Degrees of freedom (with Seth Andrew)

What this episode covers

In the world of higher education research, “success” is usually defined as a function of two statistics: enrollment and completion. Going by those two checkpoints, students experience very different chances of success based on their backgrounds and family characteristics. Consider, for example, that students who come from families in the top 20 percent of earners enroll in college at a rate 50 percentage points higher than students from families in the bottom 20 percent—that’s 78 percent compared to 28 percent. And those students from low-income families who do enroll are significantly less likely to finish college than their higher-income peers. How can educators close enrollment and persistence gaps? One solution is to build a new college from the ground up with built-in supports for low income and first generation students. That’s the idea behind an ambitious new venture called Degrees of Freedom. On this episode of The Report Card, Nat Malkus talks with Degrees of Freedom founding president Seth Andrew about the college’s unique hybrid learning model, Degrees of Freedom’s newly acquired Vermont campus, and the challenges that lie ahead of the college’s Fall 2020 opening. Andrew is the founder of the Democracy Prep Charter Schools, whose portfolio now includes 21 schools across 5 states. Previously he served as a senior advisor and superintendent-in-residence at the U.S. Department of Education and was a senior advisor in the Office of Education Technology at the White House under President Obama.