Do colleges and universities who receive the most public funding produce the most degrees?

All higher education institutions are under pressure to produce more degrees within current resources.  This pressure is particularly strong for publicly supported colleges.  Inside Higher Ed considers a new report from the Delta Project on Postsecondary Education Costs, Productivity and Accountability. Patrick Kelly of the National Center for Education Management Systems (NCHEMS), who conducted the study, correctly states that “how well higher education institutions perform with the resources they have, and how they can improve performance with few or no new resources, are uncomfortable questions that are here to stay.”  

The study is relatively straight-forward.  It takes all local and state funding provided to the public institutions in a state and adds all tuition and fees collected by those public institutions.  The degrees and certificates awarded by the institutions are then weighted, with greater weight assigned to graduate degrees and credentials awarded in science or technology.  “An average ‘weighted’ value of a credential is calculated by each state, and divided into the total public college funding, producing a ‘productivity’ figure that amounts to the total amount spent per certificate and degree.”

So, what resulted from this productivity analysis?  There is a listing of which states have the highest and the lowest costs per weighted credential.  Kelly points out that higher resource levels don’t necessarily relate to more degree awards and that some states with the lowest levels of resources yield the best production.

This is certainly not a pleasant thing to hear if you are at a public institution in a state with higher levels of funds and lower production levels.  But, it is interesting and revealing.  But, as the article points out, the analysis does not differentiate on quality.  You can bet that those institutions that don’t look so great will argue that they offer high quality and that hurts their productivity.  Maybe.

I wonder what would happen if a variation on this productivity approach was applied across all types of institutions, including the private colleges (whether for-profit or not).  Rather than looking at total costs, it would consider all types of taxpayer support per credential awarded.  Federal support, as well as local and state support, would be considered by adding direct federal funds and Title IV student financial aid with state and local appropriations.  This would allow for consideration of the relative cost to taxpayers (local, state, and federal) for each degree produced by sector. That is, there would be a measurement of the amount of public funds spent per credential produced by public institutions, for private not-for-profit institutions, and finally the for-profit institutions.  This would allow visibility into the relative productivity by sector based on government/taxpayer funds. It could be interesting….

What do you think? Please feel free to leave a comment.

Mike