Defining success in education

It is well known that higher education is one of the most, if not the most, subsidized industries in the United States.

But new legislation, currently being processed through the Indiana General Assembly, poses an interesting question.

The new budget plan proposes that 12 percent of Indiana’s money is funneled into its higher education system, much of it allocated based on success metrics. 

Institutions like Ball State University and Ivy Tech Community College are concerned that this “higher education system” mainly means the state’s big universities — a rather unsubtle jab at IU and Purdue University.

Schools are still reeling from recent budget cuts. They are afraid they won’t be able to recover fast enough, that they won’t be able to stabilize because more powerful universities will suck the linings of the government’s pockets dry.

So then the question becomes: What determines the success of an academic
institution?

Is it the performance of the students, or how many of them leave college with a degree?

In other words, are legislators looking at the wrong set of statistics?

Degree completion is no indicator of individual academic success — especially if shoddy class structures and lenient grading scales brought on that completion. By focusing only on degree completion, schools sacrifice the academic integrity of the student.

The belief is that big, state schools get the most funding as a near direct result of the thousands of complete degrees processed through the machines of their academic halls coupled with buckets of administrative power.

The belief is not wrong.

Smaller schools are left in the dust. Not because they lack competence, but because they don’t see the same raw volume of academic success.

The main problem with the bill is that it incentivizes the wrong thing. It encourages universities and colleges to look at the rate of degree completion only, rather than the educational success of its students.

And Indiana and Purdue look better on paper.

But focusing on degree completion takes away from the educational system as a whole.

The smaller schools represented have a point. By only looking at the schools with the highest rate of degree completion, legislators cut out a huge portion of the student population who have the academic integrity but lack the monetary means.

By choosing to focus on what looks good on paper, the budget awards redundant university and collegiate programs.

Giving money to schools that seek only to get students to graduate through whatever means necessary — like curriculum cuts, easier grading, etc. — only encourages a behavior that damages our educational system, and our students, as a whole.