by Steve Gill
Elected Trustee of Washtenaw Community College
Senior Consultant, New Campus Dynamics
President Obama, worried about the nation’s global competitiveness, has challenged community colleges to graduate five million more students by 2020. With 7.5 million students and deep involvement in local workforce development, community colleges have earned a well-deserved reputation as being critical to growth in the U.S. economy.
While community colleges welcome the President’s challenge, they have long been frustrated by the way in which they are held accountable for retention and completion http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/04/12/education-department-changing-graduation-rate-measurements. The Department of Education, until recently, only looked at the number of full-time, first-time students who graduated within four years. That measure doesn’t represent success for the many part-time, returning, and transfer students who for many different family and economic reasons cannot finish in four years. In December the DOE’s Committee on Measures of Student Success issued a report http://www2.ed.gov/about/bdscomm/list/cmss-committee-report-final.pdf that recommends a change in the Department’s measurement policy.
The Committee is recommending:
… that the Department improve the comprehensiveness of graduation rate data by adding other cohorts of students for which data are collected and exploring how these data can be disaggregated by race/ethnicity and gender. The Committee also recommends that the Department broaden the federal graduation rate measure by collecting data that could be used to calculate more complete graduation and transfer rates and increase the availability of data on students’ transitions in postsecondary education nationally. The Committee also recommends that the Department take steps to improve access to and availability of alternative measures of success, such as making available data on student employment outcomes as gathered in federal gainful employment regulations, providing incentives to improve the availability of state-level earnings data to two-year institutions, and encouraging institutions to develop assessments of student learning and share promising practices.
These recommendations are likely to have a profound impact on how community colleges are viewed nationally as well as how they are positioned for state and federal funding. For example, Michigan’s Governor wants to reward community colleges for their completion rates. Other states are considering similar policies. Whether these states use the old measures of success or DOE’s newly recommended measures will determine the level of state and federal funding and public perception of quality of instruction.
It is vital that community college leaders do what they can to see that the recommended measures are adopted and then applied. But regardless of what measures are used, community colleges need to help more students complete a certificate program or an associate’s degree so that these citizens can contribute to a growing U.S. economy.
