Academic Preparation for College: How Milwaukee's Promise Program Students Understand and Respond to Financial Aid Incentives

• In Event: 60.058 - Promise Scholarship Programs in High-Poverty Communities: What Is the Impact of Promise Scholarship Programs on College Access in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and Milwaukee, Wisconsin?

Abstract

Objective
In 2011, all first-time ninth graders in eighteen randomly selected high schools in Milwaukee were promised $12,000 for college. If students meet the program requirements, they can use the scholarship to attend two- or four-year public institutions. The objective of this paper is: (1) to understand how students think about the process of preparing college and (2) to examine whether treatment students describe their academic preparation differently than control students.

Perspectives
Financial aid is one of the key interventions that is introduced to students too late (Dynarski & Scott-Clayton, 2006; Long & Riley, 2007). Early commitment programs like the Promise Scholarship are intended to serve as an alternative to the traditional “late commitment” grant and loans programs that wait to inform students during the end of their senior year, when many students have already decided that college is unaffordable. By removing the barrier of cost and affordability, the theory is that the promise itself may inspire better academic preparation and performance.

Methods
Across 3 treatment high schools and 3 control high schools in Milwaukee, we interviewed a stratified random sample of 24 students from their 9th through 11th grade years; there were a total of seventy-two semi-structured interviews. Through the interviews, we sought to understand students’ college knowledge with a particular focus on financial aid and academic preparation. The following research questions guide this study:

1. How do TDP students understand and describe the process for academically preparing for post-secondary education?

2. Are there differences in how academic preparation and performance is described and demonstrated between treatment students and control students?

All of the interviews were digitally recorded, transcribed, and uploaded into NVivo which we used to facilitate data analysis. Based on our reviews of the literature, themes in our protocols, and emergent ideas from the interviews we developed emic and etic parent, child, and grandchild nodes. Once we had coded all of the interviews, we further analyzed the data by using visual displays of the evidence and creating memos and annotations using the NVivo indexing system.

Data sources
We interviewed 24 students each year from their ninth through 11th grades, totaling seventy-two semi-structured interviews.

Results
The differences in how students describe their academic preparation including course taking sequences, grades, college admission testing, and staff counseling and support were more apparent based on school type (selective schools versus non-selective or less selective schools), and not the student’s assignment in the treatment or control group. The majority of the treatment students were aware of the Promise scholarship, however, less than half mentioned that they were having regular discussions about the scholarship with their family and school staff.

Significance
As promise programs increase, it is important that policymakers understand how these programs impact student behavior, postsecondary planning, and ultimately college choice. With over 35 promise-type programs operating across the country, this study furthers the research on promise programs so that we may understand the ways in which the scholarship influences students' academic decision-making processes throughout high school.

Authors

• Tangela Blakely Reavis, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Regina Figueiredo-Brown, East Carolina University