection of academic freedom of its faculty members and shall provide procedures to ensure that its policy is followed….” While the initial push to change the standards came from those saying that tenure was an inappropriate requirement, the new draft says that tenure was never really a requirement at all, so removing the reference to it doesn’t change things in a material way. “[T]he current standards do not require approved law schools to have systems for tenuring of any or all of their faculty members and this draft retains this feature,” the report says, adding that some have seen a tenure requirement as “implied” by the current language, but that this isn’t really the case. “Interests of greater clarity and transparency require that the revised standards explicitly state whether or not schools must provide tenure rights and for whom on the law faculty. So, this draft retains, explicitly, the current policy that tenure rights are not required as a matter of accreditation policy,” the report states. It notes that there are numerous references to the importance of academic freedom and its key role in legal education. While publicly the ABA leaders pushing for change say that they are not against tenure or law professors, supporters of tenure have noted a steady stream of criticism of law professors that emerges whenever the issue heats up. The National Jurist , a publication for law students, recently ran an article called ” When Law Profs Slack, the Students Suffer .” And that prompted coverage in a The Wall Street Journal blog: ” Are Law Professors Just Plain Lazy? ” Olivas said that he believes that a small group within the ABA leadership “just doesn’t believe in tenure” and wants to change the system. This is more than a little ironic, Olivas said, noting that ABA’s leaders include judges and law firm partners — two categories of people who themselves enjoy a kind of tenure, the latter “tenure with real money.” He said that the declarations of support for academic freedom are empty. “Academic freedom doesn’t anchor tenure. Tenure anchors academic freedom,” he said. So the panel is recommending that academic freedom be preserved while “undercutting” the very system that has protected it. Rights of clinical faculty Another key issue in the changes concerns the rights of faculty who may not be on the tenure track — in law schools, clinical and legal writing faculty members are most commonly in this category. Clinical law professors run programs in which students are supervised as they take on legal cases — frequently on controversial issues — and law schools are regularly attacked over the choice of such cases. Some lawmakers in Louisiana and Maryland pushed legislation this year to crack down on these legal clinics. In Maryland, a clinic at the University of Maryland offended the poultry industry by representing environmental groups. In Louisiana, the target was a law clinic at Tulane University that has done environmental work that angered business interests there. The language that the ABA panel wants to remove from the requirements says that law schools “shall afford to full time clinical faculty members a form of security of position reasonably similar to tenure, and non-compensatory perquisites reasonably similar to those provided other full time faculty members.” Gorman, the Penn professor, said in his letter that removing protections for clinical law professors was a move in the wrong direction. “Nor should it be necessary to explain that of all faculty categories, it has been the clinicians whose teaching — most especially, in the form of live-client litigation clinics — has placed them in the position that is most vulnerable to criticism and pressure (often of the most coarse and intolerable nature) from persons, corporations and legislators who are discomforted by the work of the clinic,” he wrote. “It is precisely the clinical faculty member for whom academic freedom is a vital concern and not merely an abstract slogan, and for whom tenure provides a crucial guarantee that instruction can be carried out in the best interests of our students, and of the public.” Olivas said he was bothered by the way the current standards let law schools place clinical and writing faculty in a separate class, with some protections but not the same as tenured faculty members. He criticized the ABA for moving to end the limited protections these non-tenure faculty members have, rather than moving them to an appropriate equal status with other professors. “There should be no bright line distinction between the two” kinds of faculty members, he said. “If clinical education and legal writing are appropriate parts of legal education, they should have the same protections, the same resources and the same faculty governance and all the academic freedom that is provided, including tenure. They need it more.” A spokeswoman for the ABA said that it would take at least 18 months, should various association panels endorse the changes, for them to take effect.

The Princeton Review , a leading test-prep company, has agreed to stop using claims about average score gains in its marketing materials. While company officials say that they believe the claims were accurate, and that they were preparing to move away from such claims without outside prodding, the decision came after an investigation by the National Advertising Division of the Council of Better Business Bureaus, which found the decision to stop making such claims to “be necessary and appropriate.” (The organization acts as an arbitrator among companies that agree to have complaints probed.) The inquiry was based on a complaint from Kaplan Inc., a major competitor in the test-prep industry. Kaplan asserted that Princeton Review had no basis to talk about score gains because the start point for measuring gains was generally determined by diagnostic tests, while the end point was a live test. Critics have said that they believe test-prep companies’ initial tests yield low results, encouraging people to sign up for courses and to credit the companies for large gains later. Whatever the accuracy of the claims, they have been quite visible. Examples cited in the investigation of the Princeton Review include: “In fact, our students improve their GMAT scores by an average of 90 points” or “Our students improve their GRE scores an average of 206 points” or “Our SAT Ultimate Classroom students average a score improvement of 255 points.” Scott Kirkpatrick, president of Princeton Review’s Test Prep Division, said that Kaplan’s complaint may have helped contribute to a sense that “the timing was right” to stop making score gain claims. But he said that the shift also reflects internal thinking about “who we want to be as a company.” He said that the company wanted to be “a true education company. Instead of talking about beating specific tests, we are about preparing all students for their next step on their own terms.” He said that every student “learns in a different way” and that learning “is not all about score improvement.” He said some students need and want large gains, and others need and want small gains. While test-prep companies should assure prospective students and their families about the results of their services, they should talk broadly about education, Kirkpatrick said. The company’s original focus was on “serving the upper echelon of students,” Kirkpatrick said, while today, the company wants to reach everyone. And it may also be harder for Princeton Review to focus on helping people “beat” the tests when the company is (like Kaplan before it) now in the business of providing course offerings and degrees, not just test-prep services and college guides. Kaplan praised the findings by the advertising group and the decision by Princeton Review. While Kaplan has not made comparable claims, it too has adjusted marketing in recent years by ending the use of testimonials in which test takers talk about their large gains after using Kaplan services. “We are moving away from even these individual testimonials in an effort to further move the discussion away from specific scores and in the direction of quality of programs and the student experience,” a spokeswoman said. Many admissions officers and testing critics have worried for years that the test preparation industry favors wealthier students, and also that test-prep companies may exaggerate their impact, leaving many applicants feeling that they have no choice but to sign up. Robert Schaeffer, public education director of the National Center for Fair and Open Testing, said the evidence has long suggested that test-prep companies overstate the impact of their services. He said that the announcement from Princeton Review is positive, but that “everyone else in the coaching business remains free to fabricate score gain claims and promote them to the hilt.” Last year, the National Association for College Admission Counseling released an analysis on the impact of test-preparation services that backed the claims of companies that they do produce gains on the SAT. But the research suggested that the gains are relatively small — gains that theoretically shouldn’t matter much in admissions decisions. But NACAC also found evidence that at plenty of colleges, these kinds of gains could make a difference. SAT: 30-point bump can pay off in admissions ON THE WEB: More testing, less logic INSIDE HIGHER ED ARCHIVE: An LSAT without racial gaps? David Hawkins, director of public policy and research at NACAC, called the agreement by Princeton Review to stop the use of score gains in marketing “an important” action and “a step in the right direction.” He said that NACAC commissions that have studied standardized testing and test prep have heard from people who believed that there are “false diagnostic tests that led to inflated test score improvements” but that NACAC was never able to document the issue. He said that the inquiry by the advertising group “offers further evidence that students need better information, at a minimum, to protect against misrepresentation with regard to test preparation.” While Princeton Review and Kaplan may not be making such claims, others are. Many of the boutique companies that have proliferated in the test-prep industry in recent years have websites full of testimonials about large gains in scores and promises of minimum gains. The testimonial page of Knewton, for example, leads off with Alex R. saying “Thanks for the 240 point increase.” And the comparison it offers on the GMAT test-prep course plays up a money-back guarantee for anyone who doesn’t see a 50-point jump in scores. Josh Anish, a senior editor at Knewton, said that the company measures gains in several ways. If a student has taken a test prior to enrolling in one of Knewton’s programs, that test is the base. If not, the company does have diagnostic tests. He said that because the company hires many people who used to work for the testing companies such as the Educational Testing Service , Knewton is confident of the accuracy of its diagnostic tests. Anish said that there is nothing wrong with boasting about score gains. He said that’s what customers want. “We are proud of our courses,” he said, and many of the clients are “a type-A audience and they want to know about return on investment.” READERS: What standardized tests have you taken and what did you do or use to prepare?

Cam Holmes graduated from Tulsa Community College on Friday – and she says that, but for a program created three years ago, she never would have done so. In 2007, the year she graduated from high school, Tulsa Community College created Tulsa Achieves , which waives tuition for many local residents. That year, Holmes was among 1,357 first-time freshmen from local high schools who participated. Overall, first-time freshmen enrollment at the college rose by nearly 400 students from the year prior. College officials attribute this steep enrollment growth to the program, arguing that it has attracted many students to the college who otherwise would not have considered it an option for them. TUITION-FREE: Military, engineering, specialty colleges stand ground against costs BEST VALUE COLLEGES: Top 100 for 2010 “I didn’t know where I wanted to go to college or even if I could have gone to college,” said Holmes, 21. “My G.P.A. wasn’t that high, and I just didn’t apply myself in the way that I do now.” Holmes credits Tulsa Achieves with giving her direction – she plans to transfer to Oklahoma State University in the fall, and to major in broadcast journalism – as well as the finances to afford her first two years of college. She already qualified for Pell Grants, but Tulsa Achieves took care of the remainder of her costs. She said that the program has changed some of her neighbors’ mindsets about attending college. “Some of them feel a different attitude about college and importance of it,” Holmes said. “I know I’ve talked to some people who are new to the program, and they kind of had the same situation I had – people came out of high school not knowing what they want to do.” At a time when community colleges are being urged to attract and to graduate more students, Tulsa Achieves suggests that price matters — even with relatively low-cost institutions. But it also shows that community colleges may be able to waive tuition for many students without breaking the bank. Through a mixture of financial aid, private donations and state support, college officials say they have found a way to make up for the tuition these students would have paid, all while providing access for hundreds more students, boosting retention rates and further diversifying their campus. While tuition at the college – about $1,100 for a full-time semester of four courses – is relatively low, the effort suggests not only that there may be a critical mass of students for whom any tuition may be a hindrance but also that these students can succeed. ON THE WEB: Honors programs booming at 2-year colleges INSIDE HIGHER ED: Community colleges offer classes in ‘graveyard shift’ The college is the largest two-year institution in Oklahoma, serving about 27,000 students per semester. After state and federal financial aid is applied, the “gap-funding program” pays any remaining tuition balance for up to 63 credit hours for eligible students. Only Tulsa residents who graduate from a public or private high school or home school with a 2.0 grade point average qualify. To maintain Tulsa Achieves funding, students must retain county residency, take an orientation class within their first year, complete 40 hours of volunteer service each academic year and stay in “good academic standing.” They must earn at least a 1.7 GPA when they have 30 credit hours or less and at least a 2.0 GPA when they have 31 credit hours or more. Furthermore, they must complete at least three credit hours each semester and complete at least 70% of all of their attempted coursework. The requirements reflect a number of the hot ideas in the discussion about community colleges’ “completion agenda”: that many students need to be taught to study, that efforts to connect students to the college in multiple ways are key to retention, and that avoiding missed semesters is key. Localized programs that help high school students cover the cost of college tuition, like Tulsa Achieves, are not new. For example, Kalamazoo Promise , a program in Michigan that is funded by a small group of anonymous donors, has helped more than 1,100 of the city’s public school graduates pay their tuition at any institution in the state since it began in 2005. Despite the success of such privately funded ventures, it is often hard for public entities such as local governments or colleges to establish and maintain similar tuition-waiver programs. Voters in Davenport, Iowa, for instance, rejected a program last year that would have given each of the city’s high school graduates a lump sum of $20,000 for use at any college or university of their choosing. Tulsa Community College officials said, however, that they have found such an effort affordable. To help maximize federal and state aid awards before institutional funds are used to pay for tuition, Tulsa Achieves students are required to fill out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid. Aside from this aid, the cost of Tulsa Achieves is kept down by students who qualify for Oklahoma’s Promise , a statewide program that waives public college tuition for those who come from families that earn less than $50,000 a year. The effort led to an immediate gain in Pell Grant funds, which increased by 50% in the program’s first year, to $450,000 — as more students enrolled and more applied for aid. Overall, the college is only paying full tuition for about 37% of those who enroll through the program. “The projections were on target,” said Tom McKeon, college president. “One of the primary reasons we’ve been able to do this is we’re one of only three community colleges in Oklahoma that receive local money. … And our tax base is large; we have 14 independent school districts. Local funding makes up a third of our operating budget. … That gave us a lot of flexibility. We feel we’re giving back to a county that’s been supporting us for 35 years.” This year, McKeon noted, Tulsa Achieves cost the college $4.6 million, less than 6% of its operational budget. He said that this is “considerably less” than other community colleges in his state offer in scholarships. The local community has embraced Tulsa Achieves to such a degree, McKeon noted, that local residents and business owners have helped the college raise nearly $1.2 million for a “textbook trust.” In this way, deserving students can also have their textbooks paid for without having to dip any further into institutional funds. McKeon believes the college’s financial planning for the program will keep it around for a long time. “We’re committed to our promise,” McKeon said. “It’s not created a financial hardship for our institution, even in the midst of this recession; we’ve had to cut our budgets just like everyone else. But we’re seeing improvement out there; house prices are steady and unemployment is going down.” Matt Short, college financial aid director, sees other benefits. For example, he noted that the college’s annual loan volume decreased by nearly 1,000 loans when it launched Tulsa Achieves and that “is almost certainly correlated very closely to the 1,300 odd freshmen that did not have loans packaged on their awards that year for the first time.” Lauren Brookey, college spokeswoman, noted that, since the program started, its 4,342 participating students have completed more than 92,000 hours in community service. She added that the Tulsa Achieves has also helped the college reach out to minority and other “underserved” students. “We call this the ‘no excuses scholarship,’ ” Brookey said. “It helps spread the word and get more people to go to college. The simplicity of the program, we think, makes it easy for us to tell students that they have no reason not to go to college.” Tracey Medina, for example, is the first in her family to go to college, and she credits Tulsa Achieves with getting her there. “My parents told me that they would help me as much as they could, but they didn’t think it was going to be possible to pay for college,” the 19-year-old said. “Now that I’m here, they are very proud of me because I’m a first-generation college student and I’m helping other students enroll at the school. The rest of my family, especially my nieces and nephews, really look up to me now and always ask me all about college.” Tulsa Achieves has already influenced the creation of another program in Knoxville, Tennessee called knoxAchieves , which will give 500 Knox County public high school graduates up to $3,000 annually for community college tuition. McKeon also said that he has heard from some elected officials in his state of Oklahoma, who have ambitions of creating a statewide program.