Dive Brief:
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States that tie public college funding to performance metrics like graduation and retention rates are perpetuating the inequities in funding and performance in public higher ed, and they’re not boosting completion at institutions in the state.
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Performance-based funding fails to account for non-graduation measures of institutional success and fails to consider the missions and circumstances facing an institution.
- A new paper from The Century Foundation recommends instead of performance-based funding, “states should focus on building the resource capacity of the lowest-performing colleges.”
Dive Insight:
The paper points out that high performing schools are often higher resource institutions that have the funds to implement innovative strategies to boost completion on campus. The schools with the lower performance metrics — often historically Black institutions or those serving high minority populations — do not have the deep endowment funds from which to draw, and dwindling state and federal funding has meant these institutions are struggling to close the gaps with less money.
Too, these institutions often serve high populations of low-income students with higher reliance on financial aid who may need to leave school for a time to work to earn enough money so they can complete their educations. Many of their students often transfer between institutions; transfer students don’t count towards an institution’s graduation rates, but do count against retention numbers. At better-resourced institutions, often emergency funds exist to help students make up gaps in tuition balances to help propel them to graduation. The underresourced schools often have no such funds.
The paper argues that by tying funding to graduation and retention rates, states are actually exasperating the issue by further restricting the resources of institutions already struggling to make ends meet. Instead of incentivizing schools to boost graduation, it actually inhibits their ability to implement any innovative tactics or hire any additional support staff to push students to the finish line.