Direct Admissions: Too Late and Too Little

A great deal of attention has been given lately to states (and private entities like the Common App and Niche) that have launched direct admissions programs. Under these programs, high school seniors receive a notification of their admission to a college as long as they subsequently complete an application. At the first contact of the student by colleges, there is, of course, no financial aid award, but students are typically informed of the college’s financial aid program and how to apply.

Direct admissions programs have been started for many reasons, but the two most common are (1) to increase overall college-going among recent high school graduates in each state and (2) to increase the proportion of low- and moderate-income students who enroll in postsecondary education. Yet the efficacy of these programs remains in question.

In a working paper released in August, authors Taylor Odle and Jennifer Delaney concluded that students offered direct admission were more likely to submit an application but were not more likely to enroll. “In the face of growing adoption, we show this low-cost, low-touch intervention can move the needle on important college-going behaviors but is insufficient alone to increase enrollment given other barriers to access, including the ability to pay for college,” Odle and Delaney write.

In the 1990s, my colleagues Jack Schmit, Nick Vesper and I undertook an extensive longitudinal study of college-going behaviors in the state of Indiana. We tracked 5,000 students from their ninth-grade year through to high school graduation, conducting surveys twice a year. On each survey we asked students whether they planned to go to college or were undecided.

One of the things we looked at very carefully was when most students decided to go to college and how the timing of that decision affected subsequent college enrollment. We found that a large majority of the students who reported that they planned to go to college by the ninth grade followed through on their plans. By contrast, students who developed college-going aspirations after the ninth grade were dramatically less likely to enroll in college after graduation. We even looked at students who were undecided regarding their postsecondary plans during high school, and they too were far less likely to enroll.

One of the key factors in these studies was how much students knew about either their families’ ability to pay for college or about financial aid. The construct we focused on was whether or not students believed they would be able to afford to go to college. Our work suggests that the optimal strategy to increase college going, especially for low- and moderate-income students, is to provide them lots of information about postsecondary education early, including the probability that either their parents could afford to send them to college, or that they would receive financial aid so they could afford to enroll.

I have spent time reviewing more recent studies of the college enrollment decision. None of them replicate the in-depth, longitudinal work we did. I have asked myself, is there a reason to believe that the results of these studies from the 1990s are irrelevant to what we observe happening today? I would suggest that the work of Odle and Delaney as well as others at the very least implies that our work from the 1990s still has some relevancy. Although direct admissions is still in its infancy, without an increase in the enrollment of students who otherwise might not have gone to college, the program is little more than a lead-generation tool. If states are serious about encouraging postsecondary participation, they need to start earlier, before students’ senior and second-semester junior years. In addition, early information about financial aid and college affordability is essential.