Monday, June 21, 2010

Credit Hours

Dead Dad has an intersting take on congress trying to make the credit hour a standard measure to qualify for student aid. The real issue here is not the productivity paradox that he defines but, rather, the issue of creating clear metrics in higher education. The original impetus for the move was a poor decision on the part of an accrediting body; but the truth is that, so long as there is so much money at stake, there will be entities that try and exploit the rules.

Switching to an outcomes based approach is a tempting idea until you realize how hard it is to measure outcomes in education clearly. Do we want to create perverse incentives to select only strong students because they are the most profitable group?

It's a really tough problem!

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