Celia Baker's article, "How colleges take from the poor, give to the rich," in the 24 May 13 issue of the Deseret News is a perfect example of what can happen when a journalist meets a think tank report. The report's assumptions go unexamined, its examples become universals, and its conclusions become truth.
The report in question is the New America Foundation's Undermining Pell: How Colleges Compete for Wealthy Students and Leave the Low-Income Behind, which makes the unexceptional observation that the purchasing power of a Pell Grant has been in long decline because its value has become stagnant, state aid for higher ed has shrunken, and tuition at all sorts of colleges has been on the rise. The report's goal is to propose policies that will make it possible for more low-income students to go to college. Again, unexceptional, and, with changes in the demographics of college-going, necessary. But Undermining Pell makes additional arguments that require more scrutiny. Baker does not provide that scrutiny.
Take, for example, the article's title, which mimics the subtitle of NAF's report. Do colleges take from the poor and give to the rich by means of what the NAF calls a "an elaborate shell game" wherein an institution reduces aid available to poor students because of their Pell grants, and re-directs that aid to "wealthy" students? No. Instead, institutions offer need-based aid and merit-based aid (academic scholarships) that stack on top of other aid (federal, state, outside scholarships, savings) to reduce the amount of money a student pays out of pocket.
Take this example. Two students with the same academic background are accepted to the same college. One qualifies for a full Pell Grant, the other does not qualify for any Pell aid. How do their financial aid packages compare?
Student one gets $5500 in Pell aid, $3000 (for example, institutions set their own need-based aid policies) in need-based aid, and $15000 in merit aid, for a total scholarship package of $23,500. Student two gets $15000 in merit aid and $2000 (for instance) in need-based aid. For which student does college cost less? Student one.
But Baker and NAF would argue that the situation described above is a perfect example of the problem, in that the amount of merit aid dwarfs the amount of need-based aid. They would argue further that poor students should get more aid than "wealthy" students, because those "wealthy" students have greater means to pay for college. But is student 2 "wealthy"? Almost certainly not. As the report notes, Pell funds are not available to students whose family income tops $50,000 a year. The determination is made by means of the Expected Family Contribution (EFC) component of the FAFSA. EFC is a notoriously complex estimate of how much a family can contribute annually to a student's college costs. Suffice it to say that very few families are actually able to pay as much out of pocket as the government suggests they can.
So is there a shell game going on, where Pell funds are taken from the poor and given to the rich? Or, as Baker puts it: "Like a carnival conman duping an earnest mark, colleges are using Pell grants to take the place of institutional aid they would have given to needy students, then shifting those funds toward recruiting wealthy ones through "merit aid"?
Only if by "take from the poor and give to the rich" you mean "using Pell funds and other income to pay for educating students." Otherwise, no. In fact, as I have argued before, if there is a subsidy it flows from students with weaker academic backgrounds (who thus receive less or no merit aid and must pay more out of pocket) to students with stronger academic backgrounds. At my institution, the proportion of students with need has increased, not declined over the past several years. This is due to families being willing to borrow a bit more for the indisputable benefit of a college degree, to subsidies that flow to all undergraduate students from donors, graduate student tuition, etc., and to my institution's willingness to increase the amount of aid available to students.
It is simply wrong to suggest that merit aid reduces aid to low-income students, unless those students are so academically weak that they do not qualify for any merit aid. Otherwise, merit aid serves them well, and coupled with need-based and federal aid, reduces their cost of going to college. Further, merit aid provides a baseline predictability to a student. If a family's financial situation improves, the amount of need-based aid might decline. But merit aid stays steady. So for a family budgeting for four years of college, merit aid is a key component of their financial aid approach.
I could go on at length about other assumptions and assertions in the article and report. But let me address one more directly. After complaining that colleges unfairly treat low income students be means of their institutional aid policies (preferring merit aid over need aid) Baker reports a contradictory assertion from the NAF report. They suggest that institutions actually try not to enroll low-income students, taking a "passive-aggressive approach" to low-income students called "gapping" wherein they "offer needy students aid packages much too small to meet their needs, deliberately underfunding them to discourage enrollment." (The quotes are Baker's.)
Two responses. One, yes, colleges charge more for tuition than they give back in aid. No institution, even the wealthiest ones with massive endowments or those in states that still provide strong subsidies, can stay open if students do not pay tuition. Eliminating "gapping" is the same as not bringing in revenue. And as I have shown above, the wealthier the student, and the weaker (academically) the student, the bigger the "gap" between institutional aid and total cost of attendance.
Two, no enrollment professional I know of would go to all of the work and cost of recruiting a student, evaluating that student's application, and creating a financial aid package in order todeliberately not enroll a student. We don't have the time, or the resources. But more importantly and contrary to the article's assertion, we want low-income students to go to college. And we believe that they will flourish at our institutions.
Baker and NAF have the luxury of calling for a world where low-income students can go to any college they want for free due to the largesse of the federal and state governments and the generosity of the institution. We do not live in that world. So my job, and the jobs of my staff, is to do something much more difficult: enroll a diverse class of students who will learn, flourish, grow, graduate, and succeed after graduation, while at the same time bringing in enough tuition dollars to ensure that the education those students need is, in fact, available to them.
Showing posts with label enrollment management. Show all posts
Showing posts with label enrollment management. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 29, 2013
Monday, April 1, 2013
The college president as enrollment leader
The following things are true:
- college presidents are, above all else, responsible to ensure that their institutions earn enough revenue,
- more revenue comes to nearly every college from enrollment than from fundraising,
- college presidents spend more time raising funds than enrolling students.
This last fact is both understandable and confusing. Understandable because donors expect to be courted by the college's leadership, and because the model for many presidencies are the actions of presidents at well-endowed institutions, and because the possibility of an enormous gift keeps presidents pursuing single donors over long periods of time. Confusing because over their four years at an institution students pay far more in tuition than most donors ever give, and because nearly all institutions realize more revenue from tuition than from gifts, and because students and their parents also value interaction with college leaders, and because personal interactions are more likely to result in enrollment and revenue.
So, if college presidents were to re-balance their time between enrollment and fundraising, where would that time go?
So, if college presidents were to re-balance their time between enrollment and fundraising, where would that time go?
- Establishing a campus enrollment philosophy--During the salad days of the 1990s and 2000s enrollment was philosophically simple: raise tuition annually, and increase financial aid at a rate slightly slower than the rate of tuition increase, and your institution would enroll slightly more students and realize meaningful increases in revenue every year. The size of the increases would be driven largely by expected growth in expenditures. That philosophy, though still dominant, is under question. Today, institutions must set tuition and financial aid in a much more challenging context, one where old models may not succeed and new ones have yet to be fully tested. In this context, a president needs to engage deeply and regularly in setting the enrollment philosophy of an institution.
- Lobbying for favorable financial aid policies--With a larger proportion of students relying on federal aid, presidential lobbying needs to focus on ensuring that students can access all sorts of aid, and that regulation of that aid be both rigorous and fair.
- Building partnerships--In a future where attracting individual students will be harder and more costly, partnerships with high schools, school districts, religious organizations, civic organizations, employers, foreign governments, and community colleges are ever more important for ensuring enrollment success. The president, due to her visibility and rank, is the key person to open doors and to seal agreements with these partners.
- Hosting prospective students--Most presidents would relish the opportunity to have their dining rooms full of potential donors who were prepared to give over $50,000. Those people are the parents of prospective freshmen and prospective graduate students. There are hundreds of them who come to campus every year; a few minutes with the president may be just the thing to seal the deal.
- Focusing on retention and graduation rates--Just as presidents are ultimately accountable to donors to ensure that gift agreements are fulfilled, so they are ultimately responsible to students and parents for delivering on the promises made during recruiting--that faculty are available, that courses focus on learning, that students are retained and that they graduate in a timely fashion.
Thursday, March 7, 2013
Why Kevin Carey is (mostly) wrong about merit aid
Kevin Carey is one of the smartest and most eloquent education analysts in the United States. He is also mostly wrong about the uses of merit aid.
Carey's recent Chronicle of Higher Education piece, "Too Much "Merit" Aid Requires No Merit," argues that a significant amount of merit aid (institutional scholarships based on academic performance) is given to students whose academic record does not merit it. In giving such aid to the "stupid sons of the rich" (here Carey is quoting Harvard's turn-of-the-20th century president Charles W. Eliot) higher education both forces taxpayers to subsidize other students more heavily than it otherwise would and debases the meaning of the word "merit."
His article is wrapped around an anecdote about the son of friend. The parents were intelligent and rich; the son shared his parents wealth but not their academic prowess. Nonetheless, he was admitted to several decent private colleges, two of whom offered him a merit scholarship--in Carey's telling in order to entice his wealthy family to pay the rest of the $50,000 annual bill. The parents were incredulous, the father telling Carey, "He's never gotten a 'merit' anything before...He's not a very good student."
It is true that there are students at many institutions like the student in this story, who were indifferent academically but still qualified for merit aid. And it is true that giving such scholarships to the children of the wealthy somehow seems, well, wrong. It is, in my experience, rarely the case that such a scholarship is given to a student only because s/he is from a rich family, though. And it is also true that the alternatives to awarding merit aid in this way are not much better, either for students or for the institution.
Think about the three pricing models that private colleges use to attract students. In the first, the college prices tuition at what it costs to educate the student and offers almost no scholarships. In the second, the college prices tuition at roughly what the market will bear, but then provides institutional aid (almost entirely in the form of a discount) based on family need. In the third, the college again chooses a market price, but then provides institutional aid (again, as discount) based on merit. What happens for students and for the school?
In model one, schooling is largely available to students of middle and upper-middle class families who can afford the $15K+ that it costs to cover the costs of education. The student body is thus from roughly the same economic strata, but of varying levels of academic preparation. Will the school be able to enroll enough students to keep the doors open? Only if its reputation is strong enough, its quality high enough, or its costs low enough to generate demand. Otherwise, students have no reason to choose the school.
In model two, schooling is largely available either to wealthy students who aren't academically strong enough to go somewhere else, or to students with significant enough need, met by need-based aid, that the cost of attending becomes affordable. Again, academic preparation varies widely, but so does the economic well-being of families. And again, the school will struggle to enroll enough students, unless it has very generous donors whose gifts offset discount, or its reputation is so distinctive that it can attract both of its potential main audiences.
In model three, schooling is available to students with a relatively narrow range of academic preparation (those whose grades qualify them for merit under the school's criteria), and with a relatively narrow economic range as well. The school will attract students who can afford it, who are attracted to its message, and who may be enticed by a reward for their prior academic performance.
None of these models is inherently better than another. Schools choose them based on a mixture of their position in the marketplace, their mission, and their view of the social ends of education.
In practice, no school uses one of these pure models. Most use a mix of models 2 and 3, supplemented by federal or state aid. In the case of Westminster College, for example, applicants with an ACT score above 21 and a high school GPA above 3.0 earn merit scholarships. Scholarship amounts and ranges are posted publicly. Very few students below that range come to Westminster. But at each merit scholarship level, students are also evaluated for need-based aid, some from the college, and some in the form of federal loans and Pell grants. It is the case, therefore, that attending Westminster is actually less expensive for a student with financial need than for a student with a comparable academic background from a more prosperous family. It is also less expensive for a student with a strong academic background, regardless of his/her economic situation, than it is for a student with a weaker academic record but the same economic profile.
These results--that the cost of school is less for needier families than richer ones, less for strong students than weak ones, and least for needy, bright students--are defensible on social and educational grounds. But for a school that accepts these results, there are several implications. For enrollment managers, the biggest challenge is balancing the number of prosperous and less-prosperous students, and the number of academically strong and less strong students, so that the institution earns enough revenue to stay open and meet its goals of maintaining access to a quality education.
I have written critically of this practice, known as financial aid leveraging, because it makes price opaque to students and because it may not be well-founded in human psychology. It can cause academic problems as well, since the range of academic preparation can (though needn't necessarily) vary widely at leveraged schools. (That can also be the case at schools that hardly leverage at all). Further, students who are among the weakest academically at any institution are less likely to be retained. But so are students who are needier, so leveraging is no guarantee of college success. And for someone like Carey who is looking at higher ed as a whole, the practice raises questions about the quality of the system, since because different schools attract different pools of potential applicants, a student with a 1000 on the SAT may get merit aid at one college, but nothing at another.
Kevin Carey decries financial aid leveraging also when he criticizes institutions for giving merit aid to "the stupid sons of the rich." But Carey is wrong about schools' motivation for giving merit aid to wealthy underachievers. Schools don't do it because they want to enroll more stupid sons of the rich. We do it to enroll more bright daughters of the poor. That goal may be worth a few thousand dollars of merit aid to a "stupid son", even for a kid whose parents don't think he deserves it.
Carey's recent Chronicle of Higher Education piece, "Too Much "Merit" Aid Requires No Merit," argues that a significant amount of merit aid (institutional scholarships based on academic performance) is given to students whose academic record does not merit it. In giving such aid to the "stupid sons of the rich" (here Carey is quoting Harvard's turn-of-the-20th century president Charles W. Eliot) higher education both forces taxpayers to subsidize other students more heavily than it otherwise would and debases the meaning of the word "merit."
His article is wrapped around an anecdote about the son of friend. The parents were intelligent and rich; the son shared his parents wealth but not their academic prowess. Nonetheless, he was admitted to several decent private colleges, two of whom offered him a merit scholarship--in Carey's telling in order to entice his wealthy family to pay the rest of the $50,000 annual bill. The parents were incredulous, the father telling Carey, "He's never gotten a 'merit' anything before...He's not a very good student."
It is true that there are students at many institutions like the student in this story, who were indifferent academically but still qualified for merit aid. And it is true that giving such scholarships to the children of the wealthy somehow seems, well, wrong. It is, in my experience, rarely the case that such a scholarship is given to a student only because s/he is from a rich family, though. And it is also true that the alternatives to awarding merit aid in this way are not much better, either for students or for the institution.
Think about the three pricing models that private colleges use to attract students. In the first, the college prices tuition at what it costs to educate the student and offers almost no scholarships. In the second, the college prices tuition at roughly what the market will bear, but then provides institutional aid (almost entirely in the form of a discount) based on family need. In the third, the college again chooses a market price, but then provides institutional aid (again, as discount) based on merit. What happens for students and for the school?
In model one, schooling is largely available to students of middle and upper-middle class families who can afford the $15K+ that it costs to cover the costs of education. The student body is thus from roughly the same economic strata, but of varying levels of academic preparation. Will the school be able to enroll enough students to keep the doors open? Only if its reputation is strong enough, its quality high enough, or its costs low enough to generate demand. Otherwise, students have no reason to choose the school.
In model two, schooling is largely available either to wealthy students who aren't academically strong enough to go somewhere else, or to students with significant enough need, met by need-based aid, that the cost of attending becomes affordable. Again, academic preparation varies widely, but so does the economic well-being of families. And again, the school will struggle to enroll enough students, unless it has very generous donors whose gifts offset discount, or its reputation is so distinctive that it can attract both of its potential main audiences.
In model three, schooling is available to students with a relatively narrow range of academic preparation (those whose grades qualify them for merit under the school's criteria), and with a relatively narrow economic range as well. The school will attract students who can afford it, who are attracted to its message, and who may be enticed by a reward for their prior academic performance.
None of these models is inherently better than another. Schools choose them based on a mixture of their position in the marketplace, their mission, and their view of the social ends of education.
In practice, no school uses one of these pure models. Most use a mix of models 2 and 3, supplemented by federal or state aid. In the case of Westminster College, for example, applicants with an ACT score above 21 and a high school GPA above 3.0 earn merit scholarships. Scholarship amounts and ranges are posted publicly. Very few students below that range come to Westminster. But at each merit scholarship level, students are also evaluated for need-based aid, some from the college, and some in the form of federal loans and Pell grants. It is the case, therefore, that attending Westminster is actually less expensive for a student with financial need than for a student with a comparable academic background from a more prosperous family. It is also less expensive for a student with a strong academic background, regardless of his/her economic situation, than it is for a student with a weaker academic record but the same economic profile.
These results--that the cost of school is less for needier families than richer ones, less for strong students than weak ones, and least for needy, bright students--are defensible on social and educational grounds. But for a school that accepts these results, there are several implications. For enrollment managers, the biggest challenge is balancing the number of prosperous and less-prosperous students, and the number of academically strong and less strong students, so that the institution earns enough revenue to stay open and meet its goals of maintaining access to a quality education.
I have written critically of this practice, known as financial aid leveraging, because it makes price opaque to students and because it may not be well-founded in human psychology. It can cause academic problems as well, since the range of academic preparation can (though needn't necessarily) vary widely at leveraged schools. (That can also be the case at schools that hardly leverage at all). Further, students who are among the weakest academically at any institution are less likely to be retained. But so are students who are needier, so leveraging is no guarantee of college success. And for someone like Carey who is looking at higher ed as a whole, the practice raises questions about the quality of the system, since because different schools attract different pools of potential applicants, a student with a 1000 on the SAT may get merit aid at one college, but nothing at another.
Kevin Carey decries financial aid leveraging also when he criticizes institutions for giving merit aid to "the stupid sons of the rich." But Carey is wrong about schools' motivation for giving merit aid to wealthy underachievers. Schools don't do it because they want to enroll more stupid sons of the rich. We do it to enroll more bright daughters of the poor. That goal may be worth a few thousand dollars of merit aid to a "stupid son", even for a kid whose parents don't think he deserves it.
Monday, March 4, 2013
The unwise pleasures of administrative work
Forgive me for writing about something both personal and mundane.
My family and I took last week--spring break at Westminster--and went to Southern California. It isn't a particularly opportune time to travel if you work in enrollment management (though truth be told, more opportune than lots of other times of the year). And since I also play a large role in Westminster's current strategic planning process, and since I'm holding down the fort as the Interim Director of the Office of Communications for another week or so, I decided that I ought to work a couple of hours each morning. Which I did, along with checking my email every ten minutes or so, and also working at night after everyone went to sleep.
The trip was pleasant but not relaxing, in part because of where we spent several days (Disneyland--don't ask why), but largely because of my inability to disconnect from work, and thus to agreeing to be superficially on the trip and superficially at work.
I told myself on Sunday that the habits I have developed are unwise. They have left me a bit frazzled, and a lot uncertain about the grounds upon which I stand and from which my motivation stems. I've been reading Ruth Haley Barton's Sacred Rhythms (ironically including in the wee hours of the morning on vacation and on the flight back), and have been struck by its deft description of my own spiritual disconnectedness and by its recommendations for establishing a "rule of life" --a set of practices that are slower, quieter, and more aligned with what I think I desire deep inside myself. And I'm committed to taking up lectio divina as a way of paying deep attention to something small ( a few verses of scripture, a poem), and trying to remind myself that a key reason I got into higher education was to focus--to develop a discipline, a profession.
I drove to work this morning, my first day back, with that desire for something deeper on my mind. I got to my office, and then spent an entire day in frantic activity--bouncing from meeting to meeting, answering phone calls, writing emails, and producing documents. My day touched, among other topics, accreditation; 2+2 exchange agreements; the number of FAFSAs filed by admitted students from outside of Utah; the design of webpages for graduate programs; the intersection of strategic planning and liberal education; graduate education; the strategic direction of the Utah Campus Compact; our commencement program; the transition for the next Director of Communications; our tuition and fees schedule; the college's SWOT analysis; the Utah higher education legislative agenda; the impact of sequestration on federal financial aid; three personnel questions; aligning recruitment, financial aid, retention, and long-term financial sustainability; and recruitment for graduate programs.
That said, today had its pleasures. This is the largely unspoken truth about administrative work--it has its psychological pleasures. It doesn't offer just busy-ness, but the opportunity for flow, for making Blink decisions, for moving many things one step further ahead. The pleasure is part of the reason that administrators thrive in meetings--because meetings are brief periods of focus, in which decisions get made that allow the rest of the rush of the day to take on meaning. It is what makes it possible for them to keep working when the work doesn't carry the intrinsic rewards of working in an area of one's passion. Administration is a "feat of strength"--a demonstration that in the face of overwhelming demands, one can avoid succumbing to any of them (at least during working hours--the feeling at night and first thing in the morning is something else entirely...) It is a feat of connection--a way of remaining a contributing part of a community whose core purpose you serve but do not participate in.
I've got no deep insights (as befits my role as an administrator) into solving this problem, if it is indeed soluble. But a few thoughts: any effort to make administrative work meaningful in the way that lectio divina, or disciplinary work, or deep commitment to a single task, well-performed are meaningful, has to grapple with the fact that administrative work is not just all of the things that open it to mockery, but that it is also attractive, pleasurable, and rewarding in ways that other forms of higher education work are not. Even more, the effort at meaning has to face up to the fact that for all of the grousing about the burgeoning administrative corps in higher ed, administrators do work that is central to the success of colleges and universities. The true challenge, then, is not about time allocation, or better run meetings, or clearer procedures for governance, or any of the other proposed solutions to the administrative problem. At least in my mind, the challenge is to find ways that the pleasures of administration--which are in many ways unwise--can become wise.
If you know how to do that, let me know. I check my email constantly...
My family and I took last week--spring break at Westminster--and went to Southern California. It isn't a particularly opportune time to travel if you work in enrollment management (though truth be told, more opportune than lots of other times of the year). And since I also play a large role in Westminster's current strategic planning process, and since I'm holding down the fort as the Interim Director of the Office of Communications for another week or so, I decided that I ought to work a couple of hours each morning. Which I did, along with checking my email every ten minutes or so, and also working at night after everyone went to sleep.
The trip was pleasant but not relaxing, in part because of where we spent several days (Disneyland--don't ask why), but largely because of my inability to disconnect from work, and thus to agreeing to be superficially on the trip and superficially at work.
I told myself on Sunday that the habits I have developed are unwise. They have left me a bit frazzled, and a lot uncertain about the grounds upon which I stand and from which my motivation stems. I've been reading Ruth Haley Barton's Sacred Rhythms (ironically including in the wee hours of the morning on vacation and on the flight back), and have been struck by its deft description of my own spiritual disconnectedness and by its recommendations for establishing a "rule of life" --a set of practices that are slower, quieter, and more aligned with what I think I desire deep inside myself. And I'm committed to taking up lectio divina as a way of paying deep attention to something small ( a few verses of scripture, a poem), and trying to remind myself that a key reason I got into higher education was to focus--to develop a discipline, a profession.
I drove to work this morning, my first day back, with that desire for something deeper on my mind. I got to my office, and then spent an entire day in frantic activity--bouncing from meeting to meeting, answering phone calls, writing emails, and producing documents. My day touched, among other topics, accreditation; 2+2 exchange agreements; the number of FAFSAs filed by admitted students from outside of Utah; the design of webpages for graduate programs; the intersection of strategic planning and liberal education; graduate education; the strategic direction of the Utah Campus Compact; our commencement program; the transition for the next Director of Communications; our tuition and fees schedule; the college's SWOT analysis; the Utah higher education legislative agenda; the impact of sequestration on federal financial aid; three personnel questions; aligning recruitment, financial aid, retention, and long-term financial sustainability; and recruitment for graduate programs.
That said, today had its pleasures. This is the largely unspoken truth about administrative work--it has its psychological pleasures. It doesn't offer just busy-ness, but the opportunity for flow, for making Blink decisions, for moving many things one step further ahead. The pleasure is part of the reason that administrators thrive in meetings--because meetings are brief periods of focus, in which decisions get made that allow the rest of the rush of the day to take on meaning. It is what makes it possible for them to keep working when the work doesn't carry the intrinsic rewards of working in an area of one's passion. Administration is a "feat of strength"--a demonstration that in the face of overwhelming demands, one can avoid succumbing to any of them (at least during working hours--the feeling at night and first thing in the morning is something else entirely...) It is a feat of connection--a way of remaining a contributing part of a community whose core purpose you serve but do not participate in.
I've got no deep insights (as befits my role as an administrator) into solving this problem, if it is indeed soluble. But a few thoughts: any effort to make administrative work meaningful in the way that lectio divina, or disciplinary work, or deep commitment to a single task, well-performed are meaningful, has to grapple with the fact that administrative work is not just all of the things that open it to mockery, but that it is also attractive, pleasurable, and rewarding in ways that other forms of higher education work are not. Even more, the effort at meaning has to face up to the fact that for all of the grousing about the burgeoning administrative corps in higher ed, administrators do work that is central to the success of colleges and universities. The true challenge, then, is not about time allocation, or better run meetings, or clearer procedures for governance, or any of the other proposed solutions to the administrative problem. At least in my mind, the challenge is to find ways that the pleasures of administration--which are in many ways unwise--can become wise.
If you know how to do that, let me know. I check my email constantly...
Monday, January 14, 2013
Thinking about academic innovation in a context of declining demand for education
Over the past decade, colleges and universities have become adept at offering new or revised academic programs to respond to changes in the marketplace for students. So, if the number of transfer students in your area is in decline, seek more freshmen. If your MBA program is dropping off, then add a program in health sciences. If demand for traditional undergraduate programs slackens, then add new pricing schemes or new modes of delivery.
This remains a smart approach to adjusting to the sort we have had over the last decade where demand for education continued to increase but was distributed differently than in the past.
Three recent studies suggest, though, that overall demand for higher education has flattened or is in decline. The Council of Graduate Schools reports that overall enrollment in graduate programs fell in 2011 for the second consecutive year. NAICU, passing along federal data, notes that overall enrollment in undergraduate programs declined last year. And WICHE's new study of high school graduation suggests that the number of students graduating high school will decline for the next couple of years before flattening out.
This is not to say that there will be no mid-level changes in demand. To the contrary, WICHE is clear on changes in the ethnicity of new college-goers, and it seems likely that more students will continue to be willing to take online courses. But whereas in the past realignments of student interest took place in a context of overall growth in enrollment, these changes will take place in a period of flat or declining enrollment.
What does this shift mean? A couple of thoughts:
This remains a smart approach to adjusting to the sort we have had over the last decade where demand for education continued to increase but was distributed differently than in the past.
Three recent studies suggest, though, that overall demand for higher education has flattened or is in decline. The Council of Graduate Schools reports that overall enrollment in graduate programs fell in 2011 for the second consecutive year. NAICU, passing along federal data, notes that overall enrollment in undergraduate programs declined last year. And WICHE's new study of high school graduation suggests that the number of students graduating high school will decline for the next couple of years before flattening out.
This is not to say that there will be no mid-level changes in demand. To the contrary, WICHE is clear on changes in the ethnicity of new college-goers, and it seems likely that more students will continue to be willing to take online courses. But whereas in the past realignments of student interest took place in a context of overall growth in enrollment, these changes will take place in a period of flat or declining enrollment.
What does this shift mean? A couple of thoughts:
- Campuses cannot count on a rising tide of enrollment to protect them from misguided guesses about where new demand would lie, as they could in past years.
- Because there is not a naturally increasing enrollment, new programs or approaches will need to pay for themselves almost immediately, or be replaced.
- Without a safety net, campuses (especially small ones) will need to get better at certain types of new programs or enrollment initiatives. That is, they will need to become specialists in innovation rather than generalists.
- Schools will need to get better at thinking about geography, academic preparation, and diversity as the variables in their academic innovations, rather than putting new academic programs at the foreground and worrying about the make-up of the students interested in them later.
- It will be harder for institutions to start or sustain loss-leader programs, that is, programs that do not bring in revenue but which garner some attention for the institution. (In this context, one has to wonder how long even large universities will be able to maintain their MOOCs without meaningful enrollment, student success, and revenue associated with them.)
Sunday, November 25, 2012
The standardization of student recruiting
In the past week, my 16-year old daughter received letters from the University of Miami, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, the University of Denver, and Texas Christian. There is nothing unusual about strong private universities trying to recruit an academically promising high school junior. But the arrival of these letters, and their contents, say a lot about the standardization of student recruiting.
Here is what I mean. My daughter hadn't received mail from any schools in about a month. Then, in one week, a flurry of letters. This can only mean that the schools sending letters are all using the same vendor to manage their name buys and the early search phase of recruiting. That fact is borne out by the fact that the letters all look the same--they all tell my daughter how promising she is, and they all offer her a special publication (hints on how to have a successful campus visit in one; suggestions on choosing a college in the others). All ask her to log-in to access the information, and provide her a special log-in and password to do so. Three ask her to complete a "quiz' to determine her top major choices. Even the layout of the letter and the envelope look the same.
The gaps in the letters are as interesting as their contents. They contain very little about the institutions, their missions, or their distinctive programs, and this in spite of the fact that these schools are actually distinctive. RPI is a great technology school, Miami is in one of the most beautiful cities in the world, the University of Denver offers great programs in business and diplomacy, and Texas Christian is, well, Christian. But unless you were a very well-informed high school junior, you would never know that from the letters.
What does it mean when significantly different institutions recruit students in ways that blur the differences between them? It means first of all that student recruiting, as with many other parts of enrollment management, is becoming standardized, with the assumptions behind standardization being driven by vendors. Among those assumptions is that the first step in recruiting prospective students is to entice them with praise, promise them access to special information, and get them to provide information for the school's recruiting database, which in turn makes it possible for the institution to launch a concentrated marketing campaign at the student.
One has to wonder whether this approach is good either for students or for institutions. Is it likely to connect students early with schools where the students are likely to flourish? Does it provide important decision-making information early enough in the process? Does it create authentic relationships between students and potential schools? And for institutions, does it make sense to put distinctive missions, programs, locations, and other institutional characteristics in the background?
I would guess that the answer to most of these questions is "no." Which raises another question--if these practices don't make sense for students or colleges and universities, how long will we, as enrollment managers keep them up? Probably as long as vendors encourage them and we, out of anxiety about our ability to enroll enough of the "right' students, agree to do so.
Here is what I mean. My daughter hadn't received mail from any schools in about a month. Then, in one week, a flurry of letters. This can only mean that the schools sending letters are all using the same vendor to manage their name buys and the early search phase of recruiting. That fact is borne out by the fact that the letters all look the same--they all tell my daughter how promising she is, and they all offer her a special publication (hints on how to have a successful campus visit in one; suggestions on choosing a college in the others). All ask her to log-in to access the information, and provide her a special log-in and password to do so. Three ask her to complete a "quiz' to determine her top major choices. Even the layout of the letter and the envelope look the same.
The gaps in the letters are as interesting as their contents. They contain very little about the institutions, their missions, or their distinctive programs, and this in spite of the fact that these schools are actually distinctive. RPI is a great technology school, Miami is in one of the most beautiful cities in the world, the University of Denver offers great programs in business and diplomacy, and Texas Christian is, well, Christian. But unless you were a very well-informed high school junior, you would never know that from the letters.
What does it mean when significantly different institutions recruit students in ways that blur the differences between them? It means first of all that student recruiting, as with many other parts of enrollment management, is becoming standardized, with the assumptions behind standardization being driven by vendors. Among those assumptions is that the first step in recruiting prospective students is to entice them with praise, promise them access to special information, and get them to provide information for the school's recruiting database, which in turn makes it possible for the institution to launch a concentrated marketing campaign at the student.
One has to wonder whether this approach is good either for students or for institutions. Is it likely to connect students early with schools where the students are likely to flourish? Does it provide important decision-making information early enough in the process? Does it create authentic relationships between students and potential schools? And for institutions, does it make sense to put distinctive missions, programs, locations, and other institutional characteristics in the background?
I would guess that the answer to most of these questions is "no." Which raises another question--if these practices don't make sense for students or colleges and universities, how long will we, as enrollment managers keep them up? Probably as long as vendors encourage them and we, out of anxiety about our ability to enroll enough of the "right' students, agree to do so.
Sunday, November 11, 2012
Success in the shadow of giants, or, What does a school like Westminster call itself?
With the exception of schools whose fame (like Williams, Pomona, Middlebury, Dartmouth, or Brown) or location (New England and the Midwest) make their purposes automatically comprehensible to prospective students, the first thing that institutions like Westminster must figure out is what to call themselves.
By saying this I mean something more than "schools must have a name." I mean that schools like Westminster--which receive neither state, nor church, nor investor sponsorship, and which offer neither all fields of study or a severely limited roster of academic programs--are incomprehensible without a clear self-description.
Think about the prospective student growing up in Utah, or Colorado, or Texas, or Alabama, or any other state with a very visible state university system and/or prominent church-sponsored schools. If they are religious, they understand immediately what BYU or Baylor or Gonzaga are about. And if they are at all attentive to the news or sports, they have been exposed to state universities (particularly flagships and land-grants) since before they even considered college. Stuart Dorsey, the President of Texas Lutheran University put it this way to me in a conversation; "For a kid growing up in Texas, the first question about higher education they ask themselves is, 'Am I a Longhorn or an Aggie?'" State schools and religious universities enter the recruiting contest with an immense advantage, since they are not only more highly subsidized, but more frequently covered, more visible, larger, more famous, and more likely to be part of the everyday life of young people than are schools like Westminster. They are giants, not just in enrollment, but in visibility, in reach, and in influence.
In this context, a school like Westminster is not just unknown but unfathomable. So our first challenge, before we can work with a student on fit and affordability, is to figure out how to describe ourselves.
Our traditional way of doing it--"Institution X is a small, private, liberal arts college" is almost useless, since all of those terms are either weak, confusing, compromised, or unattached from their historical meanings. "Small," for example, is claimed by nearly every institution in the US (just look at how they market their average class size for an example). Further, for students today, small carries as many negative connotations (no bigger than high school, boring) as positive. "Private" is even worse, since it requires an immediate explanation of the legal and educational difference between for-profit and not-for-profit institutions, and a quick distancing from the University of Phoenix, ITT Tech, etc. "Liberal Arts" carries mixed meanings, with some equating it to general education and others to traditional approaches to learning. And "college" is similarly confusing, since major universities contain colleges, and small institutions call themselves "universities." And none of the words convey any of the things that make such institutions distinctive or innovative.
So how can a place like Westminster describe itself so as to be both accurate and attractive? Here are a few thoughts:
By saying this I mean something more than "schools must have a name." I mean that schools like Westminster--which receive neither state, nor church, nor investor sponsorship, and which offer neither all fields of study or a severely limited roster of academic programs--are incomprehensible without a clear self-description.
Think about the prospective student growing up in Utah, or Colorado, or Texas, or Alabama, or any other state with a very visible state university system and/or prominent church-sponsored schools. If they are religious, they understand immediately what BYU or Baylor or Gonzaga are about. And if they are at all attentive to the news or sports, they have been exposed to state universities (particularly flagships and land-grants) since before they even considered college. Stuart Dorsey, the President of Texas Lutheran University put it this way to me in a conversation; "For a kid growing up in Texas, the first question about higher education they ask themselves is, 'Am I a Longhorn or an Aggie?'" State schools and religious universities enter the recruiting contest with an immense advantage, since they are not only more highly subsidized, but more frequently covered, more visible, larger, more famous, and more likely to be part of the everyday life of young people than are schools like Westminster. They are giants, not just in enrollment, but in visibility, in reach, and in influence.
In this context, a school like Westminster is not just unknown but unfathomable. So our first challenge, before we can work with a student on fit and affordability, is to figure out how to describe ourselves.
Our traditional way of doing it--"Institution X is a small, private, liberal arts college" is almost useless, since all of those terms are either weak, confusing, compromised, or unattached from their historical meanings. "Small," for example, is claimed by nearly every institution in the US (just look at how they market their average class size for an example). Further, for students today, small carries as many negative connotations (no bigger than high school, boring) as positive. "Private" is even worse, since it requires an immediate explanation of the legal and educational difference between for-profit and not-for-profit institutions, and a quick distancing from the University of Phoenix, ITT Tech, etc. "Liberal Arts" carries mixed meanings, with some equating it to general education and others to traditional approaches to learning. And "college" is similarly confusing, since major universities contain colleges, and small institutions call themselves "universities." And none of the words convey any of the things that make such institutions distinctive or innovative.
So how can a place like Westminster describe itself so as to be both accurate and attractive? Here are a few thoughts:
- Independent. Independence conveys three facts--all important and all desirable. Independence suggests that the institution is beholden neither to church nor state. It points to the most important component of the traditional meaning of liberal arts, that it is the education necessary for free people. And those two points open a meaningful conversation about why the cost of an education is higher at Westminster than at a particular state university--because it is self-funding, and because its educational goals include but go beyond employment.
- Interconnected. Interconnection suggests something good both about the curriculum--that its pieces are tied together--and about the life of the community, that set schools like Westminster apart from their competitors. Large public universities have no such interconnected community--they have at best interest groups--and private or technical institutions have no desire to make their curricula add up to something bigger than the sum of their parts.
- School of higher learning. School is a rich word, one whose etymology suggests place, independent effort, and community. Those meanings are both more varied and more precise than "college" or "university." And "higher learning" locates the work of the school at a level of greater complexity and meaning than other school work, and puts the focus on learning, where it belongs, rather than on the scholarly bona fides of faculty or the institution's prominence, size, or image.
Friday, October 12, 2012
What kind of business is enrollment management?
Until recently, one of the most consistent complaints about American higher education was that it had become too much like a business. (Ironically, now the louder complaint, coming from a different source to be sure, is that colleges and universities are not enough like a business, spending time as they do on things besides job training.)
The debate about whether higher education should or should not be like a business obscures a smaller but important question--what sort of business discipline should the components of a college be like?
While someone who knows more about the business office and fundraising operations of a college could write something brilliant about whether those offices should be more about accounting, finance, or entrepreneurship, I would like to touch on a question in my area: What kind of business is enrollment management?
This question matters because over the past twenty years, enrollment management has become a marketing discipline. By this I mean that its key foci (pricing, branding, messaging, advertising) fall within marketing as a discipline, and that the obsessions of marketing (novelty, agility, cleverness, persuasion, differentiation, growth) have become the core obsessions of enrollment management.
Those obsessions seem to work best in a growth market, one where many additional consumers are looking to buy a product and are making decisions about the purchase based on marketing questions (How much will it cost me? How will it make me feel? Is the product glamorous or prestigious? Do its ads and sales pitches speak to me?). In this landscape, enrollment management teams can improve and expand marketing and thereby expect ever better results.
It may be that we don't live in that landscape any more. Students are increasingly skeptical of traditional marketing tactics, and parents are dubious about the prices being charged for education. Schools with a powerful brand can still rely on that brand, but the down economy and skepticism about the value of regular higher ed suggest that marketing tactics may not enroll students the way they used to.
So if enrollment management is becoming less like marketing, is there a business discipline whose insights are more helpful?
I would put my money on supply chain management as the disciplinary future of enrollment management. (Thanks to Dr. Brian Levin-Stankevich for making an off-handed remark that sparked my thinking on this.)
Supply chain management argues that it is not marketing, but instead creating value through the entire supply chain that leads to a product's success. Further, it argues that relationships and customer service are more powerful than messaging and advertising in ensuring satisfaction.
In a supply chain model of enrollment management, admissions offices would think of establishing supply chains of students rather than increasing the number of prospects. These supply chains--in schools, churches, non-profits, employers, would be in relationship with the college, and would be tasked with selecting the best supply of students for the particular college. They would be fully empowered to make that decision--given control over a scholarship budget and admissions decisions. Their work would be evaluated on outcomes--if students succeed in college, the suppliers would continue to get rewards. If not, then the college would seek out new suppliers.
In turn colleges and universities would go out of their way to build, strengthen, and satisfy their suppliers, since there are many competitors for the supply chains.
Describing access to college in this language sounds, well, business-like. But looked at another way it is an effort to solidify relationships that ought to be strong, but instead are weak in American society. Would high school counselors know their students better if they were actually responsible for getting them into college? Would high school and college curricula align better if there were real incentives to the high school to have its graduates succeed at particular colleges? Would freshmen be more likely to be retained if they attended a college where many of their older classmates attended? Would communities be healthier, and colleges more focused, if their supply of students depended on maintaining good relations with other institutions?
The answer to all of these questions is yes. And if we could respond to all of them positively, we could be sure, too, that both students and society would be benefiting from the power of a meaningful college education.
The debate about whether higher education should or should not be like a business obscures a smaller but important question--what sort of business discipline should the components of a college be like?
While someone who knows more about the business office and fundraising operations of a college could write something brilliant about whether those offices should be more about accounting, finance, or entrepreneurship, I would like to touch on a question in my area: What kind of business is enrollment management?
This question matters because over the past twenty years, enrollment management has become a marketing discipline. By this I mean that its key foci (pricing, branding, messaging, advertising) fall within marketing as a discipline, and that the obsessions of marketing (novelty, agility, cleverness, persuasion, differentiation, growth) have become the core obsessions of enrollment management.
Those obsessions seem to work best in a growth market, one where many additional consumers are looking to buy a product and are making decisions about the purchase based on marketing questions (How much will it cost me? How will it make me feel? Is the product glamorous or prestigious? Do its ads and sales pitches speak to me?). In this landscape, enrollment management teams can improve and expand marketing and thereby expect ever better results.
It may be that we don't live in that landscape any more. Students are increasingly skeptical of traditional marketing tactics, and parents are dubious about the prices being charged for education. Schools with a powerful brand can still rely on that brand, but the down economy and skepticism about the value of regular higher ed suggest that marketing tactics may not enroll students the way they used to.
So if enrollment management is becoming less like marketing, is there a business discipline whose insights are more helpful?
I would put my money on supply chain management as the disciplinary future of enrollment management. (Thanks to Dr. Brian Levin-Stankevich for making an off-handed remark that sparked my thinking on this.)
Supply chain management argues that it is not marketing, but instead creating value through the entire supply chain that leads to a product's success. Further, it argues that relationships and customer service are more powerful than messaging and advertising in ensuring satisfaction.
In a supply chain model of enrollment management, admissions offices would think of establishing supply chains of students rather than increasing the number of prospects. These supply chains--in schools, churches, non-profits, employers, would be in relationship with the college, and would be tasked with selecting the best supply of students for the particular college. They would be fully empowered to make that decision--given control over a scholarship budget and admissions decisions. Their work would be evaluated on outcomes--if students succeed in college, the suppliers would continue to get rewards. If not, then the college would seek out new suppliers.
In turn colleges and universities would go out of their way to build, strengthen, and satisfy their suppliers, since there are many competitors for the supply chains.
Describing access to college in this language sounds, well, business-like. But looked at another way it is an effort to solidify relationships that ought to be strong, but instead are weak in American society. Would high school counselors know their students better if they were actually responsible for getting them into college? Would high school and college curricula align better if there were real incentives to the high school to have its graduates succeed at particular colleges? Would freshmen be more likely to be retained if they attended a college where many of their older classmates attended? Would communities be healthier, and colleges more focused, if their supply of students depended on maintaining good relations with other institutions?
The answer to all of these questions is yes. And if we could respond to all of them positively, we could be sure, too, that both students and society would be benefiting from the power of a meaningful college education.
Wednesday, October 10, 2012
The Mormon Church's Massive Educational Experiment
There have been few bigger announcements in the past decade from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints than the one it made last Sunday--that young men could leave on missions at the age of 18, and young women at the age of 19. (The previous policy allowed young men to leave at age 19 and women to go at 21.)
The LDS Church made the decision in order to increase the number of missionaries and smooth their departure by making it possible for young men ( who make up the vast majority of missionaries) to leave on a two-year mission immediately after completing high school.
Time will tell whether this move increases the number of missionaries, and whether it has a positive impact on the number and quality of missionary work (though my bet would be yes to the first question and no to the second). But the move also raises major educational questions.
For institutions in Utah, the big question is where they will go to replace the freshmen who would have enrolled in college before leaving on a mission under the old policy, but who will now go directly into mission work from high school. Some schools (like BYU and UVU) will lose massive portions of the men in their freshmen classes.
For learning though, the questions are even bigger. The experiment that the LDS Church has undertaken is this: will young men who serve missions be more or less likely than before to go on to college? And, will those young men who go to college be more or less successful as students if they skip two years of education between high school and college?
There has been almost no discussion of this matter in the press. The only nod to it came in the Salt Lake Tribune's sports section, where coaches and student athletes both agreed that going on a mission first would make student athletes more successful as athletes.
Setting aside the tiny handful of LDS young men who are college athletes, I expect that we will see the following impacts of this policy:
1. Top students who are also active members of the LDS church will be fine in college after serving a mission.
2. Decent students who are serious about their futures will also do well in college--the maturity that they gain on a mission will bolster their self-management skills and help them do better in college.
3. Mediocre students, and those in the new college-going demographics, will be slightly less likely to go on to college, and among those who do go to college, more likely to struggle in college.
4. Students who would not have gone to college before the change will not go to college after the change either.
On number 3 above, the recent report from College Board about the levels of college preparation of SAT test takers is instructive. Only 43% of SAT test takers are prepared to succeed in college. This means that 57% of SAT test takers, (and presumably a higher proportion of those who don't take the test) aren't ready to succeed academically in college. Among that number will be many Mormon young men, who, if they serve missions, will have let at least 2 years pass between graduating high school and entering college.
The gamble the church is taking is that mission service will help young men develop positive personal and educational maturity that outweighs the losses in learning and focus that come from spending a substantial time out of school after leaving high school. That seems unlikely. But if it is the case that taking two years off from formal education makes young men more likely to succeed once they return to schooling, then the world of higher education should take notice.
The LDS Church made the decision in order to increase the number of missionaries and smooth their departure by making it possible for young men ( who make up the vast majority of missionaries) to leave on a two-year mission immediately after completing high school.
Time will tell whether this move increases the number of missionaries, and whether it has a positive impact on the number and quality of missionary work (though my bet would be yes to the first question and no to the second). But the move also raises major educational questions.
For institutions in Utah, the big question is where they will go to replace the freshmen who would have enrolled in college before leaving on a mission under the old policy, but who will now go directly into mission work from high school. Some schools (like BYU and UVU) will lose massive portions of the men in their freshmen classes.
For learning though, the questions are even bigger. The experiment that the LDS Church has undertaken is this: will young men who serve missions be more or less likely than before to go on to college? And, will those young men who go to college be more or less successful as students if they skip two years of education between high school and college?
There has been almost no discussion of this matter in the press. The only nod to it came in the Salt Lake Tribune's sports section, where coaches and student athletes both agreed that going on a mission first would make student athletes more successful as athletes.
Setting aside the tiny handful of LDS young men who are college athletes, I expect that we will see the following impacts of this policy:
1. Top students who are also active members of the LDS church will be fine in college after serving a mission.
2. Decent students who are serious about their futures will also do well in college--the maturity that they gain on a mission will bolster their self-management skills and help them do better in college.
3. Mediocre students, and those in the new college-going demographics, will be slightly less likely to go on to college, and among those who do go to college, more likely to struggle in college.
4. Students who would not have gone to college before the change will not go to college after the change either.
On number 3 above, the recent report from College Board about the levels of college preparation of SAT test takers is instructive. Only 43% of SAT test takers are prepared to succeed in college. This means that 57% of SAT test takers, (and presumably a higher proportion of those who don't take the test) aren't ready to succeed academically in college. Among that number will be many Mormon young men, who, if they serve missions, will have let at least 2 years pass between graduating high school and entering college.
The gamble the church is taking is that mission service will help young men develop positive personal and educational maturity that outweighs the losses in learning and focus that come from spending a substantial time out of school after leaving high school. That seems unlikely. But if it is the case that taking two years off from formal education makes young men more likely to succeed once they return to schooling, then the world of higher education should take notice.
Friday, September 14, 2012
Early admit for regular students
Most colleges that offer early admission programs do it to attract top students. It is a way both to ensure that top students enroll, and to indicate to them that they are, in fact, top students. In the logic of enrollment management, these purposes, and the early admit process itself, make perfect sense.
But in the logic of student success, the students who need early admission most are not top students, who know how to do school, and who are likely to succeed wherever they enroll. Instead, the students who need early admission are regular students--those who are at the median or below academically, and who have little experience with higher education.
The reason is this--the later a moderate or weak student is admitted and enrolls, the less the likelihood that they will be successful. And if admission takes place after registration begins, the likelihood of success drops even more. In short, students with a marginal academic background need more advising, more access to the right classes, and more time to integrate into college.
(And for those focused on revenue, since marginal students receive smaller merit scholarships, admitting and enrolling them early is a way of ensuring decent revenue.)
So if enrollment management has as its purpose student success in addition to prestige, building a class, and revenue, then early admit programs ought to target students who will benefit most from it--not the stars, but the regular students.
But in the logic of student success, the students who need early admission most are not top students, who know how to do school, and who are likely to succeed wherever they enroll. Instead, the students who need early admission are regular students--those who are at the median or below academically, and who have little experience with higher education.
The reason is this--the later a moderate or weak student is admitted and enrolls, the less the likelihood that they will be successful. And if admission takes place after registration begins, the likelihood of success drops even more. In short, students with a marginal academic background need more advising, more access to the right classes, and more time to integrate into college.
(And for those focused on revenue, since marginal students receive smaller merit scholarships, admitting and enrolling them early is a way of ensuring decent revenue.)
So if enrollment management has as its purpose student success in addition to prestige, building a class, and revenue, then early admit programs ought to target students who will benefit most from it--not the stars, but the regular students.
Friday, August 24, 2012
On administration, vocation, and going over to the dark side
At least since 1977, it has been possible for faculty members to "go over to the dark side." This phrase is always directed (in jest or in anger) toward former faculty members who have become administrators. As such, it betrays a great deal about some faculty--that they see administrators as impediments to faculty governance, or as a sign of administrative bloat, or as highly compensated power-seekers, or simply as representatives of the meetings, task forces, committees, reports, studies, regulations, rules, and procedures that are the most visible manifestation of administrative work.
There is undoubtedly some truth (and falsity) in each of these characterizations. But they miss what is a bigger temptation in administration--that upon going over to the dark side, one will gradually replace belief in something bigger than the institution with loyalty to the institution and the techniques that make it work.
I describe this as a temptation, because it is technique far more than power or regulation that provides pleasure and reward to administrators. It is the ability to solve problems, to work out conflicts, to find funding, to enroll students, to entice donors, to serve the institution and make its infrastructure stronger that brings satisfaction. And after a time, a good administrator develops an entire repertoire of tactics that get this stuff done.
Let me be clear--getting this stuff done is good work, and institutions without a good dark side are likely to be short-lived. But let me be clear also that becoming a technocrat can erode one's sense of vocation, of filling a higher purpose in work.
Vocation erodes for three reasons. (1) Administrative work is generally non-reflective, and as such one can go very far down a path without thinking about the path's meaning. (Note that I am not saying the path itself is bad, simply that it is unexamined.) (2) Administrative work is busy, and as such it creates an energy, a motivation, that emerges largely from activity, rather than from purpose. (3) Administrative work lacks a way to act out a sense of vocation, and educational institutions rarely reward vocation in administrators.
Let me say a bit more about point number 3. Earlier this summer, while taking my first week-long vacation since I became an administrator ten years ago (see points number 1 and 2 above), I read Chris Anderson's Teaching as Believing. It is an incredible book and wise both about how learning takes place and how the professor's vocation aligns with that learning, even in a secular setting. Anderson is a Catholic deacon and an English professor at a state university, and his effort to give meaning to academic freedom by bringing his sense of vocation into the classroom was inspiring.
I was hard-pressed, though, to imagine what a book with the same spirit as Anderson's, but written about administration, (call it Administration as Believing) might say. It is certainly the case that many administrators act ethically because of a set of religious or philosophical commitments to what is right. And it is true that religious institutions often bring the religion's faith commitments to bear on administrative practices. But it is also the case that administration rarely feeds one's sense of vocation, which instead gets built outside of work, or through relationships that exist at work, but outside of the real work of the organization.
By saying all of this I mean simply to say that institutions and administrators would be better off if going over to the dark side did not mean slowly losing the sense that one's work was about both earthly things (solving problems, launching initiatives, etc., etc.) and things that have meaning outside and beyond the institution that sponsors it. Faculty members and students are encouraged to seek that level of vocation. Administrators ought to as well.
There is undoubtedly some truth (and falsity) in each of these characterizations. But they miss what is a bigger temptation in administration--that upon going over to the dark side, one will gradually replace belief in something bigger than the institution with loyalty to the institution and the techniques that make it work.
I describe this as a temptation, because it is technique far more than power or regulation that provides pleasure and reward to administrators. It is the ability to solve problems, to work out conflicts, to find funding, to enroll students, to entice donors, to serve the institution and make its infrastructure stronger that brings satisfaction. And after a time, a good administrator develops an entire repertoire of tactics that get this stuff done.
Let me be clear--getting this stuff done is good work, and institutions without a good dark side are likely to be short-lived. But let me be clear also that becoming a technocrat can erode one's sense of vocation, of filling a higher purpose in work.
Vocation erodes for three reasons. (1) Administrative work is generally non-reflective, and as such one can go very far down a path without thinking about the path's meaning. (Note that I am not saying the path itself is bad, simply that it is unexamined.) (2) Administrative work is busy, and as such it creates an energy, a motivation, that emerges largely from activity, rather than from purpose. (3) Administrative work lacks a way to act out a sense of vocation, and educational institutions rarely reward vocation in administrators.
Let me say a bit more about point number 3. Earlier this summer, while taking my first week-long vacation since I became an administrator ten years ago (see points number 1 and 2 above), I read Chris Anderson's Teaching as Believing. It is an incredible book and wise both about how learning takes place and how the professor's vocation aligns with that learning, even in a secular setting. Anderson is a Catholic deacon and an English professor at a state university, and his effort to give meaning to academic freedom by bringing his sense of vocation into the classroom was inspiring.
I was hard-pressed, though, to imagine what a book with the same spirit as Anderson's, but written about administration, (call it Administration as Believing) might say. It is certainly the case that many administrators act ethically because of a set of religious or philosophical commitments to what is right. And it is true that religious institutions often bring the religion's faith commitments to bear on administrative practices. But it is also the case that administration rarely feeds one's sense of vocation, which instead gets built outside of work, or through relationships that exist at work, but outside of the real work of the organization.
By saying all of this I mean simply to say that institutions and administrators would be better off if going over to the dark side did not mean slowly losing the sense that one's work was about both earthly things (solving problems, launching initiatives, etc., etc.) and things that have meaning outside and beyond the institution that sponsors it. Faculty members and students are encouraged to seek that level of vocation. Administrators ought to as well.
Sunday, July 8, 2012
Why legibility is better than transparency
In the political sphere, transparency is a hallmark on democracy. But in education, transparency, or making all possible information available to all possible users, confuses as often as it helps. For students legibility, or making it possible for them to read where they are and where they go next, is more valuable than transparency.
Consider these hallmarks of educational transparency--the campus map, the course catalog, and the tuition and fees list. Colleges and universities place maps showing all buildings on their websites and at key points on campus. But students, parents, and visitors are constantly lost. Why? Because the map provides too much information. No one really needs to know where all buildings on campus are located. Instead, they need to know how to get from where they are to where they are going, something that maps do only with difficulty.
Similarly, the course catalog aims to encapsulate all information about a campus' curriculum and graduation requirements. But students consistently make poor choices, misunderstand policy, and emerge from the catalog more confused than less.
And tuition and fees lists aim to make students and their families aware of all potential costs of attending an institution. But those tables are generally ignored, in lieu of parents asking a straight-up question--"How much will it cost to attend your school." To that question we have few good answers, since costs of attendance are variable and odd, given the way that schools rarely charge round figures for anything.
Forbes journalist Patrick Spenner gets it right in his recent blog post, "Forget Engagement, Consumers Want Simplicity." There, he argues that marketers who aim to engage potential customers in too many ways--social media, frequent campaigns, personal contacts--instead trip them up. I find this increasingly true in student recruitment, where improved marketing tools allow us to contact prospective students dozens of times over the three years prior to enrolling as freshmen. Some students love the attention, but most ignore much of the interaction, or worse, disconnect early in the process. (Enrollment managers talk increasingly of stealth applicants--students who apply to the college without us knowing about them. But the truth is that there are few stealth applicants. There are instead students who were in the recruiting pool at the outset, but disconnected until they ultimately applied. They are "simplicity seekers" not stealth applicants.)
The best example I've seen recently of legibility (or in Spenner's terms "simplicity") is at Utah Valley University. At UVU, all major educational buildings are linked, so that you can walk indoors from one building to any other. UVU has made huge improvements in helping students and visitors get around--not by posting more campus maps, but by simply posting signs hanging from the ceiling at any juncture between buildings. Those signs include simple information--the name of the next buildings down any possible path, and an arrow showing which hallway to follow. The boundaries between buildings are simply marked by the purpose of the building ("business' or "liberal arts" for example) being spelled out in the carpet.
Anyone can get around UVU's campus, then, if they simply know three things--that all buildings are connected, that you can find your way by reading signs, and the name of your final destination.
Not all campuses are designed the way UVU's is. But you can take their principles of legibility and apply them elsewhere by building educational systems with three questions in mind:
Consider these hallmarks of educational transparency--the campus map, the course catalog, and the tuition and fees list. Colleges and universities place maps showing all buildings on their websites and at key points on campus. But students, parents, and visitors are constantly lost. Why? Because the map provides too much information. No one really needs to know where all buildings on campus are located. Instead, they need to know how to get from where they are to where they are going, something that maps do only with difficulty.
Similarly, the course catalog aims to encapsulate all information about a campus' curriculum and graduation requirements. But students consistently make poor choices, misunderstand policy, and emerge from the catalog more confused than less.
And tuition and fees lists aim to make students and their families aware of all potential costs of attending an institution. But those tables are generally ignored, in lieu of parents asking a straight-up question--"How much will it cost to attend your school." To that question we have few good answers, since costs of attendance are variable and odd, given the way that schools rarely charge round figures for anything.
Forbes journalist Patrick Spenner gets it right in his recent blog post, "Forget Engagement, Consumers Want Simplicity." There, he argues that marketers who aim to engage potential customers in too many ways--social media, frequent campaigns, personal contacts--instead trip them up. I find this increasingly true in student recruitment, where improved marketing tools allow us to contact prospective students dozens of times over the three years prior to enrolling as freshmen. Some students love the attention, but most ignore much of the interaction, or worse, disconnect early in the process. (Enrollment managers talk increasingly of stealth applicants--students who apply to the college without us knowing about them. But the truth is that there are few stealth applicants. There are instead students who were in the recruiting pool at the outset, but disconnected until they ultimately applied. They are "simplicity seekers" not stealth applicants.)
The best example I've seen recently of legibility (or in Spenner's terms "simplicity") is at Utah Valley University. At UVU, all major educational buildings are linked, so that you can walk indoors from one building to any other. UVU has made huge improvements in helping students and visitors get around--not by posting more campus maps, but by simply posting signs hanging from the ceiling at any juncture between buildings. Those signs include simple information--the name of the next buildings down any possible path, and an arrow showing which hallway to follow. The boundaries between buildings are simply marked by the purpose of the building ("business' or "liberal arts" for example) being spelled out in the carpet.
Anyone can get around UVU's campus, then, if they simply know three things--that all buildings are connected, that you can find your way by reading signs, and the name of your final destination.
Not all campuses are designed the way UVU's is. But you can take their principles of legibility and apply them elsewhere by building educational systems with three questions in mind:
- What is the campus' approach to the educational experience?
- Where are the critical junctures where signs need to be placed?
- What is the student's end goal?
It is disappointing but not surprising that few campuses have simple and clear answers to these key questions. Each school has all sorts of approaches to education--some majors are lockstep, others aren't, some require a thesis, others don't, some place students in internships, others don't. We have too many critical junctures--between semesters, and years, and when changing majors, and all sorts of application deadlines. And we aren't very good at knowing what a student wants to major in, let alone his/her overarching educational goals. Given our complexity, we resort to putting all possible information out there, and hoping that students can find their ways or build a relationship with a wise mentor who will guide them through. Or in other words, we default to transparency because our educational systems are illegible.
Thursday, July 5, 2012
Mission, demographics, and the problems with enrollment management
Students who go to college in the future will be different from the freshmen who have traditionally enrolled in private colleges and universities. In order to attract and enroll those students, private colleges and universities will need to better differentiate themselves from each other, and from public institutions of higher education. But as an enrollment manager, I cannot be confident that I have the tools I need to enroll those students. Here is why:
With the exception of very prestigious institutions, colleges and universities seek students by buying their names from testing and other college preparation services. We then snail mail, email, call, text, and visit with those students to try to get them to enroll. But our ability to buy names is limited by the sort of data that testing services gather. And right now, they mostly gather demographic data and data on academic performance.
These data are important--they help us target students by geography, socio-economic status, and test score. But they don't help us see who will really engage with our campus, learn successfully in our classrooms, flourish at our school in ways that they wouldn't flourish elsewhere. In other words, because those data don't tell us anything about how a prospective student will match with the mission and the pedagogy of the institution, they don't help us link our institutional mission with its central task--educating students to succeed in college and beyond.
Now it is true that mission-matching takes place later in the recruiting process (sometimes), and it is true that many high school students do not care much about the mission of the schools they are looking at. But it is also true that if schools don't do better at attracting students who really fit the institutions they are selecting, we will fail to do our duty to those students, their families, and the communities that support them. And we will fail to take advantage of the characteristics that make our institutions unique.
Having said this I confess that I don't have any idea how to align student search with mission. But the organization who does it, who helps colleges and universities think about prospective students as more than an amalgam of educational and demographic data, will have done real good for students and for American higher education.
With the exception of very prestigious institutions, colleges and universities seek students by buying their names from testing and other college preparation services. We then snail mail, email, call, text, and visit with those students to try to get them to enroll. But our ability to buy names is limited by the sort of data that testing services gather. And right now, they mostly gather demographic data and data on academic performance.
These data are important--they help us target students by geography, socio-economic status, and test score. But they don't help us see who will really engage with our campus, learn successfully in our classrooms, flourish at our school in ways that they wouldn't flourish elsewhere. In other words, because those data don't tell us anything about how a prospective student will match with the mission and the pedagogy of the institution, they don't help us link our institutional mission with its central task--educating students to succeed in college and beyond.
Now it is true that mission-matching takes place later in the recruiting process (sometimes), and it is true that many high school students do not care much about the mission of the schools they are looking at. But it is also true that if schools don't do better at attracting students who really fit the institutions they are selecting, we will fail to do our duty to those students, their families, and the communities that support them. And we will fail to take advantage of the characteristics that make our institutions unique.
Having said this I confess that I don't have any idea how to align student search with mission. But the organization who does it, who helps colleges and universities think about prospective students as more than an amalgam of educational and demographic data, will have done real good for students and for American higher education.
Friday, June 8, 2012
Why tuition-driven colleges are the future of higher education
To listen to the pundits, including such luminaries as Stanford President John Hennessy and Khan Academy founder Salman Khan, tuition-driven institutions of higher education are dying. In fact, in a recent Wall Street Journal interview, Hennessy said, "if you look at the vast majority of colleges in the U.S., there are way
too many that are [dependent on tuition to fund their budgets]. That is
not sustainable."
Let me respond. Baloney. In fact, it is increasingly likely that the only institutions of higher education that will survive in the future are tuition-driven, that is, schools where students pay roughly what it costs to educate them in order to get an education. Tuition-driven schools have a pricing problem--by-and-large we have not found the equilibrium price between what a student wants to pay and what it costs to educate them. Hennessy and Khan are correct that the use of technology might help us find that price. So might many other things, including greater specialization, clearer curricula, more straight-forward pricing, better loan options, competency-based education, and about a thousand other innovations already rolling out in higher education.
But schools like Stanford, and Khan Academy, and your local public institution have much more than a pricing problem. They have a business model problem. Here is what I mean. All three of those institutions have built business models that rely on massive and unpredictable sources of revenue to stay open.
Start with the clearest example--state institutions. For several generations, the subsidy that states provided to state institutions, plus a moderate amount of tuition money, kept the doors of state institutions open. But the amount of subsidy, at least in comparison to the cost of education, is in sharp decline. And it is tremendously unlikely that that subsidy will return in my lifetime. So state schools are hunting for a new business model. What are they turning to? Tuition.
Consider Stanford and other highly selective research institutions, private and public. These schools will likely survive long into the future. But it is unlikely that they will survive as schools dedicated to educating students. Already, in fact, the chance of enrolling at Stanford as an undergraduate is perishingly small, not because Stanford is incapable of educating more students, but because education isn't its business model. Instead, its future depends on donations from alumni and wealthy fans, effective management of its endowment, and the ability to capture research contracts from the federal government and corporations. That is, Stanford is a foundation, an investment firm, and an R&D contractor. There are almost no existing schools who, not being in the Stanford category already, are likely to be able to follow that business model in the future.
Finally, think about Khan Academy. Its mission is to provide a "free world-class education to anyone anywhere." Except, of course, that the education is not free. Students simply do not pay for it. Instead, the cost is borne by investors, and donors, and advertisers who hope that running ads on YouTube sites associated with Khan Academy will drive traffic to their businesses. It may be that Khan Academy can survive and prosper with a business model reliant almost entirely on subsidies. But I doubt that the future of higher education lies with such a model.
(Please note that I am not arguing that the waning of state subsidies for education is necessarily a good thing. It indicates a weakening of our sense of common purpose, of the notion that I am better off when my neighbor is well and wise, and of the idea that communities in the United States protect their futures by educating their young. That weakening is sad indeed.)
Which returns us, again, to tuition as a model of educational funding. There is a certain logic to paying tuition, since it aligns exactly with what we do elsewhere. Buying a snowcone involves exchanging money for a product. So does buying a shirt. When purchases are very expensive (as with cars, health care, and houses), industries arise to help buyers manage costs and avoid shocks. Variety of quality and services emerge so there is a continuum of options available to purchasers. And subsidies arise on the margins of the industry to help those who need the thing obtain it at a reasonable cost.
So I can imagine a future with a much greater range of prices (as opposed to quite inexpensive state institutions and quite expensive private institutions) and services in higher education. And I can imagine a future where there are some state subsidies for some students. But the thing I am most certain for is that more and more people will pay for their own educations.
Let me respond. Baloney. In fact, it is increasingly likely that the only institutions of higher education that will survive in the future are tuition-driven, that is, schools where students pay roughly what it costs to educate them in order to get an education. Tuition-driven schools have a pricing problem--by-and-large we have not found the equilibrium price between what a student wants to pay and what it costs to educate them. Hennessy and Khan are correct that the use of technology might help us find that price. So might many other things, including greater specialization, clearer curricula, more straight-forward pricing, better loan options, competency-based education, and about a thousand other innovations already rolling out in higher education.
But schools like Stanford, and Khan Academy, and your local public institution have much more than a pricing problem. They have a business model problem. Here is what I mean. All three of those institutions have built business models that rely on massive and unpredictable sources of revenue to stay open.
Start with the clearest example--state institutions. For several generations, the subsidy that states provided to state institutions, plus a moderate amount of tuition money, kept the doors of state institutions open. But the amount of subsidy, at least in comparison to the cost of education, is in sharp decline. And it is tremendously unlikely that that subsidy will return in my lifetime. So state schools are hunting for a new business model. What are they turning to? Tuition.
Consider Stanford and other highly selective research institutions, private and public. These schools will likely survive long into the future. But it is unlikely that they will survive as schools dedicated to educating students. Already, in fact, the chance of enrolling at Stanford as an undergraduate is perishingly small, not because Stanford is incapable of educating more students, but because education isn't its business model. Instead, its future depends on donations from alumni and wealthy fans, effective management of its endowment, and the ability to capture research contracts from the federal government and corporations. That is, Stanford is a foundation, an investment firm, and an R&D contractor. There are almost no existing schools who, not being in the Stanford category already, are likely to be able to follow that business model in the future.
Finally, think about Khan Academy. Its mission is to provide a "free world-class education to anyone anywhere." Except, of course, that the education is not free. Students simply do not pay for it. Instead, the cost is borne by investors, and donors, and advertisers who hope that running ads on YouTube sites associated with Khan Academy will drive traffic to their businesses. It may be that Khan Academy can survive and prosper with a business model reliant almost entirely on subsidies. But I doubt that the future of higher education lies with such a model.
(Please note that I am not arguing that the waning of state subsidies for education is necessarily a good thing. It indicates a weakening of our sense of common purpose, of the notion that I am better off when my neighbor is well and wise, and of the idea that communities in the United States protect their futures by educating their young. That weakening is sad indeed.)
Which returns us, again, to tuition as a model of educational funding. There is a certain logic to paying tuition, since it aligns exactly with what we do elsewhere. Buying a snowcone involves exchanging money for a product. So does buying a shirt. When purchases are very expensive (as with cars, health care, and houses), industries arise to help buyers manage costs and avoid shocks. Variety of quality and services emerge so there is a continuum of options available to purchasers. And subsidies arise on the margins of the industry to help those who need the thing obtain it at a reasonable cost.
So I can imagine a future with a much greater range of prices (as opposed to quite inexpensive state institutions and quite expensive private institutions) and services in higher education. And I can imagine a future where there are some state subsidies for some students. But the thing I am most certain for is that more and more people will pay for their own educations.
Saturday, May 26, 2012
The end of financial aid leveraging?
Nearly every institution of higher education in the US leverages financial aid. That is, we all give different amounts of aid to different students to encourage them to attend our institutions. The practical impact for students is that classrooms, like airplanes, hold customers who are paying radically different amounts for the same seat. The result for campuses, at least in theory, is that the institution realizes as much revenue as possible while still filling its class with qualified students.
There is solid research in behavioral economics, and plenty of lived experience to suggest that financial aid leveraging has worked in the past. But my sense is that it may not work well into the future. Here is why.
Our ability to leverage financial aid depends on a set of beliefs among students and their parents:
There is solid research in behavioral economics, and plenty of lived experience to suggest that financial aid leveraging has worked in the past. But my sense is that it may not work well into the future. Here is why.
Our ability to leverage financial aid depends on a set of beliefs among students and their parents:
- a general assumption that higher education is a good value and a specific belief that the particular institution where a student will enroll is worth the cost,
- a willingness to pay money (or to borrow money) to make up the difference between aid and cost of attendance,
- a willingness to overlook the fact that each student pays a different amount for the same education, a difference based largely on the student's prior academic performance (and slightly on their actual need).
The institution has to have a different set of beliefs:
- that students will come even if pricing is unclear,
- that the particular model of financial aid leveraging is both financially and morally defensible,
- that the model of leveraging maintains or improves the overall quality of students at the campus,
- that the class of interested students will be academically and financially varied enough so that students who pay a lot are numerous enough to subsidize those who pay little.
It is fair to say that every one of the assumptions above is under question right now. One need only consider the move of major research universities into online learning, the uproar about student loans, the explosion of parent appeals of financial aid packages, the outrageous financial aid packages given to top academic students (who, of course, usually come from families with greater means to pay for higher education), and the changing demographics of new college-going students--to recognize that the landscape that once supported leveraging is radically changed.
Schools have two options to respond--they can stay the course, hoping that while the national mood undermines the assumptions behind financial aid leveraging their own markets will be willing to go along. Or they can move, as a first step, towards clarity in pricing while they figure out exactly what their education is worth to the families who want to buy it.
Option two demands something more than changing tuition, particularly for small institutions. It demands that we re-calibrate where we stand in the market and who are the students who are most likely to succeed at the college. Gone are the days when small colleges could get by on a pitch about small class sizes and an academic program that looks a lot like that offered at big universities.
Monday, May 14, 2012
The most important fact about the future of higher education
Many things will be true about higher education; only some of those things will be important. If your school is concerned about the future of higher education, it must both figure out what makes a fact important (in my book important facts are those that, if acted upon, have the potential to change the whole institution), and which important facts your school wants to focus on.
The most important fact about the future of higher education is this: all students will be transfer students. By this I mean two things: first, that an increasing proportion of students will approach an institution bringing transcripted credits with them, and second, that even more students will bring expertise with them that they have learned outside traditional institutions, but which must be transferred into their new campus if that campus is to be true to the student's learning and aspirations.
Here are several ways in which the fact that all students will be transfer students will transform higher education:
The most important fact about the future of higher education is this: all students will be transfer students. By this I mean two things: first, that an increasing proportion of students will approach an institution bringing transcripted credits with them, and second, that even more students will bring expertise with them that they have learned outside traditional institutions, but which must be transferred into their new campus if that campus is to be true to the student's learning and aspirations.
Here are several ways in which the fact that all students will be transfer students will transform higher education:
- Traditional measures of success for access, retention, and graduation, will become obsolete. If most students bring credit with them, there is no such thing as a "freshman class," retention will not be controllable (since students will move easily among several institutions), and four-year graduation rates will mean very little, since few campuses will provide the entirety of a student's education.
- The idea of a curriculum will be unstable. Curricula rely on students taking courses in sequence, or at least in an order required by the institution. But transfer students will not join an institution with the same academic backgrounds, and so therefore won't want (or shouldn't want) to take courses in sequence. Curricula must look like networks, not lines, and learning must include opportunities to make meaning of learning outside of a standardized sequence of courses.
- The freshman year will be less important. For the past two decades colleges and universities have focused on improving the first-year and placing distinctive programs in it. But given the increasing number of students coming with credit and knowledge of varying sorts, the first year will be much less important than the last year, presumably the only time when most students at an institution will be able to have a common experience.
- The most important skills for faculty will be aggregation, meaning-making, and certification, not teaching, learning, research, or any other currently popular aspects of pedagogy. It will fall to faculty to work with students to help them aggregate their prior learning from a variety of institutions and sources, make meaning out of it, add to that store of knowledge, and then certify that that knowledge adds up to something that can be carried along.
- Colleges and universities will specialize more than ever before. If students are transferring knowledge and credits from many sources, only those institutions with identifiable specialties will be able to stand out among standardized options.
- The most important alliances between institutions will be among unlike, not like, institutions. Currently nearly every alliance--athletic conferences, consortia, lobbying groups, faculty development networks, etc.--are among similar institutions. Westminster is part of the New American Colleges and Universities, a consortium of institutions of similar size and programming. The University of Utah has just joined the Pac-12 to be with schools more like it. But in a transfer world, schools will want to ally themselves with a network of differing institutions in order to maximize learning for (and revenue from) students. We will see more formal alliances between community colleges and liberal arts colleges, research universities and teaching institutions, so that within a network of schools a student can get all the learning s/he desires, and individual campuses can contribute specific things of value to the learning of particular students.
Sunday, May 13, 2012
What auto loans can teach us about student loans
If you were a recent high school graduate, worked hard, got decent grades, and wanted to borrow $20,000, you could spend it on one of two things: a new car or a college education. One of those choices is a much better investment than the other. But while it is almost universally understood that a college education is more valuable than a new car, it is also the case that the means of getting that education--a student loan--is widely feared while the means of getting the car--an auto loan--carries no such stigma.
There are big cultural reasons why this is the case: the contradictory fears that a college education is essential for success in life and inadequate to ensure that success, for example, or the nonsensical political debates about student loan interest rates.
But I am more interested in the practical reasons that auto loans are accepted and student loans feared, because colleges and universities can do something about those practical considerations. Here are five characteristics of auto lending that might be suggestive for student lenders. The characteristics share one factor that ought to be on the mind of people working to fix student loans: auto loans give people power to act in ways they see fit. Student loans, at key points in the college process, make it more difficult, not less, to act.
There are big cultural reasons why this is the case: the contradictory fears that a college education is essential for success in life and inadequate to ensure that success, for example, or the nonsensical political debates about student loan interest rates.
But I am more interested in the practical reasons that auto loans are accepted and student loans feared, because colleges and universities can do something about those practical considerations. Here are five characteristics of auto lending that might be suggestive for student lenders. The characteristics share one factor that ought to be on the mind of people working to fix student loans: auto loans give people power to act in ways they see fit. Student loans, at key points in the college process, make it more difficult, not less, to act.
- Markets in interest rates matter--I can borrow money to buy a new car at 2.94% from my local credit union. Occasionally, manufacturers offer 0% interest. If I had horrible credit, but was willing to follow a strict repayment plan I could still get a loan, albeit at a much higher interest rate. In short, there is a market for auto loans dedicated to making it possible for all sorts of people to buy all sorts of cars. There is no meaningful market for student loans--regardless of your background, career goals, or ability to pay, you pay rates set by a single lender, the federal government, and take out loans in amounts dictated by the federal government. (And because there is no real market for loans, the few private lenders in the business can set their rates even higher than the federal rates.) Markets, when they work correctly, empower people to make informed decisions. The process of getting a student loan is disempowering--all the key factors are out of the buyer's hands--the rate, the amount borrowed, the source of the loan, its term of repayment.
- The size of the loan and the desirability of the purchase coincide--A new car is most desirable when it is new, and so its worth aligns with the amount owed. As the car ages and its value declines, so does the principal. As with cars, a college education is most desirable when it is new, before the hard work, the disappointment, and the frustration of choosing a major, writing a thesis, and facing up to the hard factors of life weigh in. But unlike an auto loan, a student loan's principal is highest when the thing purchased--a college education--is at its end--the moment when satisfaction is often the lowest.
- It is the monthly payment that matters--When you take out an auto loan, the focus of the discussion is on the monthly payment. This focus, of course, obscures the total cost of the loan. But it also helps people budget, since they know that each month for the coming five years they have to pay that amount. In student loans, the monthly payment is a moving target until after graduation. That fact makes budgeting difficult and forces soon-to-be-graduates to make decisions about their futures in a context of uncertainty.
- There is a secondary market for the loan and for the purchase--If you borrow to buy a car, and then decide that the car isn't for you, you can sell it. Selling the car allows you to either invest in another car or pay off your loan early. Or, if you keep the car, other people can use it--brothers, sisters, friends. But there are no secondary markets for college educations or student loans. The loan you take out is yours. You cannot share its amount with a family member. Nor can a friend take classes paid for by your loan. So the social benefit of a student loan and a college education are blunted by the way the loan is constructed.
- An auto loan buys a car; a student loan does not buy an education--You buy a car because you need a car. The thing purchased is directly tied to the money borrowed. But a student loan really buys time in the classroom, not learning or an education. There are no guarantees; you cannot return the education if it isn't working, or get it repaired under warranty. For this reason, if time in college does not lead to learning, the price of the loan seems out of alignment with the value of the thing purchased.
It is my sense, then, that if the government is going to reform student lending, or if student activists are going to take up the issue, that they look to the auto business, where loans align with desires, serve social purposes, come with clear information, and provide freedom to act.
Wednesday, May 2, 2012
What does growing economic inequality mean for enrollment management?
The Occupy movement has coaxed economic inequality from a quiet, hidden corner of American civic discussion to the center. By all measures, it is growing in the United States. And it has sharpened the discussion about access, tuition rates, and the value of higher education.
The big questions about higher education are important ones. In this post, I want to focus on something narrower, though--the impact of growing economic disparity on enrollment management. This is a topic about which there has been little discussion, and about which there should be serious concern. Here is why:
Growing economic inequality means three things:
The big questions about higher education are important ones. In this post, I want to focus on something narrower, though--the impact of growing economic disparity on enrollment management. This is a topic about which there has been little discussion, and about which there should be serious concern. Here is why:
Growing economic inequality means three things:
- Children from families at the top of the economic heap will have ever greater educational opportunities because socio-economic status correlates with academic performance. And in enrollment management, strong academic performance is linked directly to high discount rates, as schools compete for top students.
- Children from families at the bottom of the economic heap, a growing proportion of American society, will require ever more need-based aid in order to go to college. And in enrollment management, high need correlates to high discount rates, as schools try to make it possible for those students to attend college.
- Therefore, enrollment managers will see increasing demand for both merit and need-based aid, and hence growing pressure on the discount rate from both ends of the spectrum.
The key question for enrollment managers, then, is how to face this dual challenge while bringing in enough revenue to meet the institution's need. I don't know the answer, but I do suspect one thing--that schools who do it successfully will focus on narrowing the economic band from which they recruit students, because they can no longer count on one end subsidizing the other.
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
Why colleges should track credits to graduation, not time to graduation
Let me make four obvious statements:
- Improving graduation rates is essential for colleges, for society, and for individual students;
- The current measures--particularly time-to-graduation and 4-year graduation rates--describe things that are, to some significant extent, out of the hands of colleges;
- Because they are out of the hands of colleges, campus efforts to improve graduation rates get mired in debates about measurement, or frustration at the futility of trying to change something over which we have little control;
- Such a sense of futility impedes our ability to improve.
- All schools mandate a minimum number of credit hours to graduation
- Credit hours to graduation describes something over which campuses have significant control
- The measure is comparable across campuses (at least when expressed as a proportion, i.e that students at college Y require 1XX% of their minimum credit hour requirement in order to graduate.)
- The credit hour measure ties directly to the cost for students, since they pay by the credit hour, not by the year.
Friday, March 9, 2012
Getting college rankings right
This recent Inside Higher Ed essay, like many before it, calls for colleges and universities to reject US News and World Report (USNWR) college rankings. What it does not acknowledge is that the presence of these rankings, and their disappearance, serve the same three types of institutions: highly prestigious institutions who look great in the rankings, state research I institutions who are the schools of choice because of their prominence, size, athletics, and alumni bases, and open access institutions whose students select them without regard for rankings.
The rest of us don't have the luxury of abandoning the rankings because they allow us to communicate things about our campuses which are otherwise hidden to prospective students and their families. So while some schools can ignore or cater to rankings as it pleases them, we need to figure out how to get college rankings right.
Three suggestions on moving beyond quixotic campaigns against USNWR:
The rest of us don't have the luxury of abandoning the rankings because they allow us to communicate things about our campuses which are otherwise hidden to prospective students and their families. So while some schools can ignore or cater to rankings as it pleases them, we need to figure out how to get college rankings right.
Three suggestions on moving beyond quixotic campaigns against USNWR:
- Provide the data that parents want in a clear, comparable fashion. When I talk to parents at recruiting events they always ask about these things: retention rates, graduation rates, the percentage of students who go on to graduate school, the medical school acceptance rate, and the average student loan debt upon graduation. These points of data should be at the fingertips of all admissions staffers at every institution, and the organizations that oversee higher education accountability should make them easily accessible on key websites.
- Be transparent with the important data that colleges usually hide. Schools create and consume huge amounts of assessment data which is standardized across campuses but rarely shared publicly. College presidents should have the courage to post their NSSE results, their CLA results, and their accreditation self-studies on their websites. And NSSE, CLA, and the regional accreditors need to find better ways of using the data the request and gather to encourage campuses to publicly show evidence of improvement over time. (I've made this point before at greater length here).
- Focus on outcomes. While USNWR rankings are regularly criticized for being input focused, and some of the other major rankings--Princeton Review, for example--are criticized for ranking students on things that hardly matter for learning, there are rankings that pay attention to the outcomes of college educations. The best in my view are the rankings in the Washington Monthly annual college guide. There the inputs drop away and what is left is evidence of a school's ability to increase the likelihood of graduation, and its influence on the public minded-ness of its graduates. If I were a college president, I would want the institution I served to do everything it could to climb in those rankings, because they represent the sorts of things that students, parents, and civil society ought to care about in higher education.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
