Higher Ed Roundup: Week of May 26 – May 30

Looming Showdown Over G.I. Benefits

College Board Selling Data on Needy Students to Help Schools Diversify

First-Generation College Students Face Graduation Gap

Looming Showdown Over G.I. Benefits

Congress appears to be heading for a showdown with the White House over an emergency spending bill that would substantially increase education benefits for returning veterans. Last week, the Senate passed by a veto-proof margin of 75 to 22 legislation funding the Iraq War that contains an amendment, sponsored by Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA), that would cover up to the full cost of attendance at the most expensive public college in a veteran’s home state for those who served in the military after Sept. 11, 2001. Under the measure, tuition and fees would be paid directly to colleges, averaging about $1,700 a month per veteran, up from the current $1,101. President Bush has vowed to veto the measure, saying that Webb’s proposal is too costly and and that it could harm the country’s all-volunteer force by enticing soldiers to leave the military to pursue their studies. The bill now goes back to the House, which already passed it by a vote of 256 to 166, where the proposal’s supporters will see if they can attract enough additional votes to override a possible veto.

College Board Selling Data on Needy Students to Help Schools Diversify

The College Board has begun a pilot program aimed at helping colleges recruit students from low-income families. With elite colleges under fire for failing to enroll an economically-diverse student body, officials from these schools have been pressing the College Board to provide them with mailing lists of low-income students who are academically-qualified to attend their institutions. The College Board used to provide admissions officers with the income data of promising students who have taken the SAT but stopped in the early 1980s when it discovered that many colleges were using the data to recruit wealthy students who would be able to pay the full price of tuition. Under the new experimental program, the College Board still won’t provide direct income data. Instead, it will sell colleges lists of students who live in low-income neighborhoods or attend high schools that primarily serve disadvantaged students. “We are swearing to use it for good, not evil,” Bruce Poch, the admissions dean at Pomona College, told The Chicago Tribune, which first reported the story.

First-Generation College Students Face Graduation Gap

At least one in six college students are the first in their family to go to college but despite that achievement, they are much less likely to earn a degree than other students. A new study by the College Board, echoing findings of a 2005 Ed Department study, found that of those first-generation college students who graduated from high school in 1999 and enrolled at a four-year college, 44.9 percent obtained a bachelor’s degree, compared to 59 percent of their peers. The graduation rate gap was even larger among students enrolled at two-year colleges. The gap closed, however, among students with higher SAT scores and high school GPAs. First- generation students with SAT scores of 1500 or higher graduated at a rate of 65.1 percent, compared to 72.7 percent of non-first-generation students.