A new report issued by the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy entitled “Filling in the Blanks: How Information Can Affect Choice in Higher Education written by Andrew P. Kelly and Mark Schneider strongly suggests that if parents had accurate information about the graduation of two public institutions being consider by their child, they would very heavily prefer the institution with the higher graduation rate.
The report also suggests that providing this information widely will have several positive results. The first is that if consumers are provided information on costs and graduation rates will they use it in decision-making. (Oops sorry we are not supposed to consider students and their parents as consumers, even though they do.) The second positive result is that as institutions with the poorer graduation rates lose students to the institutions with the good rates. The suggested result of this is that the institutions with the poorer rates will take steps to improve their educational outcomes. If students consistently select an institution with a better graduation, more of them will graduate. Thus, the third positive result for the country would be an improvement in the overall graduation of students in American higher education
An executive summary of the report may be found at http://www.aei.org/print?pub=paper&pubId=100186&authors=<a href=scholar/100064>Andrew P. Kelly</a>, <a href=scholar/100006>Mark Schneider</a>
A PDF of the entire report may be found at
| http://www.aei.org/docLib/fillingintheblanks.pdf |
Isn’t it surprising, how many times common sense can be a fairly accurate description of reality and a decent policy guide to follow? Even if the results may not be good for our institution in the short run.