Gates Foundation Will Try to Answer the Question, Is College Worth the Cost?

Over the next year, education experts gathered by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation will try to determine the value of a college education.

Debt from rising tuition costs, a changing job market, and a host of other educational offerings beyond a four-year degree have made it difficult for many students to determine how they should proceed with their education after high school, Sue Desmond-Hellmann, Gates’s chief executive, told reporters in a conference call last week.

“Students and families across America are asking themselves, Is college worth it?” she said.

The foundation has created a 30-member Post-Secondary Value Commission to determine how educational institutions can prepare students to make the most of their education after receiving a degree or certificate. The group, which consists of educators, business leaders, policy makers, students, and advocates, met for the first time in April and plans to conclude its work next summer. Desmond-Hellmann will co-chair the group with Mildred Garcia, president of the American Association of State Colleges and Universities. Michelle Asha Cooper, president of the Institute for Higher Education Policy will be the managing director of the commission.

The commission will gather data on income, employment, and economic mobility and attempt to define the value that a post-high-school education can bring, whether from a four-year college, community college, or certificate program. In addition to helping students, it is intended to help educational institutions measure their own value, especially among members of different demographic groups, including those involving race, gender, and income level.

Shifting Strategy

Gates established the commission after it spent years funneling money to scholarships and programs designed to help students thrive on campus, including its signature higher-education program, the Gates Millennium Scholars. The $1.6 billion program’s last recipients entered college in 2016. The program provided tuition assistance to African-American, Hispanic, Native American, and Asian-American students starting in 1999.

As Millennium Scholars was winding down, the foundation in 2015 unveiled the Gates Scholarship, a $417.2 million commitment designed to help low-income students and students of color become campus leaders.

Desmond-Hellmann said the commission aims to help students make choices that help them succeed long into the future.

“Our foundation’s learned a lot in the past 10 years about getting more students to and through college,” she said. “But we still don’t know enough about the benefits that education beyond high school brings.”

Anti-Poverty Roots

In 2018, the Gates Foundation completed a two-year study of economic mobility in the United States. Its research took the foundation’s staff to every corner of the country, where they heard from people struggling to succeed, as well as academics, nonprofits, and businesses trying to help people move out of poverty.

Following the study, Gates launched a $158 million anti-poverty effort.

Desmond-Hellmann said the newly created commission was started, in part, due to questions raised during that research about the role of education in improving Americans’ earning power and the effect college debt has on students’ ability to save.

As in the anti-poverty work, Desmond-Hellmann expects grant dollars to flow once the commission completes its work.

“We will use the outputs from this commission to make investment decisions,” she said.