Gainful Employment - Part I

Over the course of the last eighteen months the number of articles questioning the value of a college degree have been increasing.  Federal and state governments are suggesting that they might apply some sort of "gainful employment of graduates" test to educational institutions in considering funding levels.

The idea of a value added assessment for degrees is not anathema to me.  I do, however, wonder how such a system might work.  There are several options that come immediately to mind.  None of them are perfect, but discussing them within the academic community might enable us to become partners in crafting the end result rather than the victims of another poorly thought out funding strategy.

The advantage of such a policy could be to help curb grade inflation and ensure a quality of product (graduate), since producing lots of poorly educated students with high grades will induce a Yugo Effect where lots of cheap poor quality products is economically unsustainable to the producer.

Of course this means that colleges and universities will have to do a calculation of the cost of producing a product of value verses the payout they get from the graduates.  Degrees with small numbers of students and/or high costs of education will be difficult to sustain.  The STEM fields could suffer through one or both of these issues.

There is also the question of when gainful employment begins.  Does postgraduate education count as gainful employment?  Again, STEM fields could suffer depending on how "gainful employment" is defined.

The effect of the cost-benefit analysis might be the closing of many degree programs and, if handled with forethought, the consolidation of some degree types at specific universities.  The STEM fields might find themselves consolidated into poly technical colleges and universities where larger numbers of students would make the accounting work.  The downside of this is that some regions just don't have enough students to support such programs so technical education could become something geographically distant for many students and therefore unattainable.

Another problem of this system of funding is that it will reduce degree flexibility so that the boom and bust cycles seen in some disciplines will be exacerbated.  As degree values fluctuate, so can departmental funding, making it difficult to manage programs.

A gainful employment policy will also make it increasingly important that educational institutions act as employment agencies.  While this in not in itself a bad idea, it will demand increased resources to support the new Dean of Employment infrastructure.  This will take resources away from the educational enterprise.

In Part II of this commentary I will look at ways "Gainful Employment" might be defined.

T.S. Hall