The Dialogue

Question: Should federal funding for higher education be tied to "bottom line" results, such as transfer rates or grade averages?

Yes, making the government more accountable for its spending is a good idea.
Susan Edwards *

The Government Performance and Results Act is designed to set performance goals for government agencies and measure how well those goals are met.

As recipients of federal funds, we in higher education should also step up to the call to demonstrate our own effectiveness.

As educators, we are familiar with measuring performance. We don't measure the hours spent on a lecture, but we do measure how student perform on an exam. Institutions, too, need to take their temperature on a regular basis.

Appropriate performance indicators can give us the feedback we need to make informed decisions. If there are areas where we aren't effective, careful examination and measurement of those areas will help us improve.

Demanding results makes sense. With the New Year, many of us have resolved to take off a few pounds. If we only measure the number of days on a diet or the amount of money spent on special diet drinks, how will we know if our diet has been effective? We must also measure pounds lost.

At this point in the development of these government performance reports, we can still have input about what the critical factors are in evaluating higher education's effectiveness.

The Government Performance and Results Act is a reality. But we have a very good product to offer the American public. We can fear this change and shrink away from it, or we can use it for our own continued improvement and to demonstrate the effectiveness of our colleges and universities.

* Susan Edwards is an assistant professor of psychology at Mott Community College in Flint, Michigan.

No, accountability is easy to preach but difficult to measure.
Dian Dolores Hasson *

The fatal flaw in the Government Performance and Results Act is that no one has devised meaningful accountability indicators for higher education.

Consider the transfer rate for community college students as one measure of success. What do these rates mean?

Community colleges have no control over a university's transfer acceptance policy or transfer requirements. Nor can community colleges keep university's from charging prohibitive tuition rates.

Our community colleges could improve learning and increase their number of potential transfers, but this accomplishment might never show up in their transfer rate! Should they receive less performance-based funding as a result? Moreover, funding incentives can easily lead to unintended consequences. If community colleges are unduly rewarded for their transfer rates, nontransfer programs could be sacrificed. If colleges are rewarded for successful course completion rates of a "C" or above, faculty, especially nontenured, could be pressured to give Cs instead of Ds.

Would higher education be more successful if the number of degrees granted increased? All an institution has to do is lower the degree requirements. Will a single student learn anything more as a result?

Given the underfunding of higher education, few of us would reject funds because they are tied to indicators. But I will recognize performance-based funding for just what it is, one way to get more money to an underfunded system.

I will not confuse accountability indicators with quality!

* Dian Dolores Hasson, a political science teacher at Butte College, is a member of the California Community College Association

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