Fresh ways to more fully measure college value.
Two scholars who study rural and broad-access institutions have just proposed some new measures of the value of colleges. No surprise, their ideas build on the attributes of the campuses they study. But the proposal is more than a self-fulfilling prophecy. I see the metrics as useful starting points for policy makers and funders in determining financial support for various types of institutions — and maybe even as guideposts for students, too.
The ideas for “an expanded vision of the value of postsecondary education” come from two associate professors of higher education, Cecilia M. Orphan at the University of Denver and Kevin R. McClure at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, and are outlined in an article in Change magazine. McClure also highlighted some key points in this Twitter thread.
The hard metrics they propose for measuring something that historically has been difficult to quantify — colleges’ contribution to their communities and regions — are especially intriguing. As the scholars note, currently there’s no commonly accepted way of capturing, comparing, and communicating such impact. From where I sit, clearly there should be. And that dovetails with some Brookings scholars’ research on building more respect for regional colleges that I highlighted last year.
In a nutshell, the higher-education professors make the case for judging regional colleges (and in some cases, other institutions) in three areas: by how well they’re promoting access to higher ed, by how student-centered they are, and by their community impact.
While that’s a refreshing turn from the many studies and rankings that emphasize how colleges affect individuals’ financial returns or social mobility, it’s how to assess these three areas that really struck me as unusual. For example, to gauge student-centeredness, Orphan and McClure list not only emergency financial support as a metric to track, but also professors’ teaching loads and levels of funding for faculty and staff professional development. That suggests a more holistic understanding of what affects the student experience than so many college-value conversations typically cover.
To measure community and regional impact, some proposed metrics (for example, “student, staff, and faculty civic engagement rates”) would be a lot harder to evaluate than others. “Presence of business incubation centers and cultural centers,” for example, you could simply count. But the concept of tracking a broader set of metrics, such as spending on community service and the number of local public-service professionals educated, strikes me as both doable and valuable.
As the business adage goes: What gets measured gets managed. Tracking metrics like the scholars propose could encourage colleges to prioritize those activities, and even help bring that “expanded vision” of higher ed to life. Concerns over public perception of the sector make this a decent time to try.
Check these out.
Here are some education-related items from other outlets that recently caught my eye. Did I miss a good one? Let me know.
- California may have Hollywood and a vibrant arts and music scene, but as the Associated Press reports, “fewer than a quarter of its public schools have a full-time arts or music education teacher, and some schools offer no such classes at all.” Last week, though, voters overwhelmingly approved a celebrity-backed ballot measure that could pump as much as $1 billion a year into arts funding in public schools. The money will also go to programs that include graphic design, coding, animation, music composition, and script writing.
- Colleges will still be able to use many strategies to promote diversity even if the U.S. Supreme Court bans the use of race in admissions, but as one leading researcher and practitioner argues, ultimately, “there is no proxy for race.” Other methods can help, Paulette Granberry Russell, president of the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education, says in an interview in The Intersection newsletter. But they don’t acknowledge “the lived experiences of individuals based on race,” she says. “This is the United States. It has a long history of racial discrimination.”
- Students who were once incarcerated face multiple barriers in pursuing higher education, like limited access to career counseling and difficulty obtaining documents needed for financial aid. A big one: having to disclose their status on admissions and financial-aid forms, as highlighted in the report, “Beyond the Box: Promoting equal access to postsecondary education and academic success for system involved students,” by the Project on Workforce at the Harvard Summer Fellowship Series. Since 2004, a Ban the Box movement “has been creating awareness about the impact of collecting criminal record information and documentation,” the report notes. Yet three-quarters of colleges still require applicants to disclose their status.
- After granting colleges and other organizations millions and millions to test new policy ideas for higher ed over the past decade, the U.S. Department of Education didn’t adequately report to Congress on what it learned from its “Experimental Sites Initiatives,” according to the agency’s independent Office of Inspector General. As Higher Ed Dive reports, the department told the office that such reports often offered little insight, but promised to draft a synopsis by the end of the year of all the experiments it had missed.
Programming note: The Edge will not be published next week. Wishing you all a happy — and relaxing — Thanksgiving. I’ll be back in your inboxes with this newsletter on November 30.
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