Modified Wed, Sep 23, 2009 06:21 AM
Toward degrees
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close xLeaders of the University of North Carolina system started pushing some years ago for campuses to enroll more students. The motivation made sense: forecasts showed that the number of college-age students was increasing, and there was pressure from all corners to make a place for those students in the system. Pushing more young people toward a college degree obviously would broaden their horizons and would benefit the state.
So schools in the 16-campus system were given additional public money for each student they enrolled.
The problem is, many of those students, at least on some campuses, were not graduating. At N.C. Central University in Durham, for example, enrollment increased by 50 percent in seven years. But one in four students left after one year, and about half graduated.
UNC system President Erskine Bowles is direct in assessing this trend. A significant number of students, he said, "dropped out, flunked out after one year, with a lot of debt. They got a bad deal, and the state got a bad deal."
Now, under Bowles' leadership, the system will require schools to meet retention and graduation rates, and if those goals aren't met, the schools that fall short will not be allowed to increase their enrollments.
This makes good sense. Admitting a student who has little chance of success, in order to get the money that comes with higher enrollment, isn't helping anybody. And it puts the incentive for UNC schools in the wrong place -- namely, to grow the student population because of the direct connection between enrollment and funding, when the priority ought to be to get the job done for the students who are admitted.
Gaining admission ought to mean that a student has a reasonable chance of graduating. And though leaders of individual universities surely see the expansion of enrollment as a chance to help more young people (nothing wrong with that), it's appropriate after several years to step back and tweak the funding system in light of experience.
To connect funding at least in part to the success of students, and thus to a measure of how well an individual school is holding up its end of the educational bargain, is entirely appropriate. It lets taxpayers know that they're getting their money's worth, and that the system is doing what it is supposed to do, which is to produce graduates, not just students. There should be a priority on efforts to help high school students make the sometimes difficult transition to university campus, and counseling as to courses and schedules must be readily available.
At the same time, of course, standards for graduation must not be watered down in the effort to keep students moving on through. A UNC system diploma must be a mark of high achievement and a clear signal that a student is intellectually prepared to move forward into the workforce or with advanced academic training.
In these tough budget times, Bowles is seizing an opportunity to look at the way the UNC system operates. That includes scrutinizing fat on the administrative layers, which he already has addressed, the organization of information technology systems, which have been multiplying on many campuses and now, how well the system's schools are delivering in degree-granting.
Going strictly by the numbers for certain appropriations was not, in hindsight, a very good idea. Changing the formula offers the UNC system a chance to institute a better one.
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