As tuition rates continue to climb and debates swirl about whether or not college is worth it, many higher education leaders are rightly shifting their focus to the concept of value. Though it can be difficult to measure and quantify value, there is growing recognition across the field that if we are going to restore confidence in higher education, we need to address the questions of return on investment.
It is no longer enough to focus solely on getting more people enrolled in college or even to increase completion rates; the emphasis now needs to be on preparing learners for what’s next in their journey. But how do we ensure that our investment in higher education will open doors to well-paying careers and provide opportunities for economic mobility?
Last week, Strada Education Foundation put forward a new set of ideas designed to help higher education leaders address this issue. Their State Opportunity Index identifies strategies and metrics that can redefine what success looks like for states and colleges, with a focus on value.
While there are bright spots across the country, as the State Opportunity Index makes clear, there is significant room for improvement in every category.
The report establishes two criteria that should serve as bookends in colleges’ quest for value. First, are states adequately measuring and publicly reporting the connection between postsecondary education and employment, or as Strada frames it “clear outcomes”? Second, how well aligned are higher education programs with well-paying jobs that are available in the labor market?
Strada finds the strongest performance among states in the clear outcomes category, which is critical for both helping college leaders make decisions about program improvement and empowering students and families to make informed choices about which opportunities to pursue.
Roughly half of states currently qualify as “leading” or “advanced” in their data collection and transparency practices. This is a good start, but more states need to embrace their role as the hub of critical data and information sources that are too often disconnected, siloed and underleveraged. For example, only a few states have enhanced their wage records to produce insights on occupational outcomes of high school graduates and college graduates, which is critical for understanding the success of the full education and training pipeline. Even fewer can disaggregate this information by demographics, which limits the ability to understand equitable outcomes.
At the other end of the spectrum is employer alignment. When considered from the labor market perspective, value in higher education can be measured at least in part via a supply and demand analysis; to what extent are education systems producing the supply of talent needed to meet employer demand? Or from the learner perspective, how available are postsecondary programs that lead to well-paying jobs in their communities?
According to the report, that alignment is generally lacking. No states meet the criteria to qualify as “leading” in this area, and the majority are not graduating enough students from postsecondary institutions with the credentials needed to land well-paying jobs in high-growth industries such as IT, business, healthcare and advanced manufacturing.
This mismatch presents an opportunity for higher education systems; if postsecondary leaders want employers to look to their institutions as talent pipelines and economic development partners, they should prioritize harnessing data to be more responsive to labor market needs and produce the talent employers are looking for to fill key roles. Strada finds that Rhode Island and Utah are currently leading the country in meeting talent demands in what it terms “opportunity jobs,” which are of particular importance because they are well-paying and under-supplied entry-level positions with potential for upward mobility.
The report then goes on to unpack two other critical elements of students’ higher education experience that, when delivered effectively, can lead to greater economic opportunity and mobility. These include students’ access to quality career coaching and advising, and to work-based learning experiences such as paid internships.
Colleges in most states have considerable work to do for these experiences to become the norm for their students. Nationally, only a quarter of graduates from community colleges and a fifth of graduates from four-year institutions experienced personalized career coaching. And when it comes to paid internships, only one out of four four-year students and one out of 10 community college students were able to participate. As Strada points out, career coaching and paid internships are both highly correlated with students’ future career satisfaction and their ability to make progress toward their goals, so increasing the availability of these supports and experiences can go a long way to addressing questions of value and return on investment.
And finally, this report shines the spotlight on college affordability, acknowledging that the costs of college need to be within reach of all students in order for higher education to live up to its promise. Recognizing that much research has already been done on this topic, Strada takes a somewhat unique angle in asking the question of how many hours students would have to work annually to cover the net price of their college education. Put differently, could students afford to work their way through college?
Perhaps not surprisingly, community colleges fare better than four-year institutions on this indicator, but the report finds wide variation across states. California and Washington are the most affordable states for students to attend college, according to the report.
By taking a deep dive into five measurable dimensions of value in higher education, Strada’s analysis elevates important questions about how to center on value within the broader continuum of education to careers.
This means building strategies aimed at the ultimate goal of career and economic value at every level. It means shifting K-12 education from a narrow focus on high school graduation rates as the key indicator of success to more meaningful measures of students’ readiness tied to their postsecondary success. It means—as State University of New York Chancellor and former U.S. Secretary of Education John King put it during the launch event for Strada’s report— shifting higher education leaders’ perspectives on the impending demographic cliff from a fixation on the scarcity of 18-year-olds to the abundance of adults over the age of 25 who would benefit from building new skills and earning a high-value credential.
In this case “value” means not just whether students graduate, but how well their education prepares them for what’s next.
A shift in focus to delivering value at every stage of the education to workforce pipeline could yield tremendous benefits for both individuals and economies. Strada’s State Opportunity Index offers a quantifiable framework for making that shift in higher education; other players with a stake in preparing students for meaningful careers can look to this approach to shape their own applications of value.