Focus on Research
Penn State Intercom......March 14, 2002

Poor students face
difficulty getting degree

By Paul Blaum
Public Information

Public policy aimed at helping low-income students succeed in college must include not only financial aid, but also a wide-reaching, multifaceted program of preparation beginning as early as elementary school, a University study reports.

"Current pre-college intervention programs are doing a good job, but most of them focus on one or two areas of need, rather than the full array of students' needs," said Patrick T. Terenzini, professor of higher education and senior scientist with the Center for the Study of Higher Education. "Current programs also concentrate on individual students, rather than on whole cohorts or age groups of students in low-income schools. The goal should be to give all low-income students an equal shot at preparing for college. But significant numbers of these young people start falling behind in their readiness and awareness of what's needed for college by the sixth or seventh grade and never make it to the starting line."

Terenzini; Alberto F. Cabrera, associate professor of higher education and senior research associate at the center; Elena M. Bernal, director of the International Research Office at Bryn Mawr College and doctoral student in higher education at Penn State, are co-authors of the monograph, "Swimming Against the Tide: The Poor in American Higher Education," published as Research Report No. 2001-1 by the College Entrance Examination Board.

"In the eighth grade, the desire to go to college is about as high among low-income students as among their affluent classmates," Terenzini said. "Whereas nearly all of the latter will realize their aspirations, only about two-thirds of the former will do so.

"Compared to their wealthier peers, low-income students face major obstacles when it comes to preparing for college, making the academic transition from high school to college, and maximizing the college experience itself both from an educational and occupational standpoint," the researcher said.

Lower-income students grow up in cultures where access to education is much more difficult. They do not receive as much reinforcement or guidance from parents and schools, with the result that they are less inclined or able to pursue a rigorous high school curriculum, researchers said.

Often low-income students come from single-parent households, which can generate little or no savings for college, Terenzini noted. Seventy-six percent of low-income young people have parents with no college experience, compared to 98 percent of high-income students who have parents with college backgrounds and expect their children to carry on the pattern. In 1998-1999, total federal and state financial aid for college students reached $64.1 billion, an 85 percent hike in constant dollars over the past decade. This increase has enhanced opportunities to attend college on all socioeconomic levels, but class disparities persist.

"An unintended consequence of the growing reliance on loans in packaging student financial aid may be to push some low-income students who fear an unmanageable loan debt to choose instead to work longer hours to pay their educational expenses," Terenzini noted. "The evidence shows that working longer hours, particularly off-campus, reduces students' chances to become academically and socially involved in their institutions, thereby reducing the likelihood that they will complete their degree programs." Putting disadvantaged students on the road to college commencement means reaching their parents when their children are still in grade school, he said. The parents need information on financial planning for their children's college education and what will be required in the way of their children's high school curriculum and other aspects of their academic preparation.

Parents and children alike also need help in making the best match between the children's aptitudes and available degree programs. This would permit low-income students not only to obtain their degrees but also to do so in the shortest, least expensive amount of time, according to researchers.

For this to happen, a more tightly knit, long-term partnership is required between the federal government, state agencies, colleges and universities, schoolteachers, parents and students across the kindergarten-to-16 spectrum, Terenzini said.  

Paul Blaum can be reached at pblaum@psu.edu.

National Science Foundation
Career award goes to Simpson

Timothy W. Simpson, assistant professor of mechanical, industrial and manufacturing engineering, has received a five-year grant from the National Science Foundation's Faculty Early Career Development program.

The program is designed to help scientists and engineers develop their research and teaching simultaneously as their careers get under way.

Simpson's National Science Foundation research will focus on ways that computer simulation and optimization can be used to improve design efficiency and effectiveness when developing a new product family. He will study how three Pennsylvania companies -- Durametal Corp., Flowserve Corp. and Ivalo Lighting -- design families of products based on a common set of components known as a product platform. He then will develop computer models that determine the best set of common and unique components within a product family.

Simpson also will examine how these companies let consumers customize a product platform online and will explore ways of using the Internet to promote customer interaction and improve customer satisfaction.

Simpson will integrate projects related to his research into courses he teaches in product design, product dissection and concurrent engineering.

Simpson joined the University faculty in 1998 with a dual appointment in the Harold and Inge Marcus Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering and the Department of Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering. He earned a bachelor of science in mechanical engineering from Cornell University and a master of science and a doctoral degree in mechanical engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology.

Research presents strategy
for Social Security reform

Penn State Mont Alto faculty member Elizabeth Hill recently completed a research project that offers insight for policy-makers on the issue of Social Security reform.

Hill, a labor economist, found that if part of the goal is to keep older people employed, the biggest incentive for older women to remain in the work force is flexibility on the job.

Hill studied 2,608 older women, ages 60 to 74, using data from a Bureau of Labor Statistics survey. The goal of the research project was to find which older women are more likely to be employed.

First, Hill found that retirement does not necessarily mean that workers are no longer in the work force. "These women may classify themselves as retired, but many are continuing to work," Hill said. The trend in recent years is that the percentage of women working after age 55 has gone up, while the percentage of men working after that age has gone down.

Hill hypothesized that women continued to work because they needed the money. Studies show that women are 70 percent more likely to spend retirement in poverty than men.

Instead, what she found was that women with more education were more likely to stay in the work force after retirement age than those with less education. Also, women who had been employed more during their adult lives tended to work at older ages. This did not fit with Hill's original idea, because women with more education and work experience are likely to have a higher family income, pension plan and savings, in general, than those with less education and work experience.

She found evidence that women with more education and work experience worked more weeks at older ages. But apparently, they had more control over work hours than women with less education and work experience and they worked fewer hours per week as they got older.

Older female workers were found more in professional and personal service occupations where there are more flexible hours and fewer physical demands.

"While a low family income had some effect on women's employment at older ages, what I found was not what I expected," Hill said.

"As we search for ways to reform our current Social Security system, these results should be important, she said. "Policy makers must keep in mind that it is not primarily money that keeps older women in the work force. It's the flexibility and the type of job offered to them," Hill said.

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