LearnmoreMN Blog: Mismeasuring college

By Steve Kelley, September guest blogger

Holding higher education accountable is a hot topic. The Obama administration has announced several programs, including the higher education version of Race to the Top, that call for colleges and universities to demonstrate positive outcomes, measured mostly by student retention and graduation rates. This month the University of Minnesota?s President Eric Kaler proposed to the Board of Regents that the University?s 2013 legislative funding request include a performance incentive pool with 5-year graduation rates as one of the criteria.

It is not surprising that the accountability wave that has submerged K-12 education is sloshing over higher education too. Tuition costs have continued to rise, including the cost of an education at a public institution. Legislators have cut back on higher education as they face ever increasing health care costs. The costs of college have revived the debate about the value of a college education. Economic data continue to show a high return on investment, with recent information from the Great Recession suggesting that college-educated workers came through the recession in better shape than those with only a high school diploma. It makes a kind of sense, then, that our notion of performance in higher education would be to measure completion rates and time to degree. Getting students graduated is what appears to add value.

In the face of these demands for measurable performance, it is essential to ask whether we are measuring the right things. Retention and prompt graduation do make a difference for students so they are not bad measures. Yet these criteria have little to say about the quality of the education being delivered or whether students are being taught the right things. As has happened in K-12 education, measuring performance has distracted us from a debate about what we want as a society from higher education and whether students are getting what they need. We lack clarity about what a good higher education is, so we fall back to measuring whether a student received a fast education.

A recent New York Times story about the Thiel fellows who forgo or drop out of college to pursue a dream project put a laser focus on the question of what higher education should do. Peter Thiel is a successful high tech entrepreneur who offers financial support to students who don?t go to college. The implicit message is that college is not a means of making a difference or solving a meaningful problem; it is a barrier to success. I am looking for the accountability project that would enable a college or university to say to Thiel candidates: we are the springboard to pursuing your dreams, not the hurdle, no matter how long it takes.

Let?s start a debate about how higher education gets better at preparing students to make a difference now, whether it is in the community, starting their own enterprise or through an employer. If we could have a meaningful debate about what we mean by a good higher education, then maybe we could figure out what we really want to measure.

Source: http://learnmoremnblog.typepad.com/blog/2012/09/mismeasuring-college.html

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