The Other 85 Percent

Myths about quality in the American higher education system

February 2, 2009 | Filed under: Capella, Capella University, Mike Offerman, The Other 85 Percent, academics, college, college degree, continuing education, distance learning, elearning, higher education, online education, online learning, online university

I have made several posts referencing the work of Peter Ewell. Mr. Ewell wrote an article in the November-December 2008 publication of Change, titled “No Correlation: Musings on Some Myths About Quality.

Mr. Ewell leads off with “For an enterprise dedicated to truth, American higher education harbors a lot of myths.” He then notes that there are “unexamined propositions about ‘the way things work’” that reveal the academy’s core values and shape public perception of higher education. These myths obscure reality and are ignored at our own peril. Ewell argues that many of the cause and effect relationships that are taken for granted are not true and we overlook some cause-and-effect relationships that are true and have to do with quality and effectiveness. His article is a good read.

Ewell addresses “resources relative to performance.” I am not thrilled with some of the performance measures, such as six-year graduation rates, because I think they are not relevant to the other 85% (adult and part-time students). Nonetheless, the finding that Ewell reports is that, in looking at both states and at institutions, “performance relative to funding varied substantially.” Said another way, there was no direct correlation or cause and effect between increased resources and improved performance. Citing the work of Carol Twigg and the National Center for Academic Transformation (NCAT), Ewell states that “in the vast majority of cases, the redesigns have yielded better student learning and higher course completion rates at reduced costs.” As he says, this defies conventional wisdom. Ewell looks at other examples and points out that spending wisely is more productive than simply spending more.

He also takes on the myth that the more difficult an institution’s admission standards, the more learning occurs at that institution. He cites studies that reveal “extraordinarily little relationship between institutional selectivity and educational good practices.” And argues that more “value added” learning occurs in open-access community colleges than at more prestigious colleges.

Ewell argues that what does matter is that the reason US higher education attainment rates have fallen relative to other countries is that we have done so poorly in increasing attainment rates for African-American and Hispanic men and women. He describes the difference between attainment rates for African-Americans and Hispanics with those of Caucasian men and women as “massive and chilling.” And he cites the shift from need-based financial aid, though still the majority of aid awarded, as a contributing factor. He quotes Don Heller of Penn State University as indicating that “the amount of institutionally awarded merit-based aid increased 212 percent between 1995-96 and 2003-04 compared to an increase of only 47 percent for need-based aid.”

Ewell concludes that most institutional leaders and the public continue to pursue “a mythical vision of quality that rests on a presumed relationship between outcomes and selectivity plus money . . . but there is no such correlation.”
What all this makes me wonder about is when the elitist notions that dominate perceptions about higher education quality will change? When will we look at learning outcomes as the primary measure of quality rather than such things selectivity and size of endowment? When will adult serving institutions that are, almost by definition, more open in access, focused on learning outcomes, and serving relatively high numbers of African-American and Hispanic students be given their due respect?

I just wonder.

How long do you think this kind of change will take?

Mike

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