Despite millions in investment, fewer AZ high school grads are enrolling in college, trade school

A decade ago, Arizona leaders set a goal designed to boost our state’s future by boosting our state’s students post high-school graduation. By 2030, 70% of the state’s graduates would continue their education in college, or in trade school or community college.

Well, it’s been 10 years, and reporter Molly Bohannon found that not only did we not reach that 70% goal, postsecondary enrollment in Arizona has actually gone down since 2016. This despite millions of dollars of investment.

Molly Bohannon wrote the story for the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting and she came into our studios recently to talk about it, beginning with just how extensive these efforts have been.

Full conversation

MOLLY BOHANNON: It’s definitely been an effort from a lot of different agencies. In 2016 when it was launched, it was launched kind of as this collaboration between private schools, public schools, K through 12, community colleges, and universities to get more students to continue their education after after high school.

And since then, a bunch of money has been spent, about $166 million is what we were able to track going back through the budgets, that was earmarked for different interventions to help students do this. So things like dual enrollment, things like efforts to increase FAFSA completion and get more students to get that federal student aid, and the Arizona Promise Program is where most of that money went, which was a scholarship created in 2022 to help students attend the three public universities.

LAUREN GILGER: OK. You said $166 million over the last decade here. And despite all of that, it looks like not only has Arizona’s post-secondary enrollment not hit 70%, but it’s actually gone the other direction.

MOLLY BOHANNON: Yeah, it’s it’s gone down about 3 points, 3 percentage points, from 53% in 2016 to 50% in 2024, which is the last year that the nonprofits who track this had data available. It peaked in 2017 at about 55%, and since then has been going down, slight upticks in the last couple years post-COVID, but again, still 3 points lower than where we started.

LAUREN GILGER: OK. What are those rates like in comparison to the rest of the country? Is this about average?

MOLLY BOHANNON: We’re below the national average. So nationally, about 62% of students enroll in the couple months after high school graduation in a community college or in a university. And Arizona’s figure tracks community colleges, universities and trade schools, so it’s actually tracks more things and we’re still below where the rest of the country is.

LAUREN GILGER: And this is across demographics for the most part, too, it sounds like. Most counties and and most demos.

MOLLY BOHANNON: Yeah, almost all counties, some counties have seen some improvement, and across most demographics. I think Asian students are consistently higher, but other than that, it’s been a pretty widespread decline.

LAUREN GILGER: OK. Researchers told you part of the problem here is basically leadership, or a lack of leadership, and and centralized leadership in terms of where this effort has been throughout the last decade in the state level.

MOLLY BOHANNON: Yeah, local and kind of national researchers and experts on post-secondary enrollment talked to me about how there’s no one right way. There’s no, you know, "Here’s how states should do this to fix the problem." All approach it really differently, but kind of a trademark of success is coordination across all these agencies. It is something that K through 12 schools need to play a role in, and universities need to play a role in, and trade schools and community colleges need to play a role in. And a lot of those efforts are happening here, but they’re not coordinated, like you said.

There’s a lack of of leadership and of centralization that these experts were saying even if all these good things are happening, maybe in small corners of the states or in some districts or schools, it’s hard to scale things without that centralization and that coordination. So the lack of that has been hurting the state, along with centralized funding, sustained funding. $166 million sounds like a lot of money, but in the grander scheme of things, we we underfund education and and this is a result of that.

LAUREN GILGER: It’s like a drop in the bucket really in the big picture. Are there programs like this that are successful in other states?

MOLLY BOHANNON: Yeah, so Arizona has implemented a lot of interventions that are, you know, proven to be successful. Investing in dual enrollment is a big one. The Promise Program has shown a lot of success in other states. Some states have seen enrollment increases as high as 14% in the years after implementation.

Arizona’s at about 2.4% in the couple years after, so obviously a a much slower pace, but more students have enrolled every year. But, you know, when I talked to the the head of the Arizona Board of Regents, which runs that scholarship program, they said, you know, "It’s it’s a good practice and it’s doing good things, it’s just underfunded right now."

LAUREN GILGER: There’s another kind of aspect of all of this, right, which is just that like lots of folks today, young folks in particular, it sounds like, really don’t value a post-secondary degree of any kind in the same way that they might have before. Like lots of folks just wondering like, is college worth the cost, and the cost has gone up, right?

MOLLY BOHANNON: Yeah, Arizona’s cost has has, I believe, stayed around flat, but the the cost associated with college have gone up, the cost of living has gone up. You know, if you’re in a small rural community here, the cost of traveling to a Tempe or to a Tucson to attend these universities is expensive. You know, you’re far away from your family, apartment rent is high. It adds up.

And so yeah, a lot of these students that I talked to were just saying, "I’m not sure it’s worth the time and and the money that it takes to get a four-year degree or even a two-year degree." Credentials can be quicker, but they can be also still be pricey. So students were questioning trade school as well and choosing to enter the workforce directly. A lot of them already work, have part-time jobs in high school, and could just take on more hours, get more pay. A lot of those are relatively high-paying jobs, too. And so there’s there’s definitely that question of is this worth it and why would I delay making money?

LAUREN GILGER: Right. And it’s sort of representative of a larger cultural shift, I think, right? Like you have this really striking stat in here, a Gallup survey from September found that just 35% of people thought college education was quote very important. That’s down from 75% in 2010. That’s wild.

MOLLY BOHANNON: Yeah, it’s a big decrease. And it is, you know, the the data all still shows that a degree is worth it, a credential is worth it. You know, a a someone with a bachelor’s degree is expected to make about 86% more than someone without or someone with a high school diploma.

And so I think a lot of what these experts I talked to were saying is that it is a messaging issue and they need to meet these students where they’re at and say, you know, "Here’s the value." They’re getting all this information from other places. They’re scared of taking out loans, and they’re not really understanding the differences between loans and scholarships and grants. And it’s a lot of information.

LAUREN GILGER: Seems like an information gap. You talked to school counselors, right, and and they had some some ideas about why this might be happening? What they’re hearing from students?

MOLLY BOHANNON: Yeah, a lot of school counselors I talked to were saying, you know, students are just scared of the cost and more scared of the cost than they’ve seen in past years and in past generations. And, you know, the districts that have done it well, the two school districts in Santa Cruz County, which has seen the highest increase, up almost 11% over the last 10 years in post-secondary enrollment. The counselors I spoke to down there were saying, "We’ve made a really concerted effort to talk to these kids early in their high school careers about student financial aid and what they do to get that and what applying looks like so that they’re not, you know, entering senior year and having all this information thrown at them." And they’ve found success with that.

They’ve had things like peer counselors to answer questions about the FAFSA process and the application process, and that’s just a little less scary than going to a counselor or going to an adult when you’re 17.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah, yeah. I mean, so that, I’m glad you brought up Santa Cruz County because that’s one of a couple of of kind of bright spots here that you highlight as well because it’s not like a blanket thing. Like there have been some places in the state that have really made strides in terms of getting people enrolled in post-secondary ed of some kind. What did they do differently? It sounds like school counselors had a different strategy in Santa Cruz County. What else did you hear?

MOLLY BOHANNON: Yeah, I mean, it really seems like it takes a community effort. It’s not just telling the students, you know, "You need to apply earlier or apply to more scholarships or do all of this."

It’s getting the parents involved, getting the families involved, having businesses in the area kind of emphasize that they need a skilled workforce. They need students to have credentials and to continue that education so that when the time comes, they’re qualified to have these jobs that that we’re going to have a lot of in the next couple years.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah, OK. Molly Bohannon, investigative reporter for the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting, joining us. Molly, thank you for coming in. Appreciate it very much.

MOLLY BOHANNON: Yeah, thank you for having me.

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