Governments rely largely on postsecondary wages to evaluate program quality. Should they widen their measures and scrutinize all institutions?
Even a decade ago, the idea of “value” was hardly mentioned in talks regarding federal higher education policy. Now, it’s rare to have a serious conversation without bringing up the subject.
A recent episode of The Key, Inside Higher Ed’s news and analysis podcast, explored how politicians and policy makers are responding to growing public questioning about the value of getting a postsecondary degree—or perhaps stoking it—by defining and trying to measure whether individual institutions and academic programs are providing value to consumers.
The episode featured three guests: Clare McCann, who was a key member of the Biden administration’s higher education policy team and recently joined Arnold Ventures as a higher education fellow; Will Doyle, a professor of higher education at Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College, who studies the government’s role in higher education; and Ernest Ezeugo, a member of the federal policy team at Lumina Foundation. They discussed how the concept of value is factoring into state and federal policy, what’s driving that trend and whether an overdependence on economic outcomes can lead to unintended consequences.
