Tag: How To Complete College

Focus On College Completion Obscures Process To Attain It

A BETTER FACTORY MODEL
Clive Belfield and Davis Jenkins write in Inside Higher Ed: Economists are often criticized for treating colleges as if they were factories: using models that evaluate college efficiency in creating outputs (student completions) for a given input (cost). In fact, in many ways a college education is like the factory production process: students start at the beginning and then, after a sequence of “inputs” in the form of courses and support services, some graduate successfully at the end. Unfortunately, economic analyses of college efficiency typically do not look at college as a process. Much more work needs to be done in this area. But to better understand the economics of college completion we need to more accurately model the resources that are required as students progress through college.

Provided by Carnegie Foundation From Inside Higher Education