Barriers to Higher Education: Current Policies and Future Research

• In Event: Uncovering Carcerality in the Educational Pipeline

Abstract

Higher education administrators and state policymakers “promote the discipline, punishment, and incarceration of individuals” (Buenavista, 2018, p. 80) by implementing policies that target students with a history of school discipline or involvement in the criminal justice system (“justice-involvement”). Recent research has documented the ubiquitousness of admissions policies (Custer, 2016; Evans, Szkola, & John, 2019), financial aid policies (Custer, 2019), campus housing policies (Custer, 2018b), and others (Custer, 2018a) that limit these students’ ability to access and complete college. This presentation focuses on these policies, the policy actors, and the consequences of these policies.

This presentation has two objectives: to offer an overview of policies that inhibit college access to students with a history of school discipline or justice-involvement, and to propose a series of innovative research questions and projects that would advance our understanding of these policies.

First, the presenter will present an overview of the policy barriers for a student attempting to enter college who has a history of school discipline or justice-involvement. This portion will include a brief history of when such policies were introduced and what changes are on the horizon. For example, the Common Application - used at more than 800 institutions - has asked applicants about school discipline and criminal convictions since 2006, but beginning for the 2019-2020 cohort, the questions about criminal convictions were dropped (Jaschik, 2018). Institutions will have to decide if they will collect criminal history information from prospective students in another way or if they will stop collecting and reviewing criminal history information. However, the Common Application maintained its questions on school discipline. The implications for how a history of school discipline can impact a student’s ability to go to college will be discussed in context with the other presentations in this session.

Second, this overview of policy barriers begs new questions. The presenter will propose a series of research questions and research projects. Two of the questions and projects include:

Increasingly, studies explore the experiences of justice-involved students who are enrolled in traditional colleges (see Dreger, 2017; Ehnow, 2018; Halkovic & Greene, 2015). They often ask how these students overcame policy barriers and how they cope with stigma in college. But what happens to a student who cannot access (or complete) college because they couldn’t overcome the policy barriers? The presenter will propose several strategies for answering this question.


Federal and state policymakers are responsible for creating some of the policies barriers in higher education, like bans on financial aid for justice-involved students (see Custer, 2019). However, college administrators have done most of the policymaking that impacts these students. The policies that block students at the point of admission, housing, student employment, and beyond are institution-level decisions. This begs the question, why? Where have college administrators gotten the ideas to implement policy barriers for these students? What attitudes do college administrators hold towards students with a history of school discipline or justice-involvement? Can their attitudes be changed?

The presenter offers these research proposals to the audience for discussion and for action.

Author

• Bradley Custer, Michigan State University