The Learning Cloud

Revenues versus productivity

A report, Recession, Retrenchment, and Recovery: State Higher Education Funding & Student Financial Aid, was released in October, 2006 by Illinois State University's Center for the Study of Education Policy and its collaborators, State Higher Education Executive Officers and the National Association of State Student Grant Aid Programs. The center studied the ongoing effect of national economic recessions on state support for higher education and concluded that post-recession recovery periods seldom increase per-student-FTE state support to its constant-dollar pre-recession level. Indeed, an earlier SHEEO report revealed that per-student-FTE state support for public institutions is a constant-dollar 25-year low. To understand these studies more fully, we need data on the productivity of public higher education. 

Should and how should learning be assessed?

Elia Powers' 9/21/2006 article for Inside Higher Ed, Assessing Learning Outcomes, summarizes a discussion hosted by the Hechinger Institute on Education and the Media, at Columbia University’s Teachers College. My take on this and other reports of the discussion is that there is an emerging consensus in higher education on several directional ideas:

• Rankings (think U.S. News & World Report), while here to stay, are not a measure of learning outcomes -- rather obvious.
• "Value-added" learning is a concept that is increasingly viable in higher education -- see the descriptions of a list of grants awarded by Teagle Foundation to private four-year colleges, and see also the draft VSA (Voluntary System of Accountability) from NASULGC (with input from AASCU) on behalf of public four-year institutions.
• Voluntary, not mandated, learning accountability should be proactively pursued in order to avoid government mandates or other interventions -- see the aforementioned draft VSA from NASULGC and a 2004 paper in University Business addressed to his private-college constituency by CIC President Richard Ekman. Fear of Data: A warning to CIC members to make peace with data--or suffer the consequences.

Balancing price and cost

My wife tuned to Lou Dobbs on CNN a few nights ago (October 24) and called me down from my home office to view his interview with Sandy Baum of the College Board (transcript available). Dobbs organized the interview to comment on the decreasing affordability of higher education to the middle class, to wit: "Again, I'm going to end it by just adding one more time, the management of those state universities is atrocious and costs are out of control. And it's not fair to our middle class students and those who aspire to the middle class to be saddled with that kind of mismanagement and that kind of financial burden."

Fast forward five days to the October 29 Sunday edition of the Washington Post, which I just read in my DC hotel room.  The Post's Michelle Singletary decried "College Costs: A Tough Equation" to headline her comments. Dobbs, Baum, and Singletary were commenting on a recent report from the College Board, Trends in College Pricing 2006. The report cites a 35% increase in inflation-adjusted tuition increases in four-year public and private colleges and universities over the past five years -- accounting for Dobbs' comment about poor management of per-student operating costs in four-year public universities. The 5-year 35% inflation-adjusted increase amounts to approximately 6% per year. Defenders of public four-year institutions may then point out that this year's average tuition is a bit shy of $6,000, which would mean an increase of about $360 for next year -- not so bad in absolute terms.

Still, it's difficult to dismiss sometimes brash and overly simplifying commentators, such as Dobbs, because of a third report, Trends in Student Aid 2006, that makes clear that financial aid is not keeping pace with the rising price of net tuition for many students. Dobbs and Singletary, for example, believe that a gap in need-based aid is resulting in a growing migration away from higher education for students from lower to middle income brackets, in spite of the good news from a 2005 revision of another report from the College Board, Education Pays 2004. That report documents the annual and life-time relative financial advantages of a two-year degree over a high-school degree, a baccalaureate degree over a two-year degree, and a post-baccalaureate degree over a baccalaureate degree.

So the task for higher education and its policy makers is to balance what higher education charges students, what students and their families can afford to pay, and what governments at all levels should pay for common-good public higher education. The goal is a complex one. For example, there is a relatively bright note in Trends in College Pricing 2006, which all three commentaries failed to mention. The picture for public two-year colleges is quite different than for four-year public universities.  Indeed the report states that, "After grants and tax benefits are considered, full-time students enrolled in public two-year colleges and universities pay less than $100 on average in net tuition and fees. After adjusting for inflation, the net price students actually pay is lower in 2006-07 than it was a decade earlier" -- surely one of the reasons that interest and enrollments in community colleges continue to increase.

All of this continues to reinforce my view that higher education and its policy makers need to understand the role that technology can play in measurably improving and accounting for institutional performance -- the theme of this blog. Accountability and productivity count!

Example of program accountability -- or non-accountability

The report from Arthur Levine described in the excerpt below is a good example of the thoughtful scrutiny implied by what I've labeled "program accountability" -- one of six higher education performance obligations addressed in this blog. Teacher education should be a high priority for many colleges and universities -- an obligation for most public institutions. But higher education is producing neither enough teacher graduates nor, according to Levine's report, adequately prepared graduates. Is the issue inattention, capacity, poor learning models, inflexibility of access, or some combination of these?

Teacher training is chaotic, study says
From the Associated Press, post by CNN.com on September 19, 2006

Aspiring teachers emerge from college woefully unprepared for their jobs, according to a study that depicts most teacher education programs as deeply flawed. The damning review comes from Arthur Levine, former president of Teachers College at Columbia University. His report, released Monday, comes as public schools are under federal orders to have a qualified teacher for every class. It casts doubts on the most basic aspects of how teachers are taught. Teacher quality has a huge influence on whether students pass or fail. The coursework in teacher education programs is in disarray nationwide, the report says. Unlike other professions such as law and medicine, there is no common length of study or set of required skills. Then there are a host of other problems: low admissions standards, disengaged college faculty, insufficient classroom practice and poor oversight, according to Levine's study. "Teacher education right now is the Dodge City of education: unruly and chaotic," said Levine, who now heads the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation. "There's a chasm between what goes on in the university and what goes on in the classroom." Read more ...

Capacity for and convenience of access

The federal report cited in the article excerpted below raises an often overlooked issue. Will the nation's colleges and universities have the capacity to meet the growth in enrollment demand. The report's racial and ethnic enrollment demographics imply the need for flexible access to market-driven programs delivered conveniently to students who are likely to be working while enrolled in college. Traditional access models will not meet this need for "flex" programs delivered dominantly through online (asynchronous) self-service interactions and transactions which are supplemented by as-needed access to academic and administrative interactions through 24x7 call centers and walk-in and office-hour expert consultations. Flex programming also reduces the need for capital investments in new classroom facilities. 

In College Enrollment, Growth of Minorities Will Outpace Rate of Increase for Whites, Report Predicts
Stu Woo, Chronicle of Higher Education, September 15, 2006

Enrollment at degree-granting colleges and universities is projected to increase until at least 2015, especially for minority students, according to a report released on Thursday by the National Center for Education Statistics, a branch of the U.S. Education Department. From 2004 to 2015, enrollment in degree-granting institutions is expected to grow 42 percent for Hispanic students, 30 percent for American Indian or Alaska Native students, 28 percent for Asian or Pacific Islander students, and 27 percent for black, non-Hispanic students. Enrollment for white, non-Hispanic students is predicted to rise 6 percent, while nonresident-alien enrollment is expected to rise 34 percent. This is the first time the annual report, first published in 1964, has included projections of college enrollment by race and ethnicity. The report, "Projections of Education Statistics to 2015," also includes statistics on degrees granted, as well as data on elementary- and secondary-school enrollment, graduates, teachers, and expenditures. Chronicle subscribers can read more ...

The future of the reformation of higher education

The Commission on the Future of Higher Education has posted a "Pre-Publication Copy September 2006" of its final report, "A Test of Leadership: Charting the Future of U.S. Higher Education."  What will be the future of the report -- the Commission's roadmap for reforming higher education?

Another recent report, "Measuring Up 2006" from the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, reveals continuing erosion in a number of the Commission's most strategic objectives. For example, the affordability of access as measured by the percentage of family income required to pay net tuition at public universities continues to decline in many states. This decline implies that the per-student institutional expense of providing services continues to increase at many public universities, and that is another of the Commission's concerns. Together the two reports (from the Commission and the NCPPHE) give policy makers good reason to take action.

It's already clear that Secretary Spellings is taking the Commission's report seriously.  She will "outline a plan for acting on the recommendations at a news conference in Washington on Sept. 26," according to the article U.S. education chief backs panel's call for college reforms: Margaret Spellings, visiting Austin, supports financial aid boost, increased accountability by
Ralph K.M. Haurwitz, Austin American-Statesman, September 11, 2006

Readers who subscribe to the Chronicle of Higher Education can access a collection of recent updates and opinion pieces on the Commission's work:

• Education Department Plans Rule-Making Sessions to Deal With Some of Federal Commission's Ideas
  Stephen Burd, Chronicle of Higher Education, August 21, 2006
• Speaking in Dissent: David Ward of ACE Explains Why He Didn't Sign Commission's Report
  Interviewed by Jeffrey Selingo, Chronicle of Higher Education, August 24, 2006
• Member of Federal Panel on Higher Education Is Tapped for Key Post at Education Department
  Jeffrey Selingo, Chronicle of Higher Education, August 30, 2006
• The Commission's Report: Landmark or Footnote?
  A Chronicle Interview with Charles Miller (Chairman, Commission on the Future of Higher Education), Jeffrey Selingo, Chronicle of Higher Education, August 30, 2006
• Education Department Mined Hundreds of Students' Records as Part of FBI Antiterrorist Operation
  Jeffrey Selingo, Chronicle of Higher Education, August 31, 1005
• Plenty of Ideas About Student Aid, but No Road Map: Proposals on access lack specificity, students and college officials complain
  Stephen Burd, Chronicle of Higher Education, September 1, 2006
• Lengthy Fights Are Expected Over Measures on Accountability: Higher-education leaders are divided over proposal for student-tracking system
  Karin Fischer, Chronicle of Higher Education, September 1, 2006
• Commission Calls Colleges 'Self-Satisfied' and 'Risk Averse:' Critics say report fails to recognize innovation on U.S. campuses
  Elyse Ashburn, Chronicle of Higher Education, September 1, 2006
• Underinvesting in the Future
  Douglas C. Bennett (President, Earlham College), Chronicle of Higher Education, September 1, 2006
  Note:  Bennett's report is of special relevance to the theme of this blog, for he asserts that "the commission also undercuts its recommendation to meaningfully assess student-learning outcomes by repeatedly calling for development and diffusion of technology-based, more efficient (cheaper!) educational methods — without apparently having any evidence that technology-based instruction achieves quality at lower cost." He's wrong about that, for the Commission directly references the work of the National Center for Academic Transformation with multiple institutions to demonstrate that technology can indeed be used to redesign high-enrollment courses for measurably improved learning, increased flexibility for students, and lower per-enrollment costs. See the sidebar description of this work on page 20 of the report, or go to the NCAT website to learn more.
• Both Lamp and Mirror
  Deborah M. Diroce (President, Tidewater Community College), Chronicle of Higher Education, September 1, 2006
• Science and Math Take Money
  Michael V. Martin (President, New Mexico State University), Chronicle of Higher Education, September 1, 2006
• Give Us the Tools
  Frank H.T. Rhodes (President Emeritus, Cornell University), Chronicle of Higher Education, September 1, 2006
• More Than Competition
  Lee S. Shulman (President, Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching), September 1, 2006

An adult perspective on higher education

A new report commissioned by Capella University offers a ringing endorsement of the perceived value of a higher education and shows higher education to be a growth industry -- provided that a number of barriers to the participation of adult students are removed. The report is linked and excerpted below.

Degrees of Opportunity: Adults’ views on the value and feasibility of returning to school.

Degrees of Opportunity is a 2006 national study of the attitudes of adult Americans (age 25 to 60) toward continuing their education. More than half of the survey respondents indicated they would like to pursue additional education — the equivalent of more than 70 million Americans. The study also reveals the reasons millions of adult Americans are returning to school, as well as the barriers that are preventing others from pursuing their educational goals. Even in a time of wide public concern about the rising costs of higher education, the study found that American adults overwhelmingly believe that advanced learning is an investment that pays. Nine out of 10 (89%) said that the benefits of higher education are equal to or greater than the time, money, and energy invested. Despite the value adults placed on higher education, only a third of those who said they wanted more education said they were likely to pursue it. Time management and financial issues were the greatest barriers. Even though these barriers have kept some adults from returning to school, more than half of those who did go back to school said they wish they'd done it sooner — and virtually no students said they wished they'd waited longer.

The final future of higher education

I’m following up my post of a few days ago to provide the report (marked “draft of 08/09/06”) that was approved on 08/10/06 to become, with minor editing and revising, the official final report of Secretary Spellings’ Commission on the Future of Higher Education. The report was approved with only one dissenting vote -- from David Ward, President of ACE. The report appears to differ from the previous draft version only in some differences of opinion concerning the loans available to students as financial aid. The following quote from the report captures its spirit and frames its detailed recommendations:

“To meet the challenges of the 21st century, higher education must change from a system primarily based on reputation to one based on performance.”

Several key recommendations address why and how colleges and universities can improve and account for critical aspects of institutional performance in ways that would allow the public and policy makers to compare the resulting performance measures among like institutions -- recommendations that could drive a cultural shift in higher education of major proportions over the years immediately ahead.

If you’re a Chronicle subscriber, read Federal Panel Approves Final Draft Report on Higher Education, With One Member Dissenting to learn more about the Commission’s final meeting of 08/10/06.

National accountability testing from the ETS

I'll start this posting on an ETS proposal on a strange note by commenting that there are few issues less meaningful than grade inflation, which is frequently in the news -- I just read a Chronicle opinion piece on the topic. Individual teachers give individual grades to students enrolled in individual course sections. It's a leap of faith for an outsider to attribute meaning to an individual grade or a composite GPA because there is seldom a valid reference point for comparison. Force fitting students' grades into a normal distribution makes little sense as a proxy for how well a group of students met a course's learning objectives. When I taught mathematics at UNC-Chapel Hill, my grading policy was that a student's final grade average would be no lower than her final exam score. I had to give a grade and wanted that grade to reflect what the student had learned over the course of the course -- a form of final reckoning against the course's learning objectives that credited students for improved learning outcomes. It would have been much better if the final exam for the course had been developed, administered, and graded by a trusted third party informed by the learning objectives of the course. That's nearly impossible in upper-level baccalaureate and graduate/professional courses that are unique to an institution or that in total garner only small enrollments from term to term. It's easily possible, however, in the "common" courses that are taught (in common) at almost all institutions from almost identical syllabi to large numbers of students term by term. A small number (20-35) of common courses accounts for 35-40% of national enrollments at any one time.  Common courses include the basic fluency courses that we associate with critical thinking (even "college prep" developmental courses) and the largest-enrollment general ed and professional introductory courses. Now I can turn to the ETS proposal.

ETS is proposing an accountability testing program in response to the focus on learning accountability in the discussions and draft recommendations of Secretary Spellings' Commission on the Future of Higher Education. The ETS proposal goes further than testing common courses and basic fluencies. It may prove to be overly ambitious, but it represents a step in the right direction by proposing independent (trusted third party), well and fairly designed assessments that would include the common courses and basic fluencies cited above. Results from such assessments could be used by participating institutions as they wished, but benchmarking among peers would be possible and student learning could be assessed on learning outcomes rather than grades. The proposal also would go a long way toward resolving transfer-credit issues that now impede degree completion for many students.

The article excerpted below reports a range of reactions to the ETS proposal.

Higher-Education Leaders Debate a Testing Service's Proposal for Accountability Testing
Kelly Field, Chronicle of Higher Education, August 8, 2006

As the debate over assessing how colleges are performing heats up in Congress and in statehouses nationwide, a group of higher-education lobbyists, consultants, and accreditors met on Monday to discuss one proposed national accountability system. The focus of the discussion was a report, issued last month by the Educational Testing Service, that calls for the creation of a system that would measure students' general skills, or "work-force readiness," along with their proficiency within their disciplines. The report, "A Culture of Evidence: Postsecondary Assessment and Learning Outcomes," suggests that the system could be incorporated into accreditation reviews by the six regional accrediting agencies(The Chronicle, July 11). Monday's round-table discussion, held at the testing agency's offices here, was designed to solicit reaction to the proposal. The first question, from Judith S. Eaton, president of the Council for Higher Education Accreditation, was whether the report was driven by the federal Commission on the Future of Higher Education's call for increased accountability in academe. The commission, which is scheduled to meet this Thursday to consider the third draft of its report to Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings (The Chronicle, August 4), has recommended that states require institutions to measure student learning. Mari Pearlman, ETS's senior vice president for higher education, said the commission was "absolutely a catalyst" for the testing service's report. She said she had met with Sally L. Stroup, the Education Department's former top higher-education official, to discuss a potential report after the panel began its deliberations last fall. Chronicle subscribers can read more ...

Closing in on the Future of Higher Education

Secretary Spellings' Commission on the Future of Higher Education recently released its third-draft report (08/03/2006). Charles Miller, Commission Chair, also sent a letter to his fellow commissioners to comment on the context in which a final report will soon be issued after only one more meeting of the Commission. From my perspective, Mr. Miller and his Commission colleagues are on the right track, and the current draft is likely to transition to the final report without major surgery -- in spite of the almost polar differences of opinion among some major higher education groups, such as the pro perspective of AASCU and con perspective of NAICU.

This blog is about:

• the need for higher education to improve and account for its performance,
• the necessary (but not sufficient) role of IT in any systemic attempt to improve and account for performance, and
• the IT-enabled learning and service process redesign strategies that have proven sufficient to the improvement task on a limited scale and that are scalable to a systemic level.

It is the need to contain or reduce unit costs -- to control costs and increase productivity in the language of the Commission -- that makes IT a necessary tool of the higher ed reformation envisioned by the Commission. Chairman Miller's letter speaks indirectly to this point by suggesting the higher ed community must "be willing and able to discuss the possibility of disruptive outcomes." Indeed, disruption in the interest of improved learning and service outcomes, increased flexibility for the student, and improved unit (per-student-FTE) cost structures is the goal of IT-enabled service process redesign in higher education. Only after a significant dose of such disruptions does it make sense to apply the principles of continuous quality improvement.

The current draft recommends that institutions "harness the power of information technology by sharing education resources among institutions, and use distance education to meet the educational needs of rural students, adult learners and enhance workforce development." Yes, but there's an even broader and deeper role for information technology implied in a current draft recommendation addressing the affordability of access and noting the need for incentives "to improve the measurement and management of costs and institutional productivity." This idea is captured in what some of us refer to as "institutional performance management."

With apologies for a commercial reference to my employer, I'll note that SunGard Higher Education's Institutional Performance Management Services help institutions identify key metrics for their strategic goals, implement an enterprise data warehouse and dashboard reporting system around those goals and metrics, and plan and implement IT-enabled service redesign initiatives to improve upon and account for the same goals and metrics. The leading sentence in the current report's third recommendation captures succinctly and perfectly the challenge addressed by institutional performance improvement services and the premise of this blog:

"To meet the challenges of the 21st century, higher education must change from a system primarily based on reputation to one based on performance."

Inside Higher Ed provides a more complete account of the Commission's third draft in A Near-Final Report?, and Chronicle subscribers can peruse Federal Panel on Higher Education Releases Third Draft Report in Advance of Final Meeting. My recent post, Amending the future of higher education, speaks and links to earlier work and reports from the Commission.