Higher education accountability: Measuring costs, benefits, and financial value
Katherine Meyer
March 14, 2023
Higher education has long been a vehicle for economic mobility and the primary center for workforce skill development. But alongside the recognition of the many individual and societal benefits from postsecondary education has been a growing focus on the individual and societal costs of financing higher education. In light of national conversations about growing student loan debt and repayment, there have been growing calls for improved higher education accountability and interrogating the value of different higher education programs.
The U.S. Department of Education recently requested feedback on a policy proposal to create a list of “low-financial-value” higher education programs. The Department hopes the list will highlight programs that do not provide substantial financial benefits to students relative to the costs incurred, in hopes of (1) steering students away from those programs and (2) applying pressure on institutions on the list to improve the value of those programs—either on the cost or the benefit side. Drawing on my comments to the Department, in this piece, I outline the key considerations when measuring the value of a college education, the implications of those decisions on what programs the list will flag, and how the Department’s efforts can be more effective at achieving its goals
