As more and more states tie their higher-education support to student performance, college leaders need to watch out for unintended effects that could hurt the very students they are trying to serve, a gathering of community-college trustees was told here on Tuesday.
“We want to improve outcomes, and putting money behind it is one way, but at the same time, you have to push back against the distortions and unintended consequences,” Thomas R. Bailey, director of the Community College Research Center at Columbia University’s Teachers College, said during a symposium sponsored by the Association of Community College Trustees.
State allocation formulas that reward community colleges based on the number of students they enroll have opened the doors of higher education to hundreds of thousands of students, Mr. Bailey and other speakers noted.
But getting them in the doors isn’t enough. Well under half of the students who enter degree programs at community colleges end up with certificates or degrees within six years, Mr. Bailey said.
A recent report by the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa’s Education Policy Center said that 22 states had responded by adopting policies that allocate a significant portion of state money to colleges on the basis of student-performance milestones, like making it through remedial courses, earning a semester’s worth of credit toward a degree, or graduating with an associate degree.
Seven more states are making the transition to such a system, and 10 have had formal discussions about it. The report concluded that there is no compelling evidence that such policies have moved the needle on student performance.
Picking the Right Model
In theory, the idea of shifting the incentive from enrolling students to graduating them makes sense, Mr. Bailey said at Tuesday’s symposium. But he added that the jury is still out on the question of whether that approach improves learning. “We can raise completion rates by handing out more diplomas,” he said.
David Cannon, vice chancellor for finance and data management for the Ohio Board of Regents, said his state’s new allocation formula, which it has been phasing in since 2010, is working. Half of the state allocations that go to community colleges are now based on enrollment, 25 percent are based on course completions, and another 25 percent on “success points” such as progressing through remedial education and finishing the first 30 credit hours of classes. The state uses a different performance formula for four-year colleges.
Ohio’s approach rewards colleges that serve more at-risk students, as well as those with high enrollments of students pursuing a science, technology, engineering or mathematics degree.
Sara Goldrick-Rab, an associate professor of educational-policy studies and sociology at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, cautioned that there are many ways that performance-based models can go wrong: when states use inappropriate metrics to measure success, when too little money is distributed to make any difference, and when faculty members feel left out of the process.
In addition, she said, “You can exacerbate inequality if you create a system in which colleges that are ahead remain ahead and those that are behind remain behind.”
Mission Driven by Money
David A. Longanecker, president of the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education, said he strongly supported rewarding colleges for how well their students perform. “I believe that paying people to do something is a lot more effective than asking them to do something,” he said.
But he added that it has to be done carefully. “You have to honor the different missions of different institutions,” Mr. Longanecker said. “Otherwise, they’ll move toward the mission that’s getting the most money.” If serving the underserved is important to the college, the financial formula has to recognize that so that colleges don’t turn away from students who need their help most, he said.
Indiana, Ohio, and Tennessee are among the states whose performance-based models are the most advanced. Tennessee passed a law in 2010 that bases nearly all of the state’s public higher-education dollars on student-success benchmarks.
After the presentations, trustees gathered around tables to discuss whether the approach made sense for their states. Many aren’t yet sold. “I’m a little anxious that performance funding will be a new excuse for our legislature to cut funding to small, rural colleges like ours,” said M. Thomas Perkins, who serves on the board of Western Nebraska Community College. “I just don’t trust them.”
