Solving the Triple Whammy of Higher Education
Designing Effective Tools to Deliver Student Success
How can equality of support for each student be built into University course design?
Although most Universities have more students from non-traditional backgrounds, they still design courses which assume that each cohort is a homogenous group of learners, with a similar learning base as a starting point for their degree studies.
Universities do provide extra support for students from non-traditional backgrounds, but the impact on completion rates is not promising.
The Triple Whammy of Higher Education:
The High School Longitudinal Study of 2009 published on 8th April 2024 analyses data from US students leaving high school in 2009 and tracks their progress in college. Using information from the US Department of Education:
“Of the 2013 cohort of students who started as full-time, first-time bachelor’s or equivalent degree-seeking students attending 4-year institutions, 45 percent completed their degree in 4 years, 64 percent completed their degree in 6 years, and 65 percent completed their degree in 8 years ”
The report drills down into the relationship between the annual earnings of a student’s family and the success rate for completion in both undergraduate and postgraduate study.
The US Journal Inside Higher Education, analysing the report data, created an insightful chart to show the level of inequality between student completion and family incomes:
Inequality in Completion Rates
A separate analysis of UK Higher Education completion rates, published by the Times Higher Education (THE) in March 2023, analysed data from the Office for Students (OfS) on student completion rates and also found significant inequalities:
“[Of] those who entered higher education in 2017-18, 82.5 per cent of full-time undergraduates who had been eligible for free school meals completed their course, compared with 90.8 per cent of their more privileged peers.
This gap of 8.3 percentage points was the highest since comparable records began in 2012-13, and almost double the difference of just five years ago.
Similarly, the gap between the proportion of black students, who have the lowest completion rates, and white students, who have the highest, grew to a record 7.8 percentage points”
The Triple Whammy:
1. Low Family Income
2. Student Debt
3. Non-Completion
In both the US and UK, the evidence shows that those who enter higher education from poorer, non-traditional and diverse backgrounds are less likely to complete their studies.
These students face a triple economic challenge in their available family incomes, the debts they will incur from their studies, and the inability to pay off these debts with a graduate job due to non-completion.
The 2023 THE article quotes John Blake, director for fair access at the OfS:
“Higher education in England has historically high completion rates, but this data shows that students from disadvantaged backgrounds and under-represented groups have been much more likely to drop out than their more advantaged peers,” he said. “These gaps are significant and, in some cases, are growing.”
For the OfS, course quality is the major factor which contributes to non-completion rates.
Addressing Inequality
If one of the main purposes of education is to create greater social mobility for all, as politicians have argued when expanding access to Universities, then those who should benefit from this social mobility the most are in fact statistically less likely to do so.
Further analysis in the US has shown that those from the poorest backgrounds are the least likely to complete their studies because the resources of the institutions they attend are more limited:
“Students from lower-income backgrounds are also more likely to attend institutions that are less resourced, so they’re more likely to have less access to academic and outside-the-classroom supports that can help make a difference in completion.”
Whilst some resources are prioritised for these students once they are attending University, little attention is paid to how students could be supported before they start the next stage of education after completing their compulsory studies.
Changing the Landscape
Given that it is harder for students from poorer backgrounds to complete their degrees, how can we offer a better design within courses so that students are more prepared for their studies? If offering individual one-to-one tutoring is too expensive then could technology help to bridge the gap?
For the first time we now have the tools in AI’s large language models (LLMs) to develop courses designed for the diverse learner, providing responsive pathways that adapt to support the challenges faced by each individual student.
These tools could help to deliver student success without the intensive individual tutoring than is unaffordable for many.
The data on student completion and achievement cited above provides a bleak picture. It is clear that the diverse nature of an individual student’s background, their socio-economic circumstances and their access to various resources has a determining impact on their likelihood to complete their studies.
The OfS quote suggests the problem is growing despite considerable resources being applied to support students from non-traditional backgrounds.
With those students from diverse, non-traditional, or poorer backgrounds describing their experience at University as a shock from a range of perspectives, cultural, financial, educational and social, the efforts which many Universities already make to try to bridge the experience gap for these students is clearly not achieving its overall aims in the completion rates for these groups.
Given that financial resources are shrinking in most Universities, tools that support all students to prepare for the demands of a course would be of benefit to all.
