How Accountable are Georgia's Leading Universities?

Calls for greater accountability in higher education are growing. Some organizations, such as U.S. News and World Report, focus on a rankings system based on college's selectivity, reputation and other factors. Others, such as the Education Conservancy, are attempting to create "anti-rankings." Rather than creating a list of colleges, this electronic project would question a prospective student about his or her background and what he or she is looking for in a college, and then return a set of colleges that would likely be a good "fit" for the student. K-12 education has been the focus of accountability efforts for at least 20 years. Higher education presents a very different challenge. Assuming the public's desire to see more transparency and accountability from colleges and universities continues, the crux of the debates over this topic will be a) whether accountability measures can best be designed by state or federal laws, by independent entities, or by the institutions themselves; and b) which accountability measures to use.

Finding fair measures to hold various colleges and universities accountable to their students and to the public has historically been very difficult. Postsecondary institutions, much more than K-12 schools, have unique and varied missions and often seek to attract students with particular interests, which makes comparisons across campuses difficult. National organizations are creating and promoting new methods of showing student performance at the college level, which will be discussed below. To date, however, two common measures used to gauge higher education institutions' effectiveness are their graduation and retention rates.

How do Georgia's Research University Graduation Rates Stack Up?

Conventionally, college graduation rates include the percentage of students who earn a bachelor's degree within six years of enrolling at an institution (the commonly accepted time frame, in part because many students are part time for some of their college years). The table to the right shows comparisons of the average 6-year graduation rate for Georgia's three research universities against leading schools in the Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) states from 2004 through 2007. (This bulletin highlights Georgia's research universities as they are readily compared with other state flagship institutions.) The graduation rates at the research universities in Georgia tend to be near the middle of the group compared to the whole, (and higher than at other USG institutions) but their improvement over time is higher than most of the schools in each group.

How do Georgia's Colleges and Universities Fare with Student Retention?

The postsecondary retention rate includes the percentage of first time, full time freshmen who return to the same institution for the fall of their second year. USG's research universities tend to have a higher average retention rate than the peer schools against which they primarily compete, a lower rate than the "aspirational schools" they strive to be like, and are average compared to the SREB flagship schools. USG's improvement over the four years looks similar to the other groups. The table to the right shows the average retention rate for USG's research institutions compared against the SREB flagship schools, from 2004 through 2007.

Source of Tables: National Center for Education Statistics

What Work is Being Done to Design a National Higher Education Accountability System?

Besides graduation and retention rates, how can stakeholders determine the effectiveness of postsecondary institutions? One of the most well-known national attempts to address postsecondary accountability is the U.S. Secretary of Education's Commission on the Future of Higher Education (the Spellings Commission), which released its final report in September 2006. This report includes findings and recommendations for postsecondary institution accountability in five areas: Access; Cost and Affordability; Financial Aid; Learning; Transparency and Accountability; and Innovation.

Among the recommendations, the Commission calls for a "consumer-friendly" database of information on institutions that would allow students, parents and policymakers to "weigh and rank comparative institutional performance." The Commission also calls for institutions to "measure and report meaningful student outcomes," and names several existing measures of higher education accountability that could be used more widely, as shown to the right:

Accountability Measure Purpose National Forum on College-Level Learning "The first attempt to measure what the college educated know and can do across states." Collegiate Learning Assessment Students "analyze complex material and provide written responses." National Survey of Student Engagement "Obtains, on an annual basis, information from hundreds of four-year colleges and universities nationwide about student participation in programs and activities that institutions provide for their learning and personal development."

In addition, another organization, the Center for Measuring University Performance, also ranks universities. These rankings are based specifically on major research universities and focus mostly on input accountability measures, including:

Colleges and universities around the country have begun to work on ways to increase their accountability to the public by evaluating themselves. One example is the Voluntary System of Accountability/College Portrait. This project is a "collaborative effort among the American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU), the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges (NASULGC), and the public higher education community." Three areas are included as parts of College Portrait: student and family information, student experiences and perceptions, and student learning outcomes (tests).

A separate response to these growing calls for greater accountability in higher education rejects the calls for outside evaluations of colleges and universities. The Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) and the Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA) issued a statement of principles in January 2008 titled "New Leadership for Student Learning and Accountability." This report states principles and action items that these organizations, representing over 3,000 colleges and universities, commit to implement as "meaningful education accountability." Contrary to the Spellings Commission's recommendations, this report argues that "quality standards must be set and met by institutions themselves and not by external agencies."

As mentioned above, the Spellings Commission recommended that postsecondary institutions measure and report meaningful student outcomes using instruments such as the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE). The USG administered the NSSE in 2005 and intend to use the resulting data to focus their improvement efforts and determine how their effectiveness measures against peer institutions.

USG and other education agencies in Georgia are attempting to address graduation and retention rates and accountability in the state's colleges and universities. Georgia's Education Scoreboard, for example, reports USG institutions' retention and graduation rates, as well as the percentage of students who keep the HOPE scholarship after 90 credit hours (the "HOPE Survival Rate"). USG itself has a "Retention, Progression and Graduation Initiative," and is attempting to address these issues as well.

Colleges and universities are hearing the calls for more accountability from legislators and the public, and are increasingly able to provide different data that might be used to gauge their effectiveness. One challenge that institutions, legislators and the public face is how to use the data that is available, and what that data actually measures. This conversation about accountability in higher education calls for a solution that addresses both the variety of missions represented by different colleges and universities as well as institutions' responsibilities to their students and to taxpayers. We are not likely on the verge of a full-blown "No Child Left Behind Act" for colleges, but some form of increased accountability is on the horizon; the question is who will decide what "accountability" means for them.

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