Dive Brief:
- The latest issue of the "Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences" examines effectiveness relating to historical objectives of higher education, largely staying away from politicized metrics elected officials have latched onto, like cost effectiveness.
- Inside Higher Ed reports the papers included in the journal study student achievement and teacher quality in STEM fields, the effect of tuition increases on student enrollment patterns, and limited access to state flagships for lower-income students because of expanded opportunities for their higher-income peers.
- Another study looks at how the “college for all” movement makes low-performing students overlook sub-B.A. degree programs that could leave them better off in the job market, and one more argues decontextualized analyses of college performance create serious flaws in outcomes.
Dive Insight:
Elected officials have championed the idea of college accountability, discussing new ways to measure schools’ effectiveness and hold them accountable for student outcomes. The reauthorization of the HIgher Education Act is sure to come with new accountability structures for colleges relating to eligibility for federal financial aid.
The College Scorecard started out as an initiative to rank schools, but the Obama administration backed off of that idea in favor of what has been both praised and criticized as a data dump. By including information about student outcomes and graduate earnings without any information about the types of students who attend these schools, more selective colleges could have better results simply because they start with higher-performing students. In making new information available to researchers and families, however, the College Scorecard has also been celebrated.