States fund public colleges primarily based on how many students are enrolled. But a number of legislatures are considering policies that would link funding to whether students graduate.
This strikes me as a terrible idea. Not necessarily in itself, but considered in conjuction with the affirmative action policies entrenched at our nation’s colleges. The effect of these policies is to systematically place certain minorities into schools for which they are woefully unprepared.
Add this kind of legislation on top of that, and you leave colleges with a difficult decision: continue to admit minorities who graduate at a lower rate than the rest of the students, or become more discriminating in who is allowed to enroll in your school.
So, will colleges choose to have their funding cut, or to be sued for discrimination?
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This kind of thing just aggravates me. It’s not the school’s fault if people don’t graduate. I do understand that they need to make the programs relevant and give proper support, but if all that is in place, where is the human choice in all this?
Neither the dr or I graduated (he’s not a real dr, needless to say). He was jazz studies and I was early childhood education, anyone surprised? He got all he could from the jazz program, figured he would rather be at home than gigging, taught himself a bunch and now supports me fabulously. Should they get rid of Jazz studies because a lot of them don’t graduate when they figure out you can’t get a job with it? Should they have told us not to get married so he wouldn’t need to support a family? He loved the program, learned a ton, wouldn’t take for his time there, but it wasn’t something he needed to finish, which wasn’t the schools fault.
I didn’t finish for two reasons. Back then, it’s changed now, if you got the early childhood degree, you pretty much had to be in public school with ‘at risk’ students in the head start program, or continue on for a masters to be in admin. You were “overqualified” to do what I really wanted to do, which was just take of 1 to 4 year olds in a classroom. I actually liked working in daycare classrooms and would have done it for the rest of my life quite happily. That’s not the schools fault. The second reason is I just don’t like lectures and didn’t really like college. I love to learn, but only what I want when I want. I’m kind of a horses patoot about that.
Your point is well taken here too Mike, and again, not the schools fault. Sometimes life doesn’t allow graduation, sometimes graduation isn’t what you need. The only time it should be counted against the school is if someone really desires a degree and was asking for help and didn’t receive it, within reason.
You’ve had the wrong lecturers.
Very cool! What’s Doc Zoon’s axe?
States can fund Colleges any legal way they see fit. I think funding based on graduation rates is backwards, but if a state’s duly elected legislators see merit in it, who am I to stop ‘em?
That’s true, Rufus, but when the government tells the schools to do two contradictory things I’m going to point it out. Politicians want credit for being on the “good” side of both issues and pretend there aren’t choices to be made.
Mike,
I don’t disagree, and it’s a good post, but this is why state’s rights are so important. If a state does that, and ends up with law suits, or it simply doesn’t work, other states will learn from their mistake and it will go away. If it becomes a federal, or national edict it will never be allowed to fail. I wrote my comment to show that this is a good, real world example of the importance of state’s rights.
Piano. Can play clarinet and sax too, but has actually made money with his piano.
I am extremely jealous! I have been noodling around with the piano for a few years. It’s a very humbling instrument. I’m finally at a point where I can “play,” but every time, EVERY TIME, I sit down and try to work on a song one of the Little Fireflies runs up and starts hitting the keys as I try to practice. The thing sits idle all day long, then I sit down after a long day in the salt mines with the hopes of a few moments of solace and one of the little snot-nosed ankle-biters runs up, “Daddy, daddy, listen to what I can do!” As Mrs. Firefly and I often say, in our best, Scooby Doo Villain voices, “Our plan would have worked too, if it weren’t for you meddling kids!”
Tell Doc Zoon my oldest just went down state in the “Big High Schools” category for playing Gershwin’s Three Preludes. I literally sat there dumbfounded watching him play at districts and state. It’s got to be Mrs. Fireflies DNA because I can’t comprehend how he moves his fingers that fast!
Tracy… I agree with your premise — obviously students have the most say in whether or not they graduate, but graduation is about the only truly verifiable way a university has to measure academic success.
Measuring full-time equivalents (FTE) is good with the “butts in seats” approach, but that bases the merit more on the recruiting and admission folks than on the faculty and student services departments (with the students the life’s blood of the university).
I agree with Rufus on the state’s rights thing. States have been throwing money at universities based on legislator loyalty — look at UT and A&M in Texas and all that oil money. When 2/3 went to UT and the other 1/3 went to A&M the Texas Techs, UNTs, et al. get a pretty short stick end. Maybe another way would work.
I definitely think it’s a state issue. And I do understand that there has to be a way to measure things (although I tend to disagree with numbers = success always). It just bugs me when people won’t see that sometimes people make other choices no matter how good they make the alternative.
How do they count graduation stats? Is it that you finish what and where you start in a linear fashion? I have many friends who start school at 18 just because that’s what you are supposed to do, then end up quitting for a season until they find out what it is they want, and then go back to finish up. How do those count for graduation?
Counting grads is the rub… they could group students into Traditional Undergrad, Adult “degree completion” non-traditional, graduate, etc. Most schools have a deadline for finishing before your catalog runs out for example so they can track it. My university groups student populations like that (most do in some way) — the time line would be the difficult part.
GPAs aren’t necessarily a good measure because of the general grade inflation the past 40 years or so (George Bush’s Yale C+ = very hard work; Joe Blows 2009 C+ = almost brain dead or lazy).
As you said Mike, this wouldn’t be a bad idea if these same governments didn’t put all sorts of restrictions and provisos on how colleges spend their money and educate their students. Ultimately this will create graduation factories and not educational institutions, there is a difference.
Mike… on the affirmative action policies… I’d wager (I haven’t done research into the numbers so I’m educable) you’re talking relatively few — percentage-wise. ELite colleges are just that “elite”. No one is clamoring to go to UT Permian-Basin in Odessa Texas or Cal. State San Bernardino or Idaho St., etc. All of those are good schools at which someone can learn a lot and reach their goals (unless your goal is to move the levers of federal power — and that’s probably a different post altogether)
Your workaday state university down past the flagship institutions might could benefit. The plan might totally fail too.
Floyd, I’m not sure what you mean.
When I said that certain minorities are systematically placed into colleges they are underprepared for, I was talking about the fact that since all universities “need” to have a certain percentage of each minority, regardless of ability, then necessarily minorities will be—in general—underprepared at every university, from top to bottom.
When, say, Yale takes the cream of the crop of a minority group, that cream comes from further down in the jug than Yale would normally find acceptable. And it goes on from there. The University of Connecticut also has to make its quota, so its standards are relaxed in turn. Then Hartford University (motto: if you mumble, it sounds like Harvard!) needs its quota filled, and so on.
The end result is that minorities consistently do worse in universities regardless of the university’s reputation for academic excellence. And so they flunk out or drop out at higher proportions than the student body as a whole. It does no one any favors, and if funding is tied to graduation, the schools will suffer simply for complying with affirmative action mandates.
but the disparity is less at “lower” colleges… I agree that affirmative action and grad rate-based funding are cross purposes. The “answer” might be race-based graduation rates. If you graduate students at rates higher than average or something….. I get a headache even contemplating it — the next government boondoggle.
Hmmm, I forget, where’s Huggins coaching these days? JohnFN, you know what I’m talkin’ ’bout.
Aren’t several colleges just handing out grades already anyway? It seems that I’ve read of this complaint recently. Perhaps it’ll all just come out in the wash, so to speak? Frankly, they strike me as re-education camps all too often, so it’ll be interesting to see how much farther they sink as they congratulate themselves on the trip down.
that’s why parents should do some shopping among colleges…
I re-educate my students from the bullshit coming out of the CA public education system every semester.