Measuring College Performance

Author/s: 
Richard Arum, Josipa Roksa
Year of publication: 
2011
Session topic: 
Incentives and measurement in broad-access higher education

Public and private investment in higher education, the significance of higher educational attainment for individual life course outcomes and the presumed role of human capital formation for economic competitiveness has led to increasing interest in measuring college quality. It is thus not surprising that while metrics of institutional quality in higher education have existed and have shaped organizational orientations and practices for decades, something has changed in the organizational environment facing colleges and universities.

Today, there is a growing discussion about moving towards greater organizational accountability in higher education. For example, the Spellings Commission report A Test of Leadership: Charting the Future of Higher Education in 2006 noted “that students, parents, and policymakers are often left scratching their heads over the answers to basic questions” given the “lack of clear, reliable information about the cost and quality of postsecondary institutions, along with a remarkable absence of accountability mechanisms to ensure that colleges succeed in educating students.” Since the Commission’s report, various external assessments and accountability measures have been proposed or advanced at all levels of the system.

File/s: 
PDF icon Download