Expanding Underrepresented Minority Participation America's Science and Technology Talent at the Crossroads (2011) / Chapter Skim
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5 Affordability
5 Affordability
Pages 103-128
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2005. Evaluation of the National Science Foundation Louis Stokes Alliances for Minority Participation Program (Final Report)
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. On the other hand, there is no correlation between net price and completion rates for high-income students, a finding that raises real questions about the wisdom of merit-aid programs and policies aimed at keeping tuition low across the board.2 Because of the importance of financial aid to college attendance and completion, the College Board has recently argued that it is important to keep college affordable "by controlling college costs, using available aid and resources wisely and insisting that state governments meet their obligations for funding higher education." More specifically, the College Board recommended "more need-based grant aid while simplifying and making financial aid processes more transparent." The College Board (2009)
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The Benjamin Banneker scholarship for African Americans was consolidated with another campus-based program. Similarly, the Minority Graduate Research Fellowship Program administered by the National Science Foundation was eliminated as a separate program following a lawsuit challenging that it was discriminatory.
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State governments play a key financial role for public institutions, where the large majority of students are enrolled, and they have two key policy levers with regard to college affordability: state appropriations to institutions (which affect tuition) and individual financial aid programs (which then affect net tuition)
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Unfortunately, the maximum Pell Grant award, the largest direct college subsidy, has not increased proportionately to tuition increases and inflation-adjusted dollars, and newly implemented eligibility policies are expected to shift the income threshold and exclude students who currently qualify for Pell Grants. The current administration has, in the meantime, proposed program changes that would increase the maximum Pell Grant by $200, to $5,550, for the 2010-2011 academic year.
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The effect of these financial factors is seen in persistence rates and degree attainment. For example, for the 2003 cohort who started at four-year institutions, 73 percent of African Americans and 76 percent of Hispanics were still enrolled or with a certificate/degree three years after enrolling, compared to 83 percent of whites and 89 percent of Asian Americans.10 Institutions are pivotal in the recruitment and retention of underrepresented minorities, and they impact the persistence of these students through the provision of institutional aid, much of which is need based.
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2007. Institutional aid and student persistence: An analysis of the effects of institutional financial aid at public four-year institutions, NASFAA Journal of Student Financial Aid 37(1)
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First, the Rethinking Student Aid study group convened by the College Board (2008a) recently recommended a major overhaul of the financial aid system.14 Specifically, they propose the following: • Make federal financial aid simple, clear, and transparent • Target loan subsidies toward assisting students in repayment • Develop a savings program for low-income families analogous to the current federal savings programs that subsidize the college savings of wealthier families • Provide incentives that reward colleges and universities for supporting their students successfully through college toward completion of their degrees and incentives for states to support the goals of the federal aid system.
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(2006) found that the need to work during the undergraduate years can complicate the pursuit of majors perceived to be time-intensive, including those in the sciences.18 At the graduate level, the Council of Graduate Schools has found through their PhD Completions Project that financial support, mentoring/ advising, and family support are the main factors that contributed to the completion of doctoral degrees.
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The program awards need-based Academic Competitiveness Grants to first- and second-year undergraduates who have completed a rigorous high school curriculum and National SMART Grants to third- and fourth-year undergraduates majoring in certain technical fields or foreign languages deemed vital to national security. An early audit of the program found that participation in these programs was low and that the Department of Education was not undertaking enough effort to promote the grants.21 It is our understanding that participation has increased, but with resources more limited, we hope that the current departmental administration will make every effort to ensure that these funds are utilized effectively.
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, which makes grants to institutions of higher education to support scholarships for academically talented, financially needy students, enabling them to enter the workforce following completion of an associate, baccalaureate, or graduate degree in science and engineering disciplines. Grantee institutions are responsible for selecting scholarship recipients, reporting demographic information about student scholars, and managing the S-STEM project at the institution.23 • Federal Cyber Service, which is a Scholarship for Service (SFS)
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.26 (Box 5-1 also reports data on financial support collected by the Council of Graduate Schools Doctoral Completions project.) Graduate research assistantships are generally funded through federal research grants awarded to universities.
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• Graduate Research Fellowships, National Science Foundation, ($93.36 million) • Integrated Graduate Education and Research Traineeships (IGERT)
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• National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowships, U.S. Department of Defense ($31.6 million)
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Underrepresented minority includes blacks, Hispanics, American Indians/Alaska Natives, Native Hawaiians/Other Pacific Islanders, and multiple races/ethnicities. Traineeships include internship and residency.
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Compared with graduates in other fields, engineering and humanities graduates were less likely to report that they had been offered guaranteed multiyear funding at time of admission. For example, only 63 percent of engineering doctoral students and 66 percent of humanities students reported being offered guaranteed multiyear funding at time of admission compared with 72-73 percent of students in mathematics & physical sciences and social sciences and 77 percent of those in life sciences.
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SUPPORT FOR UNDERREPRESENTED MINORITIES IN STEM Returning once again to the four approaches to increasing the participation of underrepresented minorities in STEM, it is clear that underrepresented minorities may benefit from: • General financial aid programs: Need-based programs such as the Pell Grant can and should be used to support low-income underrepresented minority students, including those interested in STEM, in attending college. • General programs to assist underrepresented minorities: Programs designed to support underrepresented minorities in undergraduate or graduate programs, such as the Ford Foundation Fellowship, can be used to support students in STEM as well as other fields.
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2006. Final Report of the Evaluation of the Louis Stokes Alliances for Minority Participation Program, p.
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Figure5.3.eps SOURCE: National Science Foundation, Doctorate Recipients from U.S. Universities, Summary Report 2007-2008, (NSF 10-309)
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Federal programs that provide support to underrepresented minorities in STEM include: Undergraduate • National Science Foundation, Louis Stokes Alliances for Minority Participation (LSAMP) : This program is aimed at increasing the quality and quantity of students successfully completing science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM)
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FIGURE 5-4 Graduate coursework, degrees pursued, and degrees completed, LSAMP participants compared to national Underrepresented Minorities and National White and Asian American Graduates. SOURCE: Clewell et al., Final Report of the Evaluation of the Louis Stokes Alliances for Minority Participation Program, Washing Figure5.4.eps 123 ton, DC: Urban Institute, 2005.
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Underrepresented minority includes African Americans, Hispanics, American Indians/Alaska Natives, Native Hawaiians/other Pacific Islanders, and multiple races/ethnicities. SOURCE: National Science Foundation, Science and Engineering Indicators 2008.
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Phase II awards augment the Phase I emphasis with attention to individual student retention and progression to baccalaureate degrees. Phase III awards augment the Phase I and Phase II with attention to aggregate student progression to graduate school entry.30 • National Institutes of Health, Bridges to the Baccalaureate: The Bridges to the Baccalaureate Program provides support to institutions to help students make transitions at a critical stage in their development as scientists.
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• NIGMS Individual Predoctoral Kirschstein NRSA Fellowships to Promote Diversity in Health-Related Research: These awards, awarded to eligible individual students, support research training leading to the PhD or equivalent research degree, the combined MD-PhD degree, or another formally combined PhD degree. Students must be current matriculants in a biomedically related PhD (or equivalent)
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Sloan Foundation Minority PhD Program.37 Philanthropy has also been important at the undergraduate level, as has been seen in the Meyerhoff Scholars program, funded by Robert and Jane Meyerhoff and located at the University of Maryland Baltimore County.38 While independent evaluations have shown the effectiveness of federal programs such as the NSF Louis Stokes Alliances for Minority Participation (LSAMP) and the NIH minority research training programs, to tackle the scale of change necessary in order to increase underrepresented minority participation in STEM, these and other programs like them must be scaled up to meet the national challenge and achieve the national goal of increasing participation in a transformative way.
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