Recently, this space reviewed
the conditions that lead Louisiana higher education to a point where lack of
accountability encouraged by both federal and state policy led to today’s
delivery system plagued with inefficiency and subpar performance. A recent report highlights how
state policy must continue to evolve, shaped by larger forces, in order to
overcome this – and it’s as yet uncertain whether the proper policy response
will come.
The Institute for a Competitive Workplace gave the state a
lower-than-average overall grade in effectiveness, especially faulting the
state for its ability to get students graduated and getting into the system
students from lower-income families. But pulling the overall mark up was
creating incentives for better performance, which system
officials argued was a recent product of policy that should bring about
this as time passes. They also argued the strategy shift to increase admissions
standards at baccalaureate-and-above institutions while increasing community
college capacity also would pay off in retention, the theory being that too
many unprepared students got sent to four-year institutions.
With the increase in admissions standards starting this fall,
theoretically those who do not meet the new standards would enter community
colleges. There, the schools should function to mold students into scholars
capable of handling courses that are sufficiently challenging to have them
graduate and with a degree making them capable of success outside of academia. At
the baccalaureate-and-above schools, with the chaff separated from the wheat,
resources can be used more efficiently to do a better job of educating.
However, for this to work, a few assumptions must be made that, without
further policy changes, are unlikely to manifest, thereby sabotaging the entire
enterprise. Recall that one major component of the reforms to try to improve
retention performance is monetary, where additions to or subtractions from state
aid to colleges is tied to retention rates.
However, for this incentive to work as intended, campuses cannot game
it. The idea is that retention occurs because resources are better deployed, at
the community college level used to bring students up to speed and higher up
not wasted on students who can’t. But that presupposes that the intent of
educators is to do these tasks instead of taking the path of least resistance,
which is to lower standards. The easiest thing in the world is to make
coursework less, not more as the theory hoped, demanding, principally because
the more you ask of your students, the more you must do as an instructor. And
there are three reasons specific to Louisiana why that path of least resistance
is so much more attractive.
First, the quality of the product coming into the higher education
system is low. Despite substantial reforms of the past 15 years, only haltingly
has improvement become to come to what once probably was the worst system of
elementary and secondary education in the country. And its impact has been
disproportionate to different institutions. For example, the vast majority of
students who attend Louisiana State University Baton Rouge go there having come
recently through a reformed system, because of its admissions standards and
attractiveness of collegiate life for students. This creates a greater potential
pool of efficiency resource use with so much wheat and so little chaff.
By contrast, at my institution Louisiana State University Shreveport,
perhaps one-tenth of all students admitted at any given time have come through
the reformed elementary and secondary education system within the past five
years. Until this fall, essentially all one had to do to gain admission
was to have a high school diploma or General Equivalency Diploma or equivalent and
be at least 25 years old. Even with the standards coming into place, in essence
the same may occur, even minus the age qualification, by graduating or transfering
from a community college.
Now, if community colleges do the job right, there might be some
improvement. Whether that happens is another matter. The theory is that community
college instructors, with few or no non-teaching demands, have the extra time
to devote to take students who are behind and mold them into students capable
of performing at a higher level. This does not mean that they should be any
less demanding in their courses as the same courses taught at a four-year
school, but that they spend more time getting students up to speed to handle
that workload.
Unfortunately, a common response is instead to lower expectations to
match student quality, with not much effort devoted to improvement. Again, it
is easier on the instructor in terms of work. Instead of spending hours making
up essay exams that provoke critical thinking relying on a broad spectrum of
facts and theory that will require still more hours to grade in a meaningful
way, it’s so much easier to spend almost no time to toss out a bunch of easy
multiple-choice questions that a computer can grade almost instantaneously.
Or, this approach may ease psychologically, appealing to a feeling that
students need to be given a “break” of sorts, because they went to inferior
schools, they have to work, they have families, etc. But devaluing the degree
only harms the student in the long run with the soft bigotry of low
expectations. The real world isn’t going to cut them breaks because of their
backgrounds; expectations of the need to be a high as for those without as many
obstacles to overcome. Helping them do the work isn’t the same as getting a
pass on doing the work – but it is harder on the instructor. The grade inflation trend of the last two decades
shows how academia – at all levels – has surrendered to making it easier on itself,
while disserving students.
Thus, the lack of preparedness reverberates upwards into the schools
where community colleges send their students, and is compounded there by
similar attitudes. This becomes magnified even further in Louisiana because of another
reason, the overbuilt situation of its baccalaureate-and-above
institutions and technical
schools. Very simply, there are too many institutions, faculty members,
administrators, and fixed assets chasing too few students capable of the
quality of work expected from the student body, at all levels. It’s ridiculous
that the state has more than six dozen separate higher education campuses; even
with a undersized community college system, throwing in all of the technical
schools means there are almost 50 two-year campuses operating in the state.
This makes the state one of the highest per capita spender on higher education in the nation – even after
rolling back, and even more, the large increase in resources given to higher
education beginning about a decade ago and lasting the rest of the decade. That’s
because the pie gets divided too much, to try to deal with the overcapacity.
This creates a buyer’s market, where higher education does everything it can to
keep its student numbers up – and thus puts more downward pressure on standards
accentuated by retention standards which carry monetary consequences.
As a final reason, in tandem with the generous student loan and
financial aid dollars pushed by the federal government, Louisiana’s Taylor Opportunity Program for
Students subsidizes students less likely to succeed to go to college.
Because its standards are so low – nationally, at least half of all students
could qualify for awards that pay for most academic fees – this encourages
individuals not sufficiently committed to the scholasticism required in higher
education to go to college, where they flunk out. Its nature as an entitlement
programs rather than as a true scholarship program follows the same model as
with the overbuilt system to which it funnels students – watering down
resources that reduce the effectiveness for all participants.
If the situation were different – no slack capacity, students entering
college having had sufficiently demanding standards to meet at the elementary
and secondary level and/or at the community college level, and a scholarship
program that leaves little room for the unmotivated to take advantage of it –
then conditions would be much better to avoid the path of least resistance of
lowering standards. But that’s not what we have in Louisiana, so it leads to a
mentality where, for example, if students complain about or avoid more
demanding instructors, it’s more likely that administrators, rather than telling
them if they spent more time working on the class and less time moaning about
it or exhorting more challenging coursework out of their instructors, instead will
put pressure on instructors to ease up and create happier students more of whom
are retained – especially when so many of these students see pursuit of a
college degree as a credentialing process to which they are entitled if they
put in x number of hours (a figure
they chose unrelated to actual demands) taking y courses, and not as a process of improving their bases of
knowledge and critical thinking skills.
Therefore, the very policy of incentives to improve retention praised in
the report has the possibility of being subverted. Unless changes are made, the
path of least resistance is to cheapen degree quality in the rush to retain,
which accomplishes exactly nothing. Sure, more degrees will be cranked out, but
they will be worth less than ever; it’s no accident that the presence of
proprietary schools has mushroomed in the last two decades precisely because of
the devaluation of degrees from traditional universities sensed long ago by
employers has led these for-profit schools to enter and expand the niche.
Thus, to avoid this outcome, several things must be done. First, even
if community colleges got the job done by taking the deficient and turning them
into individuals capable of scholastic learning and inquiry, the excess
capacity at the four-year level of schools still will not be utilized by the
greater ability of more students coming from the lower level to tackle quality
college work. All of faculty members, administrators, courses/programs, and
even number of campuses, will have to be reduced – and not by following the
same incentive that is trying to be mitigated here; i.e. not by getting rid of
the most demanding instructors because they drive down retention rates. This
includes shedding the state of the wasteful idea that every other parish needs
to have its own technical school campus.
Second, TOPS needs to be made into a true scholarship program. Raise
its standards to make them like the admission
standards at LSUBR. This would have the salutary impact of getting students
to raise their games before entering college. Make it pay for everything, fees
included (not now covered). And from the savings of the smaller number of these
the taxpayer would have to pick up, to qualifying students from lower-income
families create special lending programs with generous terms to pay for
non-academic expenses. With these on the line, retention will increase
naturally, not only because of the available incentives, but also because those
who don’t qualify now will go to school on their own dimes who won’t be wasting
somebody else’s money but theirs if they don’t do what is necessary to succeed.
Student performance needed to obtain a valuable degree depends not only on
faculty members providing demanding coursework, but also on the incentives to
have students be willing to put forth more effort to succeed in this quest.
Third, create a new kind of TOPS award for community college transfers.
After getting an associates’ degree, apply the same (higher) standards as if
coming out of high school (this means retaking the American College Test) – and
provide financial rewards for community colleges tied to qualification rates.
This creates the incentive for community colleges and their students to perform
better before transfer and puts them in a better position to succeed at the
next level.
The Advocate says the Governor is totally not transparent.
ReplyDeleteWhat say you?