You may have seen the recent New York Times headline “Some Colleges Don’t Produce Big Earners. Are They Worth It?” Some of the data for the article comes from studies by Third Way, a self-described center-left think tank.
The article mentions what we think is a powerful tool for helping to understand the contribution of universities and colleges to economic mobility, today's Collaborative Click: A New Way of Measuring Value in Higher Education.
We also recommend you read the New York Times article for a well-rounded discussion of the issues. But a deep dive on the social mobility data at Third Way, we think, will greatly inform your institution's considerations of at least one aspect of its economic and community engagement efforts—the ways in which the institution support economic mobility.
We are in dire need of a completely different approach to assessing institutions of higher education. Instead of prioritizing reputation and selectivity, we propose a new rating system known as the Economic Mobility Index (EMI) that attempts to answer the question: “If the primary purpose of postsecondary education is supposed to be to catalyze an increase in economic mobility, which schools are succeeding in that goal?” The following analysis is designed to give policymakers, researchers, and consumers a better way to assess which colleges are delivering on that promise for low- and moderate-income students—and which ones are falling woefully short. (Read more.)
Other relevant links:
- New York Times: Some Colleges Don’t Produce Big Earners. Are They Worth It?
- U.S. Department of Education: College Scorecard