The October 2011 issue of American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research’s (AEI) Education Outlook included an interesting analysis of the total cost of a bachelor’s degree titled, “Cheap for Whom?:   How Much Higher Education Costs Taxpayers.”  The authors, Mark Schneider and Jorge Klor de Alva, go beyond a surface analysis of tuition rates, student fees, and books.  Their analysis delves deeper into the overall financial cost model to consider and analyze taxpayer subsidies as part of the cost of a bachelor’s degree. 

Schneider and de Alva note that consumers are largely oblivious to the cost of an item, focusing almost solely on the price instead.  As long as the price seems reasonable (or, at least comparable to other similar products), the consumer is not likely to consider what the actual cost of the product is.  As the authors point out, nowhere can this be seen more clearly than in higher education.  Since the downturn of the economy in 2008, a deluge of articles have been published exploring the price of a college education (see the “Impact of the Economy on Higher Education” section of this blog) but little has been written for the American public about the true cost of a degree (that data is typically buried in academic policy and research reports that typically do not receive broad media coverage).  Schneider and de Alva have undertaken the daunting task of publishing the total cost of a bachelor’s degree for the American taxpayer.  Their findings are notable, assuming that those in a position to influence public policy and a broader national discussion read their paper.

The authors divided their sample into the following categories: public, private not-for-profit, and private for-profit institutions.  Beyond that,  they used a variation of the well-known rankings reported in Barron’s Profiles in American Colleges which provides six categories for schools ranging from “noncompetitive” (open admissions schools) to “most competitive” (highly selective, elite institutions).  Interestingly, American taxpayers subsidize the least competitive schools far less than they do the most competitive.  The irony is that the largest and fastest growing sector of the college population includes low-income and non-traditional students who are attending the lesser competitive schools.  These schools tend to offer greater flexibility for part-time students, working adults, and other “nontraditional” student populations.  To provide perspective on the dramatic differences in taxpayer subsidies, consider that “among not-for-profit institutions, the amount of taxpayer subsidies hovers between $1,000 and $2,000 per student per year…”  Among the most selective institutions in the nation, “the taxpayer subsidy jumps substantially to more than $13,000 per student per year.”

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On October 26, 2009, the National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment (NILOA) issued the results of its first annual survey of Provosts and Chief Academic Officers.  When I read the press release and skimmed through the survey, I asked Dr. Jennifer Stephens, our Associate Vice President and Dean of Assessment, to provide me with a guest article describing the survey and the significant findings.

For those of us working for regionally accredited, market-driven institutions, the survey confirms that we utilize assessment and assessment tools in many more ways than traditional research institutions.  I cannot speak for all for-profit institutions, but we embraced assessment as a tool when we realized its value in diagnosing what worked and what didn’t as the online learning field continued to evolve through improvements in pedagogy and technology.  A group of like-minded, for profit and non-profit institutions joined together to form Transparency by Design (TBD), an initiative to publish learning outcomes in a common reporting format.  As we continue to utilize assessment for quality improvement, our faculty will gain the knowledge of what works better for online teaching and our students will benefit through better designed and better instructed classes and programs.  Organizations like NILOA and TBD will share best practices with the goal of providing better outcomes for students.

I think you will enjoy reading the results of the survey as summarized by Dr. Stephens.   I look forward to seeing future surveys that indicate that progress in the utilization of assessment tools is being made by all institutions of higher education.

Over the past decade, calls for assessment and accountability have increased as the educational community has become more vocal about the need to be more systematic in assessing student performance.  This is evidenced by: 1) regional and national meetings that focus on assessment; 2) accountability initiatives such as the Voluntary System of Accountability (VSA), University and College Accountability Network (U-CAN), and Transparency by Design; and 3) the recent sharp increase of assessment tools and organizations that focus on the assessment of student learning outcomes.

To better understand the dynamics of student learning outcomes assessment in higher education institutions, the National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment (NILOA) was launched in 2008 to assist institutions and others in discovering and adopting promising practices in the assessment of college student learning outcomes. The vision of the NILOA is to discover and disseminate ways that schools can productively use assessment data internally to inform and strengthen undergraduate education, and externally to communicate with policy makers, families and other stakeholders.  The NILOA project is based at the University of Illinois and Indiana University. Stan Ikenberry and George Kuh serve as co-principal investigators, and Peter Ewell serves as a Senior Scholar. The initiative is guided by a National Advisory Panel and supported by foundations including Lumina Foundation for Education, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, and the Teagle Foundation.

To advance their mission and as their first big project, the NILOA surveyed provosts or chief academic officers at all regionally accredited, undergraduate-degree-granting, two and four year, public, private, and for-profit institutions in the U.S. about the assessment activities conducted at their institutions.  In the spring of 2009, the questionnaire was administered to 2809 institutions.  There was a 53% response rate with 1518 schools responding.  

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