Effect of Out-of-State Students on Flagship Universities

Parents Forum
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I recently read this article from the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation. It posits that increasing enrollment of out-of-state students is pushing out lower and middle-income students, and making it harder for enrolled poorer students to feel successful at that college. Much of the article goes into the reasons for it, but the section I think this forum might be most interested in is the section starting “Life at the “Out-of-State” University.”

Essentially, they cite a study that there are 3 main pathways at the flagship, the party pathway, professional pathway, and the mobility pathway. The first two are largely composed of students from affluent families, while the third is composed of students from poorer families seeking to enter the middle class.

“Armstrong and Hamilton found that the party pathway dominated institutional spending priorities.68 The party pathway was characterized by affluent students with low academic achievement, who were often from outside the state. In order to attract these students, the university spent lavishly on facilities (e.g., luxury dorms and fitness centers) and big-time collegiate sports. More funding devoted to “country club” amenities meant less funding to student services targeting the needs of working-class students on the mobility pathway. The party pathway also dominated academic life because it was “built around an implicit agreement between the university and students to demand little of one another.”69 Students on the party pathway lowered academic standards by collectively refusing to put forth more effort, by ostracizing students who try to perform academically, through course evaluations, and by enrolling in “easy” classes and majors. Gradually, professors also learn to avoid rigorous coursework, and working-class students feel conspicuous about putting forth effort. The party pathway also dominated the social life. Affluent students on the party pathway had the time and the money to spend on sorority dues, dinners out, drugs, and alcohol and were the most visible constituency on campus. Affluent students on the professional pathway were able to dabble in the party pathway or ignore it altogether, but working-class students often felt excluded, like outcasts…Not every university follows this pattern, of course. But the risk exists that the institution will reach a tipping point where serious academic pursuits become secondary, and the aspiring students from modest means will not be able to achieve their goals of social mobility for themselves and their families.”

Many of the CC families where students choose to attend OOS colleges are receiving merit aid and enrolling in honors programs. However, have observations of campuses found the truth of this at flagship universities? Do you think this is a legitimate concern or not? Are there particular campuses where this has (or has not) felt true? And where do you suspect the possible “tipping point” might be in terms of percentage of OOS students enrolling at a flagship institution?

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Table 3 (in-state list prices) and Table 4 (net prices for in-state full Pell grant students) rank flagship universities from low to high cost. No surprised the the ones in Pennsylvania are near the bottom (most expensive) on both lists. Forum favorite University of Alabama is in last place in Table 4.

Table 5 ranks flagship universities by percentage of out-of-state frosh from high to low. Those with over 50% out-of-state students do not appear to include any of the more selective ones. However, some more selective ones like Georgia Tech and Michigan are over 40% out-of-state.

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One thing I would point out is that the data from OP’s post is from 2014-2015. That may not matter for many schools, but for my flagship (University of Kentucky), there has been a dramatic shift since that time.

Over the course of just a few years, financial aid shifted from 90% based on merit to 35% merit. Favoring need-based aid has kept TCOA relatively low for incomes below $48k, according to NCES.

TCOA is still not quite as low as some other states’, but KY is poor, and has just gone through a costly construction boom on campus that was long overdue.

Also, regarding Honors colleges, UK’s is somewhat new, and seems to be different than some others discussed here. The focus is on uplifting in-state students. Eight of nine applicants will be rejected, and some OOS students have expressed frustration when they are admitted elsewhere, but rejected here. High stats OOS kids aren’t the priority.

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Wow. That is a pretty damning indictment. However, I didn’t need these tables to know that kids from out of state who were choosing to go to U Vt wanted a particular experience, that usually ranked skiing/boarding as more important than academics. And forgive me, but if a person is 18 years old, and hasn’t figured out how to resist social pressure to not do well in school, they’ve got bigger issues than the fact that their minimally selective flagship state U is admitting partiers, both in-state and out-of-state.

As the cost of college has skyrocketed, families that don’t qualify for tuition assistance are choosing their state flagships. This has led, in many states, to much higher selectivity and higher academic standards, since they are no longer admitting B- students, but now A minus students, on the average. So in general, the atmosphere at certain flagship state U’s has greatly improved. No more annual spring party riots.

Interestingly, many of the state U’s that lead in the percentage of out-of-state students are minimally selective schools from states with low populations. Vermont, Delaware, New Hampshire, Rhode Island - how many flagship level college-bound graduates do these states even produce, annually? So sure, that middle class kid who wants to party and cannot get into their own state’s flagship (and besides, who wants to go there, it’ll be just like high school all over, since everyone from their high school is going to the in-state flagship), decides to go to a neighboring state’s flagship. Besides, it’s less selective than their own state’s flagship, which they probably weren’t going to get into, anyway.

The reality is that many students who are admitted to only minimally selective schools (meaning that they accept >70% of applicants) are not particularly interested in working hard in school, or don’t have the preparation or innate ability to do college level work. Whether private or public, these schools are filled with students who see college as the thing you get to do after high school - you get to leave home (but not earn your living), you’re supposed to do enough schoolwork to not flunk out, but mostly, you’re having a good time doing the things that your parents wouldn’t have put up with - sex, drugs, alcohol, all to excess. The selectivity of the schools is the issue, not the percentage of students whom they admit from out of state.

One might just as easily say (ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM) that minimally selective colleges are largely enrolling people who really shouldn’t be in college. It’s not the effect of out-of-state students on flagship universities. It’s the expansion of colleges in order to very expensively warehouse kids who are having an extended, dependent adolescence.

A possible solution is re-directing some of the public education dollar toward good, effective technical high schools and good, cheap, college-aged technical education with apprenticeships in the traditional trades and high-tech trades. We already have this for ancillary medical fields - the community colleges train and place LPNs, RNs, respiratory therapists, X-ray techs, lab techs, etc. We need the same for all the trades.

The solution is not that flagship state U’s shouldn’t admit some out of state students. It’s that they need to be more selective, overall. U Michigan Ann Arbor is #17 on that list, has about 45% out-of-state students, and certainly no one could say that the out-of-state students are detracting from the academic experience there!

As for low socioeconomic students leaving the flagships for another state college - they’re realizing that they can live at home far more cheaply, and get the education they want at a branch campus, or a 4 yr state college, while saving about 15K/yr in room and board costs. I seriously doubt that a motivated low socioeconomic student, who has made it through the misery of being an achiever in a school district where peers at best denigrate and ostracize, and at worst physically attack students who work hard and do well in school, is going to be driven out of their flagship state U by out-of-state sorority “mean girls”.

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I totally disagree with this. Some of the smartest, most motivated students I knew in my D’s HS followed the money and went to minimally selective schools. They are all working hard and doing great.

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… followed by …

Since the low SES students mostly are enrolling at less selective non-flagship state universities (often after starting at community college) for financial reasons, are you saying that they are the “people who really shouldn’t be in college”?

If not, then how would you handle the conflicting demands that (a) non-flagship state universities and community colleges must be numerous enough and located to give a large part of the state population commute access to them, (b) they are large enough to offer a reasonably full set of academic programs and majors, and (c) your desire for them to be much more selective than they are, which would leave most of them with far lower enrollment than their capacity as driven by (a) and (b)?

Also, how would you want to handle those who were not ready for college immediately out of high school (based on poor high school records), but have matured enough to be ready some years later as non-traditional students?

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You KNOW that I’m not talking about the A students who were following the money. The reason they’re being offered money at those schools is that their qualifications were way above that of most of the students there.

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Then how do you account for the heavy party atmosphere at the flagships, and the supposed tacit agreement to drop academic standards there for that very reason?

Not everyone belongs at the flagship U. And if you read the article, it’s talking about low socioeconomic students LEAVING the flagship U, supposedly because they find it to be a party school, where their classmates don’t support their efforts to achieve (a conclusion that I felt was an overreach - I think they’re probably leaving for financial reasons).

One of the great things about our country is that everyone gets an infinite number of chances at higher education. A person can choose to go back to school at any time, and continue their education, as long as they can fund it - and usually, for the very poor, funding is available.

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I also know plenty of B students who are hard workers in college and definitely “college material.” I just think it was a sweeping generalization and could come across as insulting.

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It cannot be both ways. It cannot be the author’s observation of minimally selective flagships filled with partiers with no academic motivation, and everyone who’s there deserving to be at college at that time, at that cost. Those two observations cannot fill the same space.

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My read of the article was different than this. It’s that when low socioeconomic students were at the university, there were a number of students (allegedly, at one midwestern flagship, 55%) that was on the party-track. As the author defined this as the affluent track, then one might make a few assumptions: 1) might be a large and active Greek scene where dues/fees can be thousands/semester, 2) students going to the bars multiple nights a week (with bar prices for drinks) and getting clubbing attire (whether for a club or house parties), 3) students with cars, quite possibly very nice cars (i.e. luxury and/or late model), etc. If a significant portion of the student body seems this way, one doesn’t need to have gotten free/reduced lunch to feel out of place. Plus, if the striving students from a lower SES went to high schools where their studious habits were put down, maybe they thought things were going to be different once they got to college and then found out, hmm, maybe not.

Thus, it seems perfectly possible that academically capable students from lower SES might feel impacted if their campus has a significant number of affluent students from OOS on the party-track. I did not, however, indicate that this is what was going on at all universities with large numbers of OOS students. I was asking whether others had seen/felt this to be a legitimate concern.

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The party assumptions of the author seem to step from one article from 2013. My take away was more about low income students, not flagships being filled with partiers without motivation.

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