Last week I argued that if we assess the value of higher education solely by the income earned post-graduation, we miss some of the desired outcomes of university training. The great recession, stalled median family incomes, growing tuition costs, and a weak job market have combined to press the question of the value of higher education. I believe, however, that if we equate the value of higher education with job earnings alone, we’re missing some important outcomes.
The revealed preferences of students when choosing a major communicate their desire to learn life skills that do not map nicely into the most lucrative first jobs. They appear to be seeking individual meaning and fulfillment. The means of fulfillment vary across students. They are not income-maximizing in their decisions.
Of course, the attraction of using income as the value of higher education is that it’s nicely measured, in comparable units across all persons. However, despite the fact that the more valuable outcomes of higher education are not measured does not mean that they are not measurable. We must admit, as educators, that we have not spent enough energy identifying and measuring the important outcomes of a university education.
What would happen if we attempted to get serious about measuring these outcomes? How would we go about identifying the short-, medium-, and long-run desired outcomes of higher education? It’s common to hear alumni, many years out of Georgetown, describe what was of lasting value in the Georgetown experience. I suspect the utility of the parts of the education varies over the lifetime. Some lessons learned are immediately applied. Some shape conceptual frameworks, ways of thinking, that are found helpful decades later. Some seem to be direct benefits to the graduate; others seem to be attributes of the graduate that aid the common good or the civil society.
The key non-monetized outcomes would likely draw from both the curriculum and the co-curriculum. They would include cognitive and non-cognitive abilities. They might include skills like leadership, ethical reasoning, and problem-solving. They’d probably include psychological states such as critical empathy or understanding across differences. They might include different approaches to complex problems including design, innovation, and capacity for independent and collaborative inquiry. They might include approaches to risk-taking, uncertainty, and resilience, as well as long term inclinations for reflection, synthesis, and integrative thinking. They might also include self-assessed strength of personal networks for social and career support.
These types of outcomes are currently not measured. But what we measure affects what we do. If we believe these are the important outcomes of higher education, then we should get serious about measuring whether we’re achieving them. If Georgetown achieves these sorts of outcomes then students at graduation should demonstrate more of these attributes than they did at the inception of their Georgetown education.
Some of these attributes are internalized cognitive states of people — attitudes and beliefs that often motivate later behaviors. Developments in self-report measurement of humans have built tools to measure such attitudes and beliefs over the decades. Indeed, much of what we as a society know about ourselves comes from such measurements (e.g., how people look for jobs, their likelihood of buying products in the future, their level of support for government actions). For such attributes that are known by the person having them, we could mount base-line measurements at new student orientation, asking them about these key knowledge sets, attitudes, and beliefs. These are our students as they enter. Then just prior to their exit, we could replicate these measures. Examining the change in our students over their education might inform us on how we’re doing on those key attributes. Monitoring these key metrics over time would tell us what benefits Georgetown actually produces.
A pre-/post-measurement system of students would measure immediate outcomes. Longer-run outcomes require measurement over the life course, at various points in time. Alumni measurements when they are 5, 10, 20, and 30 years out of Georgetown could give us insights into how lessons learned in formal education have shaped their lives over their life course.
If we’re serious about the long-run value of higher education, we should be measuring the key components of that value.
Critics will attack this idea by saying we can’t measure attributes like those above accurately and reliably. I say let’s argue about this when we have the measures. Indeed, my counterargument is that if we don’t try to measure these attributes, we have little evidence that we are achieving the non-monetized outcomes of higher education that we treasure. If we don’t measure them, we may be judged only by the measured, narrow indicators of income.
I have found both Part I and Part II of Bob’s post on this topic challenging and gratifying. I also agree that, as an educator, I can articulate what outcomes I hope are worthy and desirable for our students without knowing how to assess whether what I strive to do assists the students in achieving those outcomes.
I welcome the conversation even as I struggle with the how-to of the assessment.
These kinds of projects are also wonderful opportunities for departments to come together and actually articulate what exactly the educational purposes of their curricula are and how the “values” of the education would show up in people’s lives.
In that sense, these measurements if done right are intellectually rich and stimulating. I have had some of the best and most probing academic conversations when we worked on some of these assessment projects in our department.
I have one more thought about all of the issues you are addressing here. I would also solicit the input of the many Georgetown Alumni as you go forward assessing the impact of their Georgetown education for them and for the younger Georgetown students and alums who they come into contact with from mentoring and or hiring whether in jobs or graduate programs. You have a wealth of real world experience by very seasoned alums who could bring a very helpful and different perspective to what a Georgetown education has given to them, gives to current students and young alums, and how it could be modified to improve that value including the transmission of Georgetown values to the education for current Georgetown students , now and for generations to come. Please tap a very wonderful source of information, support , and knowledge from some very loyal and insightful supporters.
Here’s a thoughtful blog post from an undergraduate playwright (not at Georgetown) arguing for the skills and passions his “impractical” degree fosters.
http://www.howlround.com/in-defense-of-my-undergraduate-playwriting-degree?utm_source=HowlRound.com%27s+Email+Communications&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=d6ff3bc216-DAILY_RSS_EMAIL&utm_term=0_9ac5709e38-d6ff3bc216-45177189
All that counts cant be counted. AND all that you can count may not count. Good thoughts again here.