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Introduction
In 2011, a group of college and university presidents came together determined to find a set of metrics that would give policymakers a more comprehensive picture of higher education. They believed the new measurements would improve the public policy debate on higher education.
For more than two years, this group worked diligently to analyze data on five issues they saw as critical to higher education:
- Repayment and default rates on student loans—to determine whether graduates can get jobs that allow them to repay their education loans.
- Student progression and completion—to illustrate progress toward completion of credentials, including critical momentum points.
- Cost per degree—to show the costs for an institution to produce a degree.
- Employment outcomes for graduates—to indicate students’ ability to find employment and increase earnings after graduation.
- Student learning outcomes—to show how effectively an institution delivers and assesses the learning required for a given credential and facilitates comparisons of various institutions’ credential quality.
Recommendations
This work produced a good framework of metrics that, when considered collectively, provide a holistic perspective on how well individual institutions or groups of institutions are performing.
To implement this framework, the college and university presidents recommended:
- Increase access to data for all institutions. The field would benefit greatly from a centralized, national clearinghouse, not tied to any government entity. The existing National Student Clearinghouse could serve as a model or could be expanded to fulfill this role.
- Reduce institutional burden. To create a new framework, a lead group of institutions must further develop the five metrics to address the ongoing burden of data production and reporting.