In an effort to rein in exploding college costs, President Barack Obama’s administration is applying pressure to universities with the oldest trick in the textbook: grades.
Using criteria such as tuition, graduation rates and the percentage of students receiving Pell grants, among other factors, the administration intends to make a scorecard for each university that it will eventually use to determine federal aid to those schools.
Normally, I’m a believer in the power of government programs to fill in the gaps between what the market dictates and what is socially beneficial. However, this well-intentioned endeavor creates a blanket solution to the complex problem of making college affordable.
Instead of trying to create a one-size-fits-all solution, the administration’s focus should be on maximizing the ability of individual students to take their aid to the college that best suits them.
Janet Napolitano, the recently appointed president of the University of California, offered a similar criticism of the plan in an interview with Washington Post reporters.
Napolitano expressed a deep skepticism for the criteria to produce meaningful rankings, noting that a large number of exceptions will have to be made. Considering that the UC generally fairs well in the administration’s criteria, and would likely benefit from the new system, Napolitano’s criticism is particularly damning.
Her remarks highlight the scorecard’s biggest problem: It disregards each university’s specific needs and environment.
Let’s deal the with the issue of context first.Each college deals with thousands of variables that influence the way it teaches and conducts its business.Some colleges focus specifically on the needs of the local population, and therefore admit a lot more low-income students, since those students need to stay close to home.
These students, on average, will have lower graduation rates than those that attend larger universities.But that doesn’t change the fact that these regional schools are sometimes a person’s best – if not only – option to climb up the economic ladder.
The numbers, and by extension the federal government’s scorecard, may not accurately reflect that fact.
Schools that have great programs in lower-paid but socially valuable vocations such as service work and nursing could also see a disproportional loss in aid because of criteria that take post-graduation salary into account for the scorecard.
Tying funding to blanket criteria forces educational institutions to focus solely on the variables being judged to the detriment of other, less quantitative areas.
For example, former President George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind, while holding elementary and middle schools accountable for their metrics, has also encouraged the formation of a teach-to-the-test curriculum. Such development spurs competition, but not progress.
A better approach for college funding would be to continue to invest in the individual students. More money for Pell grants, more money into social programs to help lower-income families and allow students greater freedom in attending school, more encouragement for schools to come up with innovative ways of teaching – such as the president’s Race to the Top program for elementary and secondary schools – are worth the administration’s time more than the scorecard.
To President Obama’s credit, the White House has given its detractors sufficient lip service, promising to reach out to the public and university officials in order to better synthesize the data it will use.
But the bigger issue here with the scorecard is a continuation of the exact kind of educational culture that has been growing around the country: an increased reliance on measurements – GPA, SAT, ACT, a laundry list of “accomplishments” to add to resumes – has, to an extent, created a culture that focuses more on one definition of success as opposed to the creative educational process.
In reality, UCLA will likely see few negative impacts of the administration’s plan.
However, the costs to higher education in general could be substantial.If the administration is really dedicated to making a difference, it’s better off spending it’s time – and political capital – elsewhere.