Measuring the Cost in Results
Just a few weeks ago, I shared that over 1 million less students were attending higher education from the fall of 2019 to the fall of 2021. Last week, we reviewed the disappearing standardized SAT/ACT tests many of us loved to hate.
This week, I am really going to step into it by sharing a flawed but worthy point of view. For decades, nay centuries, the debate has raged about going to college for “the sake of learning” or going for the sake of economic upward mobility. It has always been posited as an either/or and you had to take sides. How about seeing it as an endless circle?
College should offer elements of both. One should grow in the ability to think, analyze, as well as learn to appreciate the arts. One should discover new ideas, values, and be able to compare/contrast and choose your beliefs and values. However, what is THAT worth? And, how long should you have to pay for it?
I just read a report from Third Way, a DC think tank, titled Out with the Old, In with the New: Rating Higher Ed by Economic Mobility. Their message is that colleges need to be evaluated on how much upward economic mobility their degrees bring. While an interesting premise, this analysis was riddled with baseline assumptions that mar the results. Here’s are three crucial assumptions I could spot.
1) Their analysis treats degrees from all institutions as equal in perceived value. We know intuitively that is not true, or there would not be a frenzy every year to get into certain elite schools.
Let’s state the obvious. Elite schools are NOT designed to help students with upward mobility. Their admitted students tend to already be top academic & and societal achievers. Nothing new there. See the articles’ summary below. The highlights are mine.
The PEP metric and our previous analyses of it are useful in that they allowed us to see how well institutions serve the low-income students they enroll. However, taken alone, the metric fails to account for the share or number of low- and moderate-income students a school serves. So, when looking at the PEP exclusively, a highly-selective school that admits only a handful of low-income students each year could come out looking good—even though they are not serving the purpose we articulated or contributing to real economic mobility. Therefore, we have added onto our analyses by looking at the proportion of Pell Grant students (low- and moderate-income students who receive a federal grant to cover a portion of tuition costs) an institution enrolls—in addition to the PEP an institution produces for its low-income students—to provide us with a much fuller picture of the mobility a school is producing.
This is a fuller picture, but inaccurate. You end up measuring mobility from THAT school and student level. What about regional and state comparisons of economic mobility?
2) When you add in the percentage of students who qualify for some level of Pell Grants, you are fundamentally focusing on a different group of schools. That is okay! The article develops two lists of schools that score well on upward mobility for Latinx and African American students. I believe it is good information, a useful filter if you are trying to decide between schools. Nevertheless, be discerning. A school in my state, situated in an economically distressed region, is shining brightly in their report. Those of us who live here, know it differently. A degree from that institution is still not well regarded. I want that to change for the better, believe me. But THAT will take significant institutional changes AND time.
3) Nowhere in the report does it discuss 4-year and 6-year graduation rates. Getting into a school is not the issue. Getting out in four years is critical to increasing your economic mobility by reducing your total loans, payback period, and monthly payment.
How do you become one of the 39% who DO graduate in four years? Basically, don’t change your major after your first year, get your next three years of classes locked in. Go online at 12:01 am on class sign-up day for courses you need to graduate on time. Don’t flunk anything that is a core course, requiring you to do it again. That focus and strategic effort are what it takes to get out in the 4 years
100 blogs later, I am seeing some REAL changes coming to Higher Education. Why? Because YOU the consumers are demanding it? Maybe. A bigger reality is fewer students getting a lot pickier about how they get their education, and how much it costs.
And I say, Hallelujah!
Next week, another lie exposed in the Student Loans arena!
Until Next Time,
All My Best,
Bonnie Burkett
