ASU's Operation Comeback has already 700 people interested in returning to college to get degree

ASU has launched a new effort to bring back students who started their college careers but didn’t graduate. Operation Comeback aims to help those students go back to school and get their degrees — that includes financial assistance.

Nancy Gonzales is executive vice president and university provost at ASU. She says the program launched about a month ago and has seen around 700 people say they’re interested in trying to find a way back. When she joined The Show, she said higher education has done a pretty good job nationally of getting more students into college. But it needs to do a better job of helping more students complete their degrees.

Full conversation

NANCY GONZALES: If you look at national data, about two-thirds of students who start at a four-year institution earn a bachelor's degree within six years. That means roughly one in three don't. And over time, that gap between degree completers and those with some college but no degree adds up. Depending on how you count it, somewhere between 37 [million] and 43 million working age adults in the U.S. today have some college credit but no degree.

MARK BRODIE: That seems like an awfully big number of students who start college but don't finish.

GONZALES: It's a very big number. And it is it is a failing of higher education and that's why we're putting the emphasis on that particular marker along with everything that we do to just make sure we create pathways for more students in. We want those students to succeed when they're with us.

BRODIE: I can think of and I can imagine any number of reasons why students who start at ASU or any other university aren't able to finish. Is it typically things like life happens or they can't afford it anymore, or they decide that they want to do something else with their lives that doesn't involve college? Like are those kind of the reasons why people leave without finishing?

GONZALES: Absolutely. It's really important to understand that the decision to leave college is never, almost never due to one bad choice. It's a combination of factors and you've identified many of them very well, financial pressures. academic pressures or sort of lack of a clear understanding of what their goals are at that particular time in their lives.

Family responsibilities, mental health challenges, health challenges, and sometimes feeling disconnected from the university and its role in their life, all of that can add up and lead students to make that choice. Luckily, these are all things that institutions can do something about.

BRODIE: Well, that's kind of where Operation Comeback comes in. How are you trying to bring these, I guess, former students back into the classroom to finish their degrees?

GONZALES: So first, What we need to do is reach out and identify students and make sure that they understand that we are here for them. What we provide them is tailored advising, clear pathways back, and financial support that makes returning more possible. And so really connecting with the students is the first step.

BRODIE: Obviously for those students, I would imagine that it's helpful to get their degree. Are there bigger sort of societal reasons to do this as well?

GONZALES: Absolutely. You know, one reason really has to do with student debt. Student debt actually becomes much more problematic when it's paired with non-completion, simply because those students are more likely to struggle with repayments and they don't have the earnings boost to be able to pay back those debts.

A recent study by Brookings showed that people with a bachelor's degree earn about $10,000 per year more than those who went to college but didn't complete. And over the course of a lifetime, the difference really adds up. Estimates are on average about a $1 million difference between those who complete and those who didn't. I would say it also goes beyond higher education.

There's a recent national story, I think, in Fortune magazine that talked about the fact that employers are increasingly looking to degrees to make hiring decisions in a world where AI now allows people to tailor their experiences to job positions. We're finding that employers are more and more trusting the credential as a signal of a student's ability to work hard and to succeed.

BRODIE: Is this being paired in any way with, you talked about counseling and advising, is this being paired in any way with identifying students who maybe are at risk of leaving and trying to stop them from departing before they graduate in the first place?

GONZALES: Those efforts are already ingrained into what we do, which is trying to understand when students are having financial barriers, when they're having personal difficulties, or when, they're just kind of struggling with academics. We have a saying, which is, raise your hand. So we always are telling our students, raise your hand and we will find ways to support you. Not all students either get that message or hear that message, but this is an effort that extends it even to those who have since, you know, have not been with us for some time.

BRODIE: Sure. Let me ask you about another group of students that there have been questions about lately, and those are those from other countries. There's been so much talk about international students being nervous maybe about being allowed back into the country if they leave or being forced to leave the country if they're here.

What has the situation been like over the last, let's say, couple of months at ASU, which of course has a pretty good number of international students?

GONZALES: We do. We have a very large population of international students. We're actually the fourth-largest across the country and the largest public university in terms of the number of international students we have. We've been working very hard to help students understand that ASU still has a place for them and also for our current students to feel connected and not to feel threatened. You know, certainly students more and more are questioning, and so we've been working very hard, we did all across the summer, to help students persist in their efforts to find a way to get here.

BRODIE: Have you found fewer international students on campus now than were, you know, let's say last year at this time?

GONZALES: Yes, I think there are some countries that the barriers to be able to get here are particularly difficult. We have a large population of students from India, and so the number of students who were able to get visas have declined because the visa interviews have been paused, and that's had a significant impact on us as well as most other universities.

BRODIE: One other thing I'd like to ask you about before I let you go is research funding. There's, of course, been so much discussion about the federal government pausing or canceling research grants. ASU is a big research school. What has the impact been so far?

GONZALES: Well, we have had several grants canceled. I think more challenging has been all the various shifts that are happening in the research landscape with, you know, executive orders that have been challenged and then perhaps get reversed and with changes in funding levels being announced and also those now being challenged. So we're waiting to see, you know, how all of that will play out and just making sure our faculty are supported and they know that they should continue to advance their research and doing all that we can to support the research. faculty and infrastructure because it is so important for our success.

BRODIE: What has all that uncertainty meant for not just the research, but as you referenced, the researchers doing that?

GONZALES: I think many of them, depending on what areas of research that they are engaged in, are needing to rethink their future directions and try to plan for pursuing the newer opportunities that seem to be a priority. So that's a responsible way for our faculty to make decisions about their future research. They’re typically trained very broadly and are very talented. So it's not as if, if one grant gets canceled, they don't have other opportunities. Now, having said that, I do want to acknowledge that it's very challenging for faculty, particularly those who are early in their career.

BRODIE: Yeah. Are you nervous that some number of faculty researchers are going to decide that it's not just ASU they don't necessarily want to be at, but this country is not the right place for them to be and they'll pursue their research somewhere else?

GONZALES:  I think the risk of that is a real risk. I think we've seen a lot of talk about that, but less moves at this point. It's pretty attractive to be a researcher in the United States because of the ways that that research is supported. I think the bigger concern are young faculty or students on their track to becoming a professor who may rethink their decisions, and the brain drain and the loss of that talent would really be a big problem and very concerning.