Back
to A New Path for Postsecondary EducationBy Stephen Clements and Edward “Skip” Kifer
From Talking Back
p. 13-24, published 2001
As noted in the previous section, a succession of Kentucky governors, General Assemblies, and policy and political leaders during the 1990s passed important education legislation. These laws, among other things, increased funding for education in the Commonwealth and also created new policy mechanisms for helping teachers, principals, superintendents, professors, and college administrators more effectively educate the state’s students. Kentucky voters and taxpayers have presumably agreed to fund these expenditure increases to help counteract the educational deficits compiled in the Commonwealth during the past century, when state policies, budgets, and commitments were insufficient to enable her citizens to keep up with the education levels of neighboring states, and a bias against formal schooling was palpable in some sectors of the state’s population.
Indeed, as James Klotter argued in one of his recent historical works, at the turn of the 20th century, Kentucky’s elementary school system was more well developed than its counterparts elsewhere in the southeast. By mid-century, however, the Commonwealth had slipped behind numerous other states in the region in education expenditures, school attendance, graduation levels, and the like.(15) Since then the state has played catch up in terms of schooling, and although its governors—from Bert Combs through Paul Patton—have launched many initiatives to improve education, other states and the nation have also striven to develop a better-educated populace. Hence, though Kentucky has recently made important learning gains and her best students attend the most prestigious colleges and universities in the nation, the state still faces an uphill battle in terms of aggregate education statistics. As a result, Kentuckians are used to hearing the Commonwealth ranked among the least accomplished states in terms of key education indicators. As previously noted, Kentucky continues to rank near the bottom in terms of the percentage of its population with a high school degree or its equivalent (49th) and the percentage of the adult population with a four-year college degree or better (48th).(16)
Table 2: Educational Progress in Kentucky, 1980-2000
A closer look at statistics reveals the steady progress the Commonwealth has made in educating its citizenry. Table 2 shows key education indicators at ten-year intervals from 1980 to 2000. As is evident, in just the past two decades, Kentucky has cut nearly in half the percentage of its adult population 25 and older with less than a high school degree. At the same time, the number of Kentuckians who fail to finish high school has fallen from four in ten adults to two in ten. The percentage of the state’s adult population with a bachelor’s degree or more has also risen steadily but not to the extent that the U.S. portion has. Still, the proportion of Kentuckians with a college degree increased from about one in ten adults in 1980 to nearly one in five in 2000. Some of the statistical improvement we have seen resulted from the death of many older citizens who never completed formal education beyond grade school, but much stems from the policies and programs enacted in recent decades.
Improvement in the state’s educational status has occurred in spite of countervailing demographic trends. At least in part, Kentucky’s educational status has not advanced because the state is home to an extraordinarily high native population, the nation’s second highest in 1990, and a large and aging population, among whom undereducation is commonplace. At the same time, longevity has steadily increased, and parts of rural Kentucky have become magnets for returning retirees with no postsecondary-education experience. Because Kentuckians tend to be less mobile and more inclined to “age in place,” undereducation remains a stubborn characteristic of the general population. Moreover, a national trend towards higher education rates has negated gains relative to other states.
Greater scrutiny of other statistics reveals both the strengths and weaknesses of recent education progress. The most important point that emerges from the statistics is the unequal distribution of education across the state. In a nutshell, the metropolitan areas of the state, and particularly the Lexington-Louisville-Covington region, have a relatively well-educated populace, whereas the rural areas of the state, especially the eastern and southcentral parts of Kentucky, still have an undereducated populace. One particular data map (Figure 3) of the Commonwealth aptly illustrates this point. Based on 1990 census results, it shows the percentage of adults 25 and older with a college degree by county.(17)
Figure 3: Percent of Adults with a Bachelor’s Degree or Higher, Ages 25 and Older, Kentucky, 1990
The highest degree-attainment rates are in Fayette and Oldham Counties, the latter of which is a suburban community where many professionals who work in Louisville live. The next highest rates are in the collar counties around Fayette in the central part of the state, along with Jefferson County (Louisville) and the counties bordering Cincinnati in the north. Other counties with higher attainment levels include those in which institutions of higher education are located: Calloway (Murray State University), Warren (Western Kentucky University), and Madison (Eastern Kentucky University). Outside of these areas, postsecondary degree attainment rates are considerably lower.
Another informative data map was generated as part of a 1997 adult education study of literacy in the Commonwealth (Figure 4). Indeed, Kentucky has long fought appallingly high levels of illiteracy across the state, and though illiteracy has receded, the battle still rages. According to the 1997 survey, some 340,000 Kentuckians between ages 16 and 64 function at the lowest level of literacy, (Level 1 on a 5-point scale), while another 656,000 citizens in the same age group function at Level 2. In other words, around a million working-age individuals in the Commonwealth are either illiterate or have difficulty reading newspapers, job advertisements, or application forms. It will likely be hard for these Kentuckians to thrive economically in the information-age economy. The data map shows the distribution of literacy levels across the state, which tracks closely with the previous information about education levels. As the map shows, the highest literacy levels are in the counties clustered around urban-triangle cities, as well as in the western part of the state. Alternatively, the lowest levels are spread across the more rural counties outside of the urban-triangle area and concentrated in the eastern part of the state.(18)
Figure 4: Percent of Kentuckians, Ages 16-64, at Two Lowest Levels of Literacy, by County, 1997
Not surprisingly, there is a strong correlation between the counties with the lowest literacy rates and numerous other indicators of social and economic problems. These counties have the highest rates of high school noncompletion and lowest rates of college degree possession. According to a recent Council analysis, counties with the highest literacy levels have the highest per capita income, whereas those with the lowest literacy levels have the lowest per capita income. There is also a strong relationship between literacy levels and unemployment rates. Again, and as one would intuitively expect, counties with the lowest literacy levels tend to have the highest unemployment and vice versa.(19) It is unclear, of course, whether the low literacy levels of these rural areas of Kentucky cause low per capita income and high unemployment rates, whether lack of economic opportunities in those places lead to low income and high unemployment levels and indirectly foster illiteracy, or whether other factors affect income, education, literacy, and economic development levels. As social scientists have long argued, the fact that there is a correlation between higher education levels and higher economic returns—long demonstrable empirically(20)—does not mean that increasing postsecondary attendance rates in an area will always cause income levels to rise. However, to reiterate our point, low education and literacy levels are unequally distributed across Kentucky in such a way that the urban triangle and western portions of the state benefit economically while rural areas tend to suffer.
In sum, Kentucky’s record in recent decades has been mixed. On the one hand, Kentucky has made palpable and important strides in educating its populace to levels possessed by those elsewhere in this country. In fact, in the urban-triangle metropolitan regions, education levels of the citizenry rival those of urban and suburban areas across the nation. While the educational and economic advances in these areas have been impressive, the gains have not been sufficient for Kentucky to overtake the national average. Moreover, significant areas in the state suffer from unusually high educational and economic deficits. Hence, from a “glass-half-empty” perspective, it is still true that at least four out of five adults in the Commonwealth do not possess a four-year college degree (the comparable figure nationally is three out of four adults). Furthermore, in many of the more rural areas of the state, the college-completion rate is much lower, high school noncompletion rates are considerably higher than the state and national averages, and adult literacy levels are much lower.
Such social statistics sound familiar to anyone knowledgeable about Kentucky’s history, geography, and economic development. The question that looms large in the present context is, “How are these statistics important to the future of Kentucky higher education?” From a policy perspective, one might argue that Kentucky’s plans to invest additional resources in K-12 and higher education are the crucial factors, not the legacy of the past. From the standpoint of HB 1 and a concerted state initiative for dramatic expansion of postsecondary enrollment, however, such statistics are indeed vital, because when they are juxtaposed to research findings about postsecondary attendance patterns, they show the nature and extent of the learning challenge facing Kentucky and also provide hints about the types of policies and programs that might effectively counter this legacy of educational malnutrition.
Specifically, research on postsecondary enrollment trends shows several sources of distinct disadvantage for students in general: so-called first-generation status, welfare status, and single-parent home status. The term “first generation” refers to college students, or would-be students, who come from families where no adult attained a postsecondary education. According to an analysis of a national postsecondary student data set, it appears that as of about five years ago, 53 percent of college students nationally came from homes where parents had attended college, received a bachelor’s degree, or received an advanced degree. The remaining 47 percent of students were thus “first-generation” students, whose parents had only attained a high school diploma or less. Comparable figures on Kentucky students are not available, but given the lower-than-average levels of postsecondary education among the state’s adult population, it seems safe to assume that the percentage of first-generation students in Kentucky exceeds 50 percent—and is likely quite higher than this at many institutions around the state.
Figure 5: U.S. Enrollment in Postsecondary Education by Parents’ Education, 1995-1996
While it is certainly admirable for students from noncollege families to aspire to postsecondary education—and these students must necessarily comprise a significant percentage of the postsecondary mix to reach the Council’s enrollment goals—recent research on disadvantaged students nationwide shows the difficulties these first-generation students face in terms of reaching college. In one study, the authors examined the extent to which high school students typically take what they term the “pipeline steps” necessary to enable them to reach a four-year college. The first step was for students to desire to attain at least a baccalaureate degree. Second, students needed to have earned a high school GPA of at least 2.55, which the study authors deemed the minimal level for college admission. The third step was to have taken a college admissions test, either the SAT or ACT. The fourth step was to have applied to a four-year institution, and the fifth step was to have actually enrolled in a four-year institution. No linked policies exist, of course, to encourage students to take these particular steps. Rather, these were simply the minimum actions the authors thought students needed to have taken to be able to fulfill a stated desire to achieve a college degree. The study included information on a national sample of students who were in eighth grade in 1988 and who answered a follow-up survey in 1994 about their educational activities.(21)
As can be seen in Figure 6, the results of the study’s data analysis are striking. Clearly, first-generation students tend to take these pipeline steps at a substantially lower rate than do their second- or third-generation peers. First-generation students aspire to a bachelor’s degree less than half as often as do students from families whose parents attended college. Far fewer of them have a GPA that would likely earn them entrance to a four-year college. They take college entrance exams much less frequently than do their peers. And they apply to and enroll in four-year colleges at a dramatically lower rate than do those from college-educated families. This does not mean, of course, that these students do not attend community or technical colleges at relatively high rates. But if one benchmark of postsecondary progress is increasing the percentage of Kentucky’s population with a bachelor’s degree or more, and if the state’s higher-than-average proportion of first-generation students have low postsecondary education aspirations, then the state’s education challenge becomes more stark.
Figure 6: Pipeline Steps Taken by 1988 Eighth Graders, by Parents’ Education
The most up-to-date analysis of national data on postsecondary enrollment trends was offered recently by the National Center for Education Statistics, as a special essay in its 2001 edition of the annual Condition of Education.(22) This report contains a host of information about the variations in postsecondary enrollment among students based on their social background characteristics, nearly all of which buttresses these general points regarding the difficulties facing disadvantaged students. For example, the data show that first-generation students tend not to take the most rigorous courses in high school, even though doing so is highly related to successful completion of a college degree. This is especially the case in terms of mathematics; indeed, it appears that disadvantaged students who take the most advanced math courses in high school greatly increase their chances of entering and finishing college. Also, students from disadvantaged families have generally lower postsecondary aspirations than their peers from more advantaged families and are less likely actually to enroll in a four-year institution.
The previously cited study that focused on the postsecondary difficulties facing first-generation college students also reviewed the impact on postsecondary attendance of recipients of welfare, given recent changes in that entitlement program, and on students who come from divorced families or single-parent (usually female-headed) households. The welfare issue stems from the reform of the federal Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program in 1996, which was changed that year to the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) program, to be operated via block grants to the states. The demographic profile of adult welfare recipients nationally as of 1995 was as follows: they were overwhelmingly single mothers (90 percent), tended to be minority group members (37 percent white, 36 percent black, and 20 percent Hispanic), and were disproportionately undereducated (42 percent did not have a high school diploma or its equivalent). To address the educational needs of this population, the previous AFDC program encouraged welfare participants to pursue GED and postsecondary training opportunities. The 1996 reforms, however, imposed new work requirements on TANF participants and also placed new restrictions on postsecondary participation. While solid national data or Kentucky state data are not available on welfare recipient postsecondary enrollment, data from selected sources do suggest that welfare reform has caused a significant drop-off in postsecondary attendance rates among members of this population.(23) Although this trend is not likely to have a huge impact on Kentucky institutions—welfare recipients make up less than 4 percent of the U.S. undergraduate population—its effects are likely to be felt most acutely at public community colleges, given that the majority (nearly 60 percent) of welfare participants attend these types of institutions.(24)
For children of divorce or of single-parent households, the study notes that the percentage of American children living in single- or divorced-parent households has risen from 4 percent in 1970 to around 10 percent in 1995. (Since this does not include children of divorced parents who remarry, “…the proportion of children who have experienced divorce may be significantly higher.”)(25) Children from such families, the report avers, will likely face greater difficulty affording postsecondary education, given the lower income levels of single-parent (mostly female-headed) households and the emotional toll that divorce often takes on children. Based on analysis of National Educational Longitudinal Study 1988 and 1994 data, it appears that children from divorced families take the five previously cited pipeline steps for college attendance proportionately less frequently than do their peers from married families: 30 percent from divorced homes failed to take any of the steps, compared with 20 percent from intact families, while 24 percent of children from divorced homes took all five steps, compared with 36 percent of those with married parents.(26)
There is, quite naturally, an economic component to this problem. In 1991, nearly three fourths of those from divorced homes had family incomes of less than $35,000 per year, compared with only 39 percent of those from married parents. The percentage of Kentucky children living in single-parent households will not be accurately estimated until after 2000 census data are examined. However, data compiled by the Kentucky State Data Center show a dramatic increase over the past 25 years in the percentage of children born in the Commonwealth to unmarried mothers. Statewide, and as shown in Figure 7, births to unmarried mothers rose from 11.5 percent of all births in 1975 to almost 30 percent by 1997.
Figure 7: Percent of Births to Nonmarried Mothers, Kentucky, 1975-1997
Even though the number of births in this category vary considerably from county to county and region to region within the state, the same trends, and roughly the same percentages, hold throughout most of the state. In addition, and as one familiar with social statistics might expect, the bulk of these births to unmarried women occur among those in the population who are youngest and have the least amount of formal education. In fact, of 5,122 births to 15- to 19-year-old women in Kentucky in 1998, some 3,566, or almost 70 percent, were to unmarried women with less than a high school degree. Similarly, in 1998 some 3,859 children were born to women with less than a high school degree, and 47.4 percent of this total, or 1,831 children, were born to unmarried mothers.(27) Though these data do not provide crucial information about the current social or familial situations of the children born to unmarried mothers—presumably many of these mothers marry after the birth of their child, or are cohabiting, or are living with parents or grandparents and are not strictly in a single-parent household—they nevertheless suggest a significant increase over time in the number of Kentucky children who do not have the economic, social, or educational benefits of living in a two-parent home. Inasmuch as living in a single-parent home represents a disadvantage to students in terms of possible postsecondary enrollment, Kentucky will likely face a larger problem over time in this regard rather than a smaller one.
The legacy of educational underemphasis throughout Kentucky’s history, which is captured by some of the previously cited statistics, also manifests itself through various academic achievement indicators. Though subsequent sections of this report provide greater detail on the academic achievement of students who responded to our survey, it is worth noting that in the aggregate, according to a recently released national report on the status of state postsecondary efforts, Kentucky students are lagging behind the top states in terms of scholastic performance. As Table 3 shows, a somewhat smaller percentage of Kentucky high school students take upper-level math and science courses—deemed necessary for college success—than do students in the cluster of states with the best averages in such courses. It is worth noting, though, that Kentucky students are not too far behind in these measures and that Commonwealth students have made dramatic progress in pre-collegiate courses taken over the past two decades. Where the state still lags, according to these data, is in the percentage of Kentucky eighth grade students who take algebra, a foundation course for a successful sequence of college-preparatory math.
Table 3: Academic Preparation for College, Kentucky and Leading States
Additional achievement data show starker differences between the proficiency levels of Kentucky students and those from the best-performing states. As shown in Table 4, Kentucky students who take Advanced Placement tests are relatively less likely to score high enough on these exams to exempt themselves from lower-level college courses. In addition, smaller percentages of Kentucky high school seniors score in the top 20 percent nationally of SAT and ACT entrance exam takers, as compared with students in the highest-performing states. Moreover, fewer Kentucky eighth graders score “proficient” on National Assessment of Educational Progress exams than do their peers in higher-performing states. Again, Kentucky students have made substantial progress in these areas in recent decades. Yet the legacy of underachievement renders the process of educational “catch up” long and difficult.
Table 4: College Preparation Indicators
Determining what these statistics imply for the next 20 years of Kentucky postsecondary education is not an easy task. As noted, the Commonwealth has made enormous progress in recent decades, a time when citizens began to take formal education more seriously and to invest vastly greater resources in both K-12 and higher education. In addition, state leaders have set formidable achievement goals for Kentucky students both in terms of academic performance at the K-12 level and of enrollment and completion rates at the postsecondary level. However, educational accomplishment is not well distributed across the state; the best educated citizens concentrate in the urban centers and the urban triangle, leaving many rural parts of the state with only small percentages of adults who have pursued postsecondary opportunities. Moreover, a great many Kentucky students suffer from the very disadvantages most likely to keep them from postsecondary enrollment: a greater than average percentage of them come from homes with parents who have no postsecondary education, and increasing numbers of them are living in single-parent homes at a time when fewer postsecondary opportunities are available to undereducated parents receiving government assistance. Hence, at the same time when the state has pledged to see substantial increases in postsecondary enrollment, many of its students will have to overcome enormous barriers to participation.
Though we will discuss policy options the Commonwealth might consider to help counteract the effects of these problems—which, once again, flow from the many decades of educational impoverishment of the state’s citizens—it should be clear from the outset that many remedies must somehow target those whom colleges and universities usually never encounter. Certainly universities and other postsecondary education institutions can make changes that will help students complete degree programs more quickly and efficiently or transfer among institutions more effectively. And indeed, various elements of HB 1 reform have been focused on increasing retention rates and streamlining the transfer process. Inasmuch as it is crucial, however, for Kentucky high school students to take the pipeline steps necessary for postsecondary enrollment and for far greater numbers of students to aspire to a four-year college degree, then state policies will have to target middle and secondary school students rather than the postsecondary institutions themselves.
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15 Klotter 147. Return to text.
16 Census 2000 Supplementary Survey Profile for United States, Kentucky, and other states, “Table 2. Profile of Selected Social Characteristics,” 2001, U.S. Bureau of the Census, 21 Sept. 2001 www.census.gov/c2ss/www/Products/Profiles/2000/Tabular/C2SSTable2/01000US.htm. Return to text.
17 The following counties are between 10 and 17.4 percent: Boone, Bourbon, Boyd, Boyle, Campbell, Carroll, Christian, Clark, Daviess, Fulton, Greenup, Hardin, Henderson, Kenton, Mason, McCracken, Meade, Rowan, Scott, Shelby, Taylor, Trigg, and Whitley. The counties between 17.5 and 22.4 percent include: Calloway, Franklin, Jefferson, Jessamine, Madison, Warren, and Woodford. Return to text.
18 Though these are the illiteracy figures cited widely by experts inside and outside of Kentucky, we would note that disagreement exists about the nature and extent of this problem. See, for example, the revisionist position of Andrew Kolstad, in Jay Mathews, “Millions of Adults Illiterate No More,” Washington Post, July 17, 2001. Return to text.
19 Council on Postsecondary Education, “Adult Literacy in Kentucky.” Spotlight on Postsecondary Education, Vol. 1, No. 2. According to the report, counties with 25 percent to 40 percent of 16- to 24-year-olds at the literacy levels 1 and 2 had per capita income of $23,400, while those with 49 percent to 60 percent at those same levels had per capita income of $14,300. Similarly, counties with 25 percent to 40 percent at levels 1 and 2 had unemployment levels of 4.3 percent, whereas those with 49 percent to 60 percent at those levels had unemployment of 7.9 percent. Counties in the middle, with 41 percent to 48 percent at levels 1 and 2, had per capita income levels and unemployment levels roughly halfway between these highs and lows. Return to text.
20 For recent analyses of the education-income linkage, see Economics and Statistics Administration, Bureau of the Census, Statistical Brief 94-17, U.S. Department of Commerce, Aug. 1994, and “How Much We Earn—Factors that Make a Difference,” Statistical Brief 95-17 June 1995. See also Thomas G. Mortenson, “Educational Attainment by Family Income, 1970 to 1994,” Postsecondary Education Opportunity 41 (1995). Return to text.
21 Education Resources Institute, “Missed Opportunities: A New Look at Disadvantaged College Aspirants.” (Washington, D.C.: Institute for Higher Education Policy, 1997). Return to text.
22 Susan P. Choy, “Students Whose Parents Did Not Go to College: Postsecondary Access, Persistence, and Attainment,” in The Condition of Education 2001, xvii-xliii. (Washington, D.C.: NCES, 2001). Return to text.
23 Missed Opportunities 16. Return to text.
24 Missed Opportunities 17. Return to text.
25 Missed Opportunities 23. Return to text.
26 Missed Opportunities 24. Return to text.
27 Kentucky State Center for Health Statistics, Kentucky: Annual Vital Statistics Report, 1988, Table 1-B, “Resident Live Births by Age and Marital Status of Mother, by Race of Mother, 1998” (Frankfort: Cabinet for Health Services, 1998) 13. Return to text.