Yesterday, Tuesday June 19th, The Institute for a Competitive Workforce (ICW), held an event releasing the 3rd edition of its Leaders & Laggards series, A State-by-State Report Card on Public Postsecondary Education. The report analyzes the performance of different state public higher education systems and assigns letter grades to each state according to their outcome, identifying the best performers and those who have fallen behind. In addition to highlighting successful state practices, the report includes recommendations for what states performing poorly can do to improve select performance areas.
The Leaders & Laggards Report grades states on:
1. Student Access & Success
2. Efficiency & Cost-Effectiveness
3. Meeting Labor Market Demand
4. Transparency & Accountability
5. Policy Environment
6. Innovation
The overall objective of the report is to “arm readers with information that gives them a clear-eyed view of how state systems of higher education compare with one another on a host of outcome, efficiency, and policy measures”.
Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce estimated that “by 2018 more than 60% of American jobs will require some form of postsecondary education”. While 70% of U.S. high school graduates now continue on to some form of postsecondary education- a seemingly encouraging statistic- as identified in the Leaders & Laggards report, “fewer than half of those who enroll finish a degree or certificate within six years”. More specifically, Andrew P. Kelly, Research Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, stated that, “the national median for four-year degree completion is just above 40%...[and] for two-year degree completion is just above 20%”. In her welcome remarks at yesterday’s report launch, Margaret Spellings, President of the U.S. Forum on Policy Innovation and Senior Advisor for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, shared that there are an estimated, “3.5 million unfilled jobs in the U.S. due to lack of higher education credentials, despite the 8.2% unemployment rate”.
In the report’s introduction, the ICW calls for a shift “away from a heavy focus on inputs such as spending and toward and emphasis on student outcomes, return on public investments, and transparency”. The report explains that few states have developed adequate ways to assess the quality of their higher education programs, and that, “without these measures of quality, states will be hard-pressed to ensure that their investments in postsecondary education are paying off.” Grover “Russ” Whitehurst, Director of Brookings Institution’s Brown Center on Education Policy, claims that student outcomes are also vitally important for the families of prospective students to know. At yesterday’s event, Whitehurst explained, “short of buying a home, and investment in higher education is the biggest investment a family will make”.
While it seems quite apparent that there is a need for increased data and analysis on the performance of postsecondary education institutions, there is controversy over whether the assignment of letter grades is the most affective and appropriate method of examination. The ICW explains their hope that, “state leaders can use [the report’s] information to craft a reform agenda that best fits their needs and aspirations”. Is this possible?
The ICW also explains that, “in order to fairly compare one state’s performance to another’s, all data used in the report had to be nationally collected or reported, using normalized definitions for each metric across institutions and states”. Is this enough? Is it fair to grade states side-by-side when there are so many differences in state demographics that effect outcomes?
According to Joe Cortright, CEOs for Cities Senior Advisor, a defining feature of City Vitals 2.0, a CEO’s for Cities report on benchmarking city and regional economic performance, is that there is no rank indicator. Cortright explains that values are not about praising or criticizing cities for their current state, but rather evaluating a city’s “potential to make change over time”. Is this a more effective grading metric? Would it be more worthwhile for colleges and families to know how state systems of higher education compare with one another or the potential for a state’s system of higher education to change over time? Would a failing grade catalyze state prioritization of postsecondary degree attainment or would the evaluation of a state’s potential to change over time serve as a more encouraging motivator?
Are the grading specifics even worth harping over? Maybe the most valuable take-away from the new “Leaders & Laggards” report is that it is becoming increasingly important for adults to attain higher education degrees in order to be successful in the workforce, but students are failing to complete their degrees and states are failing to investigate degree completion.
Hopefully the release of the ICW’s “Leaders & Laggards” report will stimulate conversations about education attainment, talent development, and states’ Talent Dividends, the monetary value to states of increasing college attainment rates by one percentage point. While an outcomes-based letter grade system may not be a perfectly accurate grading method due to inconsistencies between state demographics, maybe a state report card is exactly what is needed to reinvigorate the conversation of adult higher education and talent dividends.