For too many Michigan college students, a degree is elusive

Audreanna Shannon was only a few weeks into her freshman year at Wayne State University, and it wasn't going well.

Especially in chemistry class.

"I didn't know what they were talking about," recalled Shannon, a 2007 graduate of Detroit's Mackenzie High School.

Wayne State was very different from high school, where Shannon spent more time socializing than studying. Classes at Mackenzie were easy. Although her longtime dream was to be a pediatrician, Shannon took only a year and a half of high school science.

At Wayne, Shannon became quickly and painfully aware of her academic shortcomings. "I wasn't prepared at all," she said.

It's a common refrain among U.S. college freshmen, especially first-generation college students such as Shannon who enter higher education unprepared on multiple levels - academically, financially and socially - resulting in a much greater risk of dropping out.

In the case of chemistry, Shannon simply stopped going to class. "It was a very young way to think," said Shannon, looking back a decade ago. "But I didn't want to be embarrassed."

No surprise, Shannon flunked chemistry that semester and her grades in general were problematic.

Shannon persevered, although it took seven years, four colleges, several changes in her major and a scary amount in student loans for Shannon to get her bachelor's degree in family life studies from Western Michigan University in 2014. Since then, she's added a master's in counseling education from WMU and she's working on a second WMU master's in teaching English as a second language.

Shannon also just started a new job at Kalamazoo Valley Community College as an academic counselor, mentoring students struggling with issues she knows all too well.

The crushing cost of higher education. The frustrating gap between career dreams and academic skills and preparation. The anxious search for the right career. Juggling the distractions of life outside of class Negotiating one's way around institutions of higher education, where time is money -- and mistakes can be both time-consuming and costly.

And unlike Shannon, many give up. Only 28 percent of Michigan residents age 25 and older have at least a bachelor's degree and another 10 percent have an associate's. About four of every 10 Michigan adults who started college dropped out before finishing.

College completion is particularly elusive among young adults from low-income households.

Only 11 percent of U.S. young adults with a family income below $37,600 have a bachelor's degree by age 24, compared to 58 percent with a family income above $124,000, to a study released this month by the University of Pennsylvania.

Student sociodemographics are the biggest predictor of college success and there are multiple reasons for that, say the study co-authors, Margaret Cahalen, director of the Pell Institute for the Study of Opportunity in Education, and Laura Perna, director of the Penn Alliance for Higher Education and Democracy.

"It's the money" to pay for college, Perna said. "It's exposure to academic rigor. It's the availability of information (about higher education). It's the social and emotional support. All those things matter."

This isn't just an issue for individuals. In an economy increasingly reliant on a well-educated workforce, increasing college graduation rates is one of Michigan's most-important public policy challenges, and one MLive is exploring as part of a several-month series on what Michigan leaders need to do to create a better future.

And that pressure to improve educational outcomes is happening as Michigan high schools are graduating more and more students of color and/or from low-income households, groups that struggle the most in higher education.

A third of Michigan public-school students are non-white and half of all public-school students qualify for the subsidized lunch program, which equates to an income below $37,800 for a family of three.

"College is hard for everyone," Shannon said. "But it's especially hard if you don't have someone explaining all the things that can go wrong."

For many first-generation college students, she said, "You come into the situation thinking you know what to do. But then you get knocked down and you don't know how to get back up."

Soaring costs

Of course, many older Michigan residents were first-generation college students themselves. But they also had advantages over today's first-generation students.

In the era when higher education was more the exception than the rule in many communities, those going to college tended to a self-select group of motivated students. Tuition was considerably less decades ago. First-generation students were much more likely to have classmates who were also first-generation, which made college less intimidating. And for those who dropped out or didn't go to college at all, Michigan offered plenty of job choices.

It's a much different environment today. Instead of being a destination for the best and brightest, college is the default option for most new high school graduates, whether they are ready or not - and both the finances and the environment can be intimidating.

The three biggest reasons that students drop out higher education, experts say: College costs; students are academically unprepared, or they unprepared socially or emotionally for college life -- from homesickness, to feeling overwhelmed, to treating college as a constant party.

The money issue is significant, the report by Cahalen and Perna said.

Among key findings of their study:

• The cost of college nearly equals the poorest students' family income

• Pell grants, the federal money to help low-income students with college expenses, have not kept pace with increases in costs

• College debt has become the norm.

• The vast majority of black students borrow

• More low-income students are attending college, but their enrollment rates remain significantly below that of more affluent young adults.

• Degree attainment varies considerably by family income

"We have a lot more low-income students going to college, but our completion rates aren't good overall and they especially are not good for low-income and first-generation college students," Cahalen said.

College affordability

Dannielle Curtis was a first-generation college student determined to get through college, and she did.

A 2007 graduate of Covert High School in Van Buren County, she earned her bachelor's from Western Michigan in 2013. She also has two master's degrees, and today is an academic advisor at University of North Carolina.

But Curtis also is a 28-year-old with $100,000 in student loans.

"I really struggled with college affordability, and I've got myself into a bad financial situation because of the decisions I made" as an undergraduate, she said. Curtis didn't pay tuition as a graduate student because she was a full-time WMU employee during that time.

While Curtis' family pushed education - "not going to college was not an option" - they couldn't help financially, she said. "So, it was 100 percent loans and grants."

She was grateful to be offered loans to finance her education, but she also was naive, Curtis says now.

"I had no one to consult, and I didn't know," Curtis said. "It's unfair to expect a kid to ask questions that they don't know to ask."

While Curtis is glad to have her degrees and a good job at a world-class university, the financial burden of her student loans weighs heavy.

"I believe education is important," she said. "I have a good quality of life. But I do stress about money. I wonder if I'll ever be able to afford to have children."

Among the factors that can drive up debt: taking all the loan money offered; taking longer than four years to get a degree; lack of awareness about scholarships that can reduce dependency on loans; using loan money to take remedial classes that don't qualify for college classes or retaking classes failed the first time; deferring loan payments after graduation, which makes the loan amount swell as interest costs compound.

Yet low-income students, in particular, have little option but to borrow money, Cahalen and Perna said.

"You only have so many mechanisms to pay for college," Perna said.

Cahalen noted many full-time college students work to offset expenses -sometimes to the point where it undermines their college studies.

"I think a reason many people don't complete (college) is they're working too much," she said.

Kalamazoo Promise

For the past 12 years, The Kalamazoo Promise has been a radical experiment in college affordability.

Funded by anonymous donors, the scholarship program pays college tuition for graduates of Kalamazoo Public Schools. To qualify, students must live in the school district and attend college in Michigan. Promise students have 10 years to use the money, which covers 130 credits, the equivalent of a bachelor's degree.

While other communities in Michigan have created Promise-type programs, including Flint, Lansing and Detroit, none are as well-funded as Kalamazoo.

About 6,200 students have qualified for the Kalamazoo Promise scholarship so far, and about 5,145 have used it. Among those at least six years out of high school, 38 percent of Promise-eligible students have a bachelor's degree compared to 30 percent of Michigan students statewide.

Still, Kalamazoo Promise executive director Bob Jorth says college affordability remains an issue for many Promise students, even with their tuition covered.

"It takes money to live, and many are working minimum-wage jobs and their families can't help," Jorth said. "I've got students workings two or three jobs. It's no wonder" some don't finish or take the entire 10 years to get their degree.

In fact, The Promise is a sobering reminder that college affordability isn't the only challenge for young adults, especially those from low-income families.

Completion rates have been particularly problematic for low-income students who attend community college, Jorth said.

To address that, the Promise program is now insisting that Promise recipients at Kalamazoo Valley Community College - the most common destination for Promise community college students - meet regularly with mentors to make sure they are staying on track.

"All the early indicators are pretty strong" that it's working," Jorth said "We're seeing higher grade-point averages and better retention."

'Poorly prepared'

"One lesson of The Promise is that when you dramatically increase college enrollment, you're going to bring in a lot more kids who are poorly prepared," said Michelle Miller-Adams, a political scientist at Grand Valley State University who studies college access,

That includes students whose high school curriculum didn't prepare them for college-level work, as well as young adults not equipped to deal with the emotional and social challenges of college life, such as moving away from home and having more freedom.

"Especially for first-generation college students, it can be hard to navigate if you didn't grow up with people talking about college at the dinner table," said Sarah Anthony, a first-generation college graduate who now works for the Michigan College Access Network.

After Anthony graduated from Lansing Everett High School, she went to Central Michigan University. "In many ways, I felt I didn't belong," she said. "It was very intimidating. ... I felt a million miles away from Lansing."

Another big issue: Many teenagers start college clueless about their career goals - or have a goal that quickly gets derailed because they didn't fully grasp what it involved. But as many students testify, switching majors involves time and money, both of which can greatly increase college debt.

"I were queen of the world, I would have a really robust career-planning component" embedded into high school curriculums so that teenagers have a better sense of their options as they enter college, Miller-Adams said.

"We are very, very under-resourced in that area," and it's getting worse, she said, pointing to a recent study that found the average high school counselor oversees 700 students.

"We're telling everybody they need to have post-secondary education at a time when we've made it a lot more expensive, and we're not providing enough support," Miller-Adams said.

"Everybody has gotten the memo that you need to go to college," she said. "But there's not enough in the memo about what to do once you get there."

This year, MLive is exploring issues of economy, education and infrastructure, and what Michigan leaders need to do to create a better future. We'd love to hear from you, about your struggles and your wins, as you navigate Michigan's educational landscape. We want to use your voice and your questions to frame the conversation with candidates as we head into midterm elections. Have a story to share, send us an email to michiganbeyond@mlive.com