Beware the New "Education Sector"

Over the years, Kevin Carey and I have had our tussles, most recently over whether some of his recent stances on education reform were too faithful to a business model, which I called "neoliberal."  But throughout it all, I have remained a fan of both Kevin and his shop, Education Sector, since both are known for asking hard, data-driven questions about whether higher education is meeting the needs of students from disadvantaged families.   So I am extremely disappointed to see that Education Sector has been hijacked by the conservative Right, and now clearly represents the interests of business elites, pushing free-market principles on all of education.  Kevin, to his credit, is getting the hell out of there, moving to the New America Foundation, accompanied by his talented colleagues Stephen Burd, Amy Laintinan, and Rachel Fishman.

Within a few days the change at Education Sector will be complete.  The leadership includes several consultants to the Romney campaign and members of the Hoover Institution, such as John Chubb, Macke Raymond, and Bill Hansen, who seem to believe that markets have magical powers, and that educating students is akin to making hamburgers or sauerkraut. Worse yet, Hansen is a former Bush appointee who lobbies for the Apollo Group, and has worked against every effort to contain corruption in for-profit schools.  He was president of Scantron, of the "fill in the bubble" testing industry, and has worked to advance the cause of student loan providers. And his jobs have been described as things like "creating a new education line of business...and  integrating the education services activities throughout the company into a strategic product portfolio." Stephen Burd's long been on to this guy- he is trouble.

No doubt about it, these folks will use Education Sector to advance an agenda aimed at ensuring the federal government stops helping students afford college.  They'll start by telling us that college isn't really necessary, and that financial aid is ineffective-- but they'll also do nothing to ensure public higher education becomes free. Instead, they will push free-market solutions -- mainly online education-- for other peoples' children, while probably sending their own kids to elite private schools.

So next time you see a report from Education Sector, give it a second look.  Theirs are no longer "Charts You Can Trust."  They are acts of political manipulation pushed by the hard Right.

Consider yourself warned.

Updated at 11:16 am CST. Gee, Google is so much fun.

Measuring Up? The Trouble with Debt to Degree

The following is a guest blog post by Robert Kelchen, graduate student in Educational Policy Studies at UW-Madison, and a frequent co-author of mine. --Sara

I was pleased to see the release of Education Sector’s report, “Debt to Degree: A New Way of Measuring College Success,” by Kevin Carey and Erin Dillon. They created a new measure, a “borrowing to credential ratio,” which divides the total amount of borrowing by the number of degrees or credentials awarded. Their focus on institutional productivity and dedication to methodological transparency (their data are made easily accessible on the Education Sector’s website) are certainly commendable.

That said, I have several concerns with their report. I will focus on two key points, both of which pertain to how this approach would affect the measurement of performance for 2-year and 4-year not-for-profit (public and private) colleges and universities. My comments are based on an analysis in which I merged IPEDS data with the Education Sector data to analyze additional measures; my final sample consists of 2,654 institutions.

Point 1: Use of the suggested "borrowing to credential" ratio has the potential to reduce college access for low-income students.

The authors rightly mention that flagship public and elite private institutions appear successful on this metric because they have a lower percentage of financially needy students and more institutional resources (thus reducing the incidence of borrowing). The high-performing institutions also enroll students who are easier to graduate (e.g. those with higher entering test scores, better academic preparation, etc) which increases the denominator in the borrowing to credential ratio.

Specifically, the correlations between the percentage of Pell Grant recipients (average of 2007-08 and 2008-09 academic years from IPEDS) and the borrowing to credential ratio is 0.455 for public 4-year and 0.479 for private 4-year institutions, compared to 0.158 for 2-year institutions. This means that the more Pell recipients an institution enrolls, the worse it performs on this ratio.

While even though Carey and Dillon focus on comparing similar institutions in their report (for example, Iowa State and Florida State), it is very likely that in real life (e.g. the policy world) the data will be used to compare dissimilar institutions. The expected unintended consequence is “cream skimming,” in which institutions have incentives to enroll either high-income students or low-income students with a very high likelihood of graduation. (Sara and I have previously raised concerns about “cream skimming” with Pell Grant recipients in other work.)

The graphs below further illustrate the relationship between the percentage of Pell recipients and the borrowing to credential ratio for each of the three sectors.

There is also a fairly strong relationship between a university’s endowment (per full-time equivalent student) and the average borrowing to credential ratio. Among public 4-year universities, the correlation between per-student endowment and the borrowing to credential ratio is -.134, suggesting that institutions with higher endowments tend to have lower borrowing to credential ratios. The relationship at private four-year universities is even stronger, with a correlation of -.346. For example, Princeton, Cooper Union, Caltech, Ponoma, and Harvard are all in the top 15 for lowest borrowing to credential ratios.

The relationship between borrowing to credential ratios and standardized test scores is even stronger. The correlations for four-year public and private universities are -.488 and -.589, respectively. This suggests that low borrowing to credential ratios are in part a function of student inputs, not just factors within an institution’s control. In other words, the metric does not solely measure college performance.

It is critical to note that the average borrowing to credential ratio should be lower at institutions with more financial resources and who enroll more students who can afford to attend college without borrowing. However, institutions who enroll a large percentage of Pell recipients should not be let off the hook for their borrowing to credential ratios. These two examples highlight the importance of input-adjusted comparisons, in which statistical adjustments are used so institutions can be compared based more than their value-added than their initial level of resources. The authors should be vigilant to make sure their work gets used in input-adjusted comparisons rather than unadjusted comparisons. Otherwise, institutions with fewer resources will be much more likely to be punished for their actions even if they are successfully graduating students with relatively low levels of debt.


Point 2: The IPEDS classification of two-year versus four-year institutions does not necessarily reflect a college’s primary mission.

IPEDS classifies a college as a 4-year institution if it offers at least one bachelor’s degree program, even if the vast majority of students are enrolled in 2-year programs. Think of Miami Dade College, where more than 97% of students are in 2-year programs but the institution is classified as a 4-year institution.

For the purposes of calculating a borrowing to credential ratio, the Carnegie basic classification system is more appropriate. Under that system an institution is classified as an associate’s college if bachelor’s degrees make up less than ten percent of all undergraduate credentials. The Education Sector report classifies 60 institutions as four-year colleges that are Carnegie associate’s institutions.

This classification decision has important ramifications for the borrowing to credential comparisons. The average borrowing to credential ratio by sector is as follows:

Two-year colleges, Carnegie associate’s: $6,579 (n=942)
Four-year colleges, Carnegie associate’s: $13,563 (n=60)
Four-year colleges, Carnegie bachelor’s or above: $23,166 (n=1,421)

Ten of the twelve and 20 of the top 40 four-year colleges with the lowest borrowing to credential ratios are classified as Carnegie associate’s institutions. For example, Madison Area Technical College is 54th on the Education Sector’s list of four-year colleges, but is 564th of 1,002 associate’s-granting institutions. These two-year institutions with a small number of bachelor’s degree offerings should either be placed with the other two-year institutions or in a separate category. Otherwise, anyone who wishes to rank institutions based on their classification would be comparing apples to oranges.

In conclusion: the effort in this report to measure institutional performance is a laudable one. But the development and use of metrics is challenging precisely because of their potential for misuse and unintended consequences. Refining the proposed metrics as described above may make them more useful.

A Breath of Fresh Air

Kevin Carey visited UW-Madison this week. He spent some time with my Intro to Debates in Higher Ed Policy class, and also gave a talk at WISCAPE. I have to admit, I was jet-lagged from AERA and feeling pretty low when he arrived. But after an hour of listening to Kevin speak to my colleagues at Madison, I perked right up. I only wish more leaders of my institution, and more faculty, had been able to attend. For those of you who missed it, here are a few highlights of what he had to say:

"... We've built our higher education system from the top down...the resources given to those newly brought into the fold have never matched those who were there from the beginning. Take Wisconsin.... Madison spends far more money per student than other branches of the University of Wisconsin system, places like Oshkosh and Green Bay. Of course, Madison is a research university, a very good one, and research is expensive. So let's set all that research aside and look only at spending on what the feds classify as "instruction, academic support, and student services." Classified that way, spending at all of the other branch campuses is about the same, roughly $8,500 per student. Here in Madison, it's more than twice as much.

So here's my question: why are you so expensive to educate? Why do you deserve so much more? After all, you're supposed to the smart ones. On average, you got the best preparation, you went to the better high schools, you're more likely to come from a well-off family and less likely to come from a poor one. You're good at learning. You can do a lot of it on your own. Maybe it should take less money to help you reach your educational goals. It's not at all clear to me why it takes so much more. And Wisconsin is very typical in this regard. Run the numbers for another state university system and they usually come out the same way."

No one could offer Kevin a decent response. His comments ring loudly right now-- as students and faculty across the University come forward to support the Chancellor's Initiative that raises tuition in an effort to spend MORE per student, while at the same time stating an intention of enhancing college access. How could we be surprised? What member of the university community wouldn't like to have more money for his/her programs? Who wouldn't like a raise, or feel like they got to see professors more often? Who doesn't want to be successful as an institutional leader, and keep our constituents happy? Don't we all-- always-- want more?

But Kevin challenges us to go beyond our own personal, selfish, ambitions. He wants us to think about what we actually do for a living, and how-- and whether- it matters. If we're really concerned with access, if we really embrace the Wisconsin Idea, shouldn't we value leaders who push us to consider being generous with the rest of the students in the state? Shouldn't we listen hardest to the people who appear the least self-interested? Why aren't folks asking, why would an assistant professor work so hard to protect the ability of low-income students to access this university? What's in it for her? Let me tell you, the answer is nothing -- nothing tangible. Just the truly deep down feeling of knowing this is what I was educated to do, it's how my grandparents and parents raised me, and it's the only kind of work I'm willing to put my son in daycare to go off and do.

It's a simple fact: when we increase spending at a place like Madison, and jack the sticker price, we increase inequalities both in terms of per pupil spending, and in terms of rates of application to the UW. As Kevin says, "When people look at resource allocation numbers for our K–12 schools and see massive inequality, two-to-one spending ratios and the like, they call it injustice and file massive lawsuits. When they see the same numbers for higher education, they call it meritocracy, and a job well done."





Despite assurances of late that elitism doesn't pervade our admissions process (whoever thought it did?) the real issue remains that students and families are scared off by the sticker price. Research supports that, and no intervention's ever successfully found a way around it. No amount of discounting will solve it, and there's no reason to think that just because the problem is bad now, at price=X, that it won't be worse at X+$2,500. Especially in financial times this like. Sure more aid will be available, and that's a lovely thing, but inequities between campuses in the state will have grown, and applications among poor kids to our sttae flagship may well decline.

Maybe some just don't care. After all, we live our lives in the here and now, in our own small professional worlds where first and foremost we protect ourselves. But if you have a few minutes alone at night, try setting that aside and listening closely to our visitor from Washington. He left us with these words:

"Only by subordinating some of their self-interest...and embracing the interests of all institutions, and the students within them, and the students who aren't in an institution at all—will America's elite institutions be able to maintain the historic values of higher education that have done so much to make us the nation we are today."

I'd be so proud to be part of any college or university that took that to heart. Regardless of its so-called level of "prestige."