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.

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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.

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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."

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I'm Not the Only One

Yesterday Kevin Carey considered the NY Times piece, and what he knows of me, and concluded that "that the liberal professoriate is alive and well."

I think he's completely correct, and want to highlight some fine examples of my junior colleagues who also prove his point (for the record, my senior colleagues confirm his impression too). I am-- by far-- not the only academic focused on issues of inequality and striving to use rigorous methods to examine them.

For starters, one only needs to look across the hall from my office, next door to my esteemed colleague Mike Olneck, where you can find Doug Harris, Nancy Kendall, Adam Nelson, and Tricia Burch. All in the throes of early careers, all making outstanding contributions to the study of educational policy by choosing their topics and approaches with an eye towards clear identification of both problems and solutions.

Adam is an historian whose painstaking attention to detail and beautiful writing increases our awareness of the broader and longstanding social issues which shape current policy debates. For an example, see his well-reviewed book, The Elusive Ideal: Equal Educational Opportunity and the Federal Role in Boston's Public Schools, 1950–1985. Adam brings just as much of his energy to his teaching, conveying an affinity and talent for undergraduate education that most parents just dream their kids will get exposure to,

Doug Harris, far more well-known than I, burst on the academic scene fresh from the Economic Policy Institute, and quickly established himself as a thoughtful leader of the movement to measure teacher quality in an objective, comprehensive, yet accessible way. He is a jack of all trades, as many of the best economists are, even daring to collaborate with me (poor boy!) on a ridiculously large study of financial aid. His approach could never be considered partisan, and as a result he has fans on both the right and the left. I certainly count myself among them.

Tricia Burch somehow (how? How???) manages to be an outstanding teacher and mentor (according to every student I've met) while also generating careful conceptual and empirical work on educational policy and practice. And, to top it all off, she is a departmental leader of the movement to value one's family, as well as one's academic life. She has a forthcoming book, as well as two gorgeous children and a very happy marriage. Most impressive.

Finally, there is Nancy Kendall, our most recent hire. Better than almost anyone, Nancy simultaneously represents the old guard and the new, with her deep commitment to questioning normative conceptions of equity and her extremely sensitive and thorough ethnographic approach to understanding the lives of children in the most vulnerable situations. Nancy and her beautiful baby and husband will spend the next year in Mozambique, as part of a Fulbright fellowship.

Colleagues like these promise that the academy going forward will never leave behind the past, but will at the same time find new ways to work and teach that should hopefully demonstrate to more Americans that higher education need not be considered the domain of the elite.

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The Graduation Rate Gap: Minding What Matters?

One of the dirtiest secrets in higher education is that getting in--the focus of 18 years of hard work in some families--is no guarantee of college success. The sad truth is that at many public four-year colleges and universities fewer than half of entering freshmen complete a degree within six years. And in some cases those low average rates conceal incredible disparities based on race and family income.

Kevin Carey of Education Sector has done a remarkable job at turning the nation's attention to this often overlooked problem in recent years. He helped create College Results Online which enables the average Joe to spend hours of fun picking out individual schools and seeing just how low their graduation rates can go. (Seriously, go check it out-- it's FUN!)

Most recently Carey issued Graduation Rate Watch, a report that uses six years of federal data to look at changes over time in the black-white gap in college completion. His primary point: between 2002 and 2006 some schools made significant strides in closing their gaps, while others did not. And in fact, some schools had (and have) no gap at all. Therefore, Carey concludes, the answers are clear: too many colleges are indifferent to the plight of minority students, they know what they need to do, and we just need to push them to do it.

Kevin and I agree on most things. We agree that the feds and states are paying far too little attention to low rates of college success. We agree that disparities in degree completion rates are unacceptable. And we agree that institutions of higher education need to be a part of the solution But on one crucial point we disagree: what should be done.

Drawing on a case study of a single college (Florida State) and its lovely college-support program CARE, Kevin contends that the solution to closing the college achievement gap lies in "creating incentives for institutional leaders to act on the knowledge that already exists." His goal in making this kind of statement is to get educators to step up-- they know what needs to be done, and what remains is to take action.

But the researcher in me hesitates to endorse this plan. Here are a few reasons why:

1. There is little evidence that differences in students' college graduation rates are primarily or even substantially attributable to school-level factors. Go back to the Coleman report--his intelligent hypothesis was that inequities in schools due to segregation were driving black/white differences in educational outcomes. But instead he found that family background and other student-level characteristics drove far more of the variation in student achievement. Yes, some school-level factors matter--among them teacher quality--but empirical evidence indicated that changing schools themselves would not diminish educational inequality much.

Why would we think things would be different in higher education? The typical argument goes like this: We know that institutional choices and policies (financial aid, academics, advising, faculty, incentives, student engagement, etc) matter in terms of student learning, retention, and attainment. Given our diverse, decentralized higher education "system" there is substantial inter-institutional variation in the quality of those choices and policies. Therefore, "institutional effects" should be significant and real.

Well, they may be significant, they may be "real," but there is little hard data to say that they are large and should be the main focus of policy reform. I'm not saying that colleges and universities aren't different from one another in ways that matter, but because higher education is not compulsory and its gates are closely guarded by the gods of test scores and $$ the level of stratification in the college entry process is so intense that students attending different schools are very different from one another. There have been very few studies of institutional effects in higher ed that deal with that selection issue appropriately. I strongly suspect that if a good study were done (and given data constraints it'd be hard to do), we'd find that policymakers would get the biggest bang for their buck by working to reduce race, class and gender disparities in who goes to college and where they go.

2. Another important concern: There can be unintended consequences when you push colleges to close achievement gaps. Take this scenario: You've got 30 percentage point gap in college completion, with 40% of black students finishing a degree in 6 years, compared to 70% of whites. You want to close that gap. So you tell your admissions director to solve the problem. And he does: by being more selective in which black kids he admits. Admitting only very highly-prepared black students may mean a decline in the number of black kids on campus, but it's likely to increase the completion rate of those who are admitted. And if he coupled his efforts with a greater effort at targeted recruiting of minorities (including directing merit-based scholarships at them) , he might succeed in simultaneously increasing diversity and completion rates. Not a bad thing per se (perhaps) but definitely not what Carey has in mind...

3. There is not a shred of evidence that FSU's CARE program actually works to increase student retention or achievement. No evaluation that takes into account who they serve to start with, nada. Yes, they've got data indicating that CARE students start with lower entering test scores than other students and end up with higher retention rates, but NO--this doesn't automatically mean that success is due to the program. What if CARE students are simply more motivated than other students-- meaning that they were more likely to be retained from the start? We don't have any way to account for that in the absence of a good ol' random assignment trial where we assign students at random to participate in CARE. Now that would be worth doing!


Of course I understand that Kevin's goals are different from mine. Ultimately he operates in a world where being 51% sure that you're right when making policy recommendations is sufficient-- after all, if we don't advocate for changes in colleges, there might not be attention paid to higher ed at all (or dollars spent). But in my little research world, I need to be much more confident that the recommendation I'm making will be effective in creating the kind of change we aim for--AND, I want to focus on what will make the biggest difference. And there's simply little hard evidence to suggest that adopting a program like FSU's would help to close the black/white gaps in completion at other schools.

Why not--instead of "tinkering at the margins" with school reform--tackle the larger and more systemic problems like ending poverty and racial segregation? (Why is it that educators and educational policymakers have a hard time seeing what happens outside of schools as being part of their domain?) Why not make higher education compulsory, and in doing so greatly increase the motivation to make high school meaningful? Why not re-envision the entire system and create a p-16 structure which compels higher ed and secondary ed to take an interest in one another?

The last thing we need to do is fan the flames of fears about accountability, encouraging colleges and universities to turn even more inward, engaging in ego-think, and directing their attention at self-preservation rather than student success. We do want them to do more-- and they can be an important part of the process of change-- but they need direct their attention at the things that matter most.

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