Change welcomes letters to the editor. They should be sent to the executive editor, Margaret Miller, at change@carnegiefoundation.org.
College Costs and Prices
I read Jane Wellman’s thoughtful essay (The Higher Education Funding disconnect: Spending More, Getting Less, Change, November/December 2008) just after spending three days with students at UMass Boston, the very students whose lives are in the balance these days. And while their institution is struggling to make the path to graduation easier, their success is hampered by the realities that Wellman describes so clearly.
Nearly all of the students we interviewed for The NewsHour expect to be deeply in debt by graduation, and nearly all said that they were receiving minimal financial help from their families. What was particularly striking, however, was their deep faith in the power of a college education to improve their lives.
Colleges don’t know how lucky they are that today’s students haven’t replaced faith in the American Dream with anger about how they’re being treated. Who knows how long that will continue? What would happen if most students realized just how much money is going to the ‘arms race,’ to what Wellman calls “institutional entrepreneurship,” to bloated salaries and other inducements to recruit so-called superstars, and other to efforts to boost U.S. News and World Report ratings? Or if students knew how little attention is paid to their learning, or to how they are being taught, and by whom?
Wellman’s essay is a call to action. It’s time for transparency and for a re-examination of priorities.
—John Merrow
Education Correspondent
The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer
President, Learning Matters Incorporated
Funding Floors
While exposing the myth that more money does not necessarily mean higher graduation rates (“No Correlation: Musings on Some Myths About Quality,” Change, November/December 2008), Peter T. Ewell then perpetuates other myths by not acknowledging the complex relationship between institutional resources, admission criteria, student socioeconomic background, and student success. Ewell is basically right that spending wisely beats spending more; but we still need a spending floor. All evidence suggests that public comprehensives add at least as much learning value as universities with deeper pockets. That result reinforces the incredible bargain of their tuition rates and, given their transparent sticker prices, their draw on public financial aid. But evidence suggests that the floor of funding is too low.
It is also no surprise, or no myth, to those in the public comprehensives sector that our institutions, while not highly selective, create more learning. There is no causal relationship between selectivity and learning. In fact, public comprehensive institutions are confident that value-added measures of learning will demonstrate considerable accomplishment.
As the Documenting Effective Educational Practices project suggests, there is no miracle cure on campus other than a culture of caring. Such a culture requires moral leadership, institutional research with a capacity to infer causes from effects, and the will to invest in academic and student support, which rarely makes the news.
—Jolene Koester
Chair, American Association of State Colleges and Universities
President, California
State University, Northridge
Northridge, CA
Sitting in our office on a community college campus in one of the lowest-funded states in terms of higher education, we are intrigued by Peter Ewell’s observations about the relationship between resources and outcomes. Clearly he’s right that what really matters is what you spend your resources on. At the same time, there is some “floor” funding level below which a college simply doesn’t have the resources to serve its students. Many in the California community colleges (where spending per student is half of what the California State University campuses receive, and a fourth of what goes to the University of California) would argue that we’re below that floor.
With this in mind, the California Basic Skills Initiative (BSI) has been working on a new model for looking at costs and quality. Many of the approaches that research has demonstrated would create better conditions for learning and increased student success—learning communities, supplemental instruction, increased counseling support, dedicated tutoring, increased classroom time on task, more flexible learning environments—require significant up-front investments of resources. However, our work in the BSI suggests that in states where enrollment isn’t capped (essentially outside California), much of this investment would be recovered if the programs successfully increase future student retention and progression to the degree. In some cases the investment may even return a “profit.”
In the end, we in the community colleges are challenged with serving the most underprepared segment of the higher education population, often overrepresented by students from historically underserved ethnic groups. To truly address the achievement gaps that are so commonly observed, we would love to be able to dedicate additional resources in a strategic, evidence-based manner that would make a difference in so many students’ lives.
—Robert Johnstone
Dean of Planning, Research and
Institutional Effectiveness
Skyline College
Vice President
Research & Planning Group of California
—Regina Stanback Stroud
Vice President, Instruction
Skyline College
San Bruno, CA
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