Opening the doors to more low-income students reshapes a university

JUDY WOODRUFF:

Next, we wrap up our week-long series, Rethinking College: Closing the Graduation Gap, by visiting with a university president who says the nation's public research universities are failing to meet the needs of low-income students.

Hari Sreenivasan reports.

MICHAEL CROW, President, Arizona State University:

We doubled our number of graduates, we went from 9,000 graduates to 20,000 graduates.

HARI SREENIVASAN:

In the rarefied world of higher education, where exclusive schools cater to only the very best students, Michael Crow is blazing a new path. He's an anti-elitist.

MICHAEL CROW:

So, it goes back to our admission standards. If you have better than a B average overall, then you're admitted.

HARI SREENIVASAN:

As the president of Arizona State University, Crow has dramatically increased the student population to 84,000 students, making it the largest university in America.

Under Crow, the number of low-income students has soared, enrollment of blacks and Latinos has doubled, and ASU has accomplished this despite the largest funding cuts from any state legislature in the country.

MICHAEL CROW:

The specific freshman year experience…

HARI SREENIVASAN:

President Crow's mantra is this: A public university should be judged by not who it turns down, but who it admits.

MICHAEL CROW:

Public research universities have become increasingly exclusive and increasingly expensive. They began believing that they needed to emulate the private universities or replicate them.

And so we're saying it's time to innovate, it's time to develop a new kind of American university.

It's all about attitude.

HARI SREENIVASAN:

As ASU, that means breaking down traditional academic departments. The school has slashed millions of dollars in administrative costs by merging academic departments and eliminating support staff, cuts that help fund low-income students and encourage cross-disciplinary learning.

MICHAEL CROW:

We have 15 or 16 new transdisciplinary schools, a School of Earth and Space Exploration, the country's first School of Sustainability, a School of Social Transformation. We have a School of Transborder Studies.

We have a new range of new ways that we're approaching problems. We have built this building again to break down disciplines. We blow up departments. So, this building is called Interdisciplinary Science and Technology Building Number Four.

HARI SREENIVASAN:

You're getting the pictures from Mars and these students are taking a look at it working with NASA's JPL.

MAN:

Absolutely. Kristen is working out some lunar data sets.

MAN:

We have the Lunar Orbiter, which is managed here.

MICHAEL CROW:

And then also in here are people doing robots and drones and new ways of looking at things. And they're all mixed up. We don't have, like this is chemical engineering and this is chemistry. We don't care about any of that.

HARI SREENIVASAN:

What Crow says he does care about is making the university accessible to low-income families.

By expanding the student population from 55,000 to 84,000, the university is able to use money from full-paying students to recruit more who need financial aid.

How did you increase access, especially to low-income communities?

MICHAEL CROW:

Talent is not a function of your parents' income. Talent is a function of your ability, your drive as an individual. We have gone out and found that talent wherever it is. We have built tools. We have a new tool that we're just about to launch called me3.

HARI SREENIVASAN:

Crow hopes the me3 tool will entice high school students from poor communities by giving them a virtual career identity.

FREDERICK COREY, Arizona State University:

So, this is the me3 tool. For each major, we have a description of exactly what's involved in the major in terms of career outlook, job outlook.

HARI SREENIVASAN:

Frederick Corey, who oversees the student adviser program, says online technologies can get students in the door and keep them there.

FREDERICK COREY:

Course withdrawal is one of the biggest expenses we can face. Every day, we're looking at this. If I'm doing a big sweeping look, I can see what percentage of students in each college are off-track.

HARI SREENIVASAN:

Student records are used to predict success.

FREDERICK COREY:

You have to take the courses that are diagnostic of success. If you go off-track twice, you have to pick a new major.

HARI SREENIVASAN:

That's exactly what happened to freshman Robert Hammerschmidt, who ultimately switched major from actuarial science to computer engineering after receiving several online alerts.

ROBERT HAMMERSCHMIDT, Student, Arizona State University:

I actually did get multiple e-mails. They did make it clear that this might not be exactly right for you, because this is a critical course. I admit I was a little bit sad at first.

FREDERICK COREY:

Sometimes, it's a process of grieving. You come to terms with the fact that now I need to give up that identity and work with somebody as I shape a new identity.

MICHAEL CROW:

And so these are the lab floors. And we need to do a lot more to empower those individuals to be more successful. We need to do a lot more to embrace this notion of how technology can be our friend. We're trying to find a way in which their learning experience can be enhanced sufficiently by technology that it can be empowered, faster, deeper, better, broader.

HARI SREENIVASAN:

But the push for technology-enhanced teaching and a larger student body has led some to question the quality of learning at ASU.

KEITH LAW, Professor, Merced College:

I don't think that this is a model for a new American university, for those American universities that still like to maintain their prestige.

HARI SREENIVASAN:

Keith Law is a professor of Merced College in California. He says ASU's quick expansion and particularly their massive online curriculum could damage the university's status.

KEITH LAW:

I think Arizona State University is risking slipping into becoming a diploma mill that grants graduation and grants diplomas to students without really guaranteeing them an excellent education. And I think that's going to erode the value of their degrees down the road.

HARI SREENIVASAN:

Despite critic, Crow sees innovation and online technologies as reshaping the entire university system.

KEITH LAW:

Technology allows both faculty and students to move through courses at a higher rapidity, move through them as you have mastered them.

HARI SREENIVASAN:

What would that mean for technologies?

MICHAEL CROW:

When they say, well, here's a basic concept in psychology, that's — you might be an engineering major and you're not going to take the full psychology course, but you may want that concept in psychology, .25 credits, that kind of thing.

HARI SREENIVASAN:

ASU's new model is likely to be watched closely, as America's colleges face growing enrollment from less traditional students.

In Phoenix, I'm Hari Sreenivasan for the PBS NewsHour.

PBS NewsHour coverage of higher education is supported by the Lumina Foundation and American Graduate: Let's Make it Happen, a public media initiative made possible by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.