Cut student services? Think again

Excerpts from an article in today's Inside Higher Ed:

The painful art of trimming a college or university budget -- often with the goal of protecting core academic programs while picking and choosing which support services to cut -- may just have gotten a bit more difficult.

A forthcoming working paper by a Cornell University graduate student, Douglas Webber, and Ronald Ehrenberg, director of the Cornell Higher Education Research Institute, found that in certain instances, graduation and persistence rates are linked to greater expenditures on student services. The research findings show a higher positive correlation between graduation rates and spending on student services -- including things like student organizations, additional educational tools, and health and registrar services -- than between graduation rates and instructional or research spending.

The report also found that expenditures on student services increased the graduation rates more for schools with lower average test scores and more students receiving Pell Grants. "Put another way," the report reads, "their effects are largest at institutions that have lower current graduation and first-year persistence rates."

"I think that's the kind of finding you expect, that for the first generation students, the kind of services they would need that help them stay in school, it's much more important," he said. "It's something to keep in mind as colleges and universities need to make cutbacks. These services help keep students in school." Callan further emphasized the need to "built budgets around the needs of your students."

And now, for the rest of the story...