The University of North Carolina General Administration Board of Governors met last week to further define the five themes they plan to address in the future of higher education in our state: access, affordability and efficiency, student success, economic impact, and excellent and diverse institutions.
To inform their discussion, the board heard presentations on the current state of higher education in North Carolina as it relates to inequalities in access and student success as well as a presentation on a potential solution to the issues that were highlighted.
Kelly, senior vice president of strategy and policy for the UNC General Administration, cited data which showed that North Carolina has one of the fastest growing economies and populations, has higher education institutions that rank among the best in the country with relatively low tuition and high degree completion rates and yet is 39th in per capita income and has one of the lowest rates of upward mobility (the ability to earn more money than one’s parents) in the country.
“The UNC System did not cause this puzzle but it has a tremendous opportunity to help solve it and it starts with improving rates of student access and success,” Kelly said.
Currently, Kelly showed 47 percent of those who are born in the lowest socioeconomic category and don’t get a college degree will be there in adulthood, while 10 percent of those who are in that category will make it to the top category. He compared that to 26 percent of those in the next highest economic category who will remain there without a college degree and 37 percent who will move to the top category (out of five) if they obtain a college degree.
“We’ve made large gains in access but stubborn gaps still remain,” Kelly said.
To further drive home the point, Kelly put up another chart which showed that a high school student in the lowest category of economic standing who scored in the top percentile on high school exams was just as likely to earn a college degree as a high school student in the highest economic category who scored in the second-lowest percentile on their exams.
Kelly also showed that those who receive need-based Pell grants are 12 percent more likely not to graduate. To solve these issues, Kelly warned about the creation of more academic hoops for students to jump through to prove their abilities.
“We need to be careful about navigating the tension between access and success,” Kelly said. “Simply counting paper credentials can create perverse incentives.”
The next presenter, Matthew Pellish, senior director for strategic research and education at the education think-tank EAB, explored the costs and benefits of one of those potential models for improving higher education: performance-based funding (PBF).
Pellish cited data that showed that while PBF may pay off down the line, those positive results are at least seven years down the line and would require more trouble than they are worth.
Pellish said that university systems in the past have struggled to arrive at any workable consensus on the proper judgements for student success, leading to more and more benchmarks which lack substance.
“It seems like it has inconclusive results at best if you’re being nice to it,” said Madeline Finnegan, president of the Association of Student Governments, which represents the student body of the entire UNC System. “It seems as though it’s attempting to solve a problem, but I think that in the end what it will end up doing is stratifying our campuses even more.”
The next Board of Governors meeting is on Oct. 14 in the Center for School Leadership Development at 140 Friday Center Drive in Chapel Hill. The board sets aside time during each meeting for public comment and publishes their responses to each question online, though only two people showed up at the meeting last week.
To register to address the board yourself, go to http://northcarolina.edu/content/contact-us. The deadline for registering for the Oct. 14 meeting has not been announced, though based on the schedule for last week’s meeting, it can be predicted to be Oct. 8.