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In case there are any Ed.D. students out there looking for a dissertation topic, or any educational researchers looking to make a huge splash in the real world, I’ve got one for you. I offer it free of charge. It’s fairly basic, but I haven’t seen any good work on it.
Assuming that a college has enough money to support one of these options, but only one, which one is likeliest to lead to the greatest increase in graduation rates?
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Another full-time counselor
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Another full-time professor
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Another instructional designer
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The equivalent dollars given out in "completion" (second-year) scholarships
It’s an empirical question, so it should be solvable empirically. The question also works in reverse when budgets dry up. Which would hurt least if it were eliminated?
I ask because we talk a good game about aligning resources with goals, but we lack good measures to weigh one intervention as against another. Typically, they’re studied -- and advocated for -- in isolation. Yes, all else being equal, another full-time counselor would help meet our students’ needs around anxiety and mental health. In isolation, more full-timers on the faculty (as opposed to more adjuncts) would tend to improve completion. In isolation, more support for faculty innovation and technology should improve the quality of teaching, and therefore student performance. And yes, in isolation, scholarships help students finish. But how does B compare to D, numerically? I don’t know, and I haven’t found anyone who does.
Each has its own constituency, but that’s the worst way to make a decision. Defaulting to internal political pressure tends to reward the areas that are either the largest or the best organized, rather than the most beneficial. (It’s sometimes called the Matthew effect, after the parable of the talents in the book of Matthew. Or, as Billie Holiday put it in “God Bless the Child,” “them that’s got shall get, them that’s not shall lose.”)
I would imagine that the empirical answer would vary by context, but that’s fine; any guidance as to how to measure in a given context would be helpful. A baseball team with eight outfielders and no shortstops would benefit more from adding a mediocre shortstop than from adding yet another outfielder, even if that outfielder is very good. Quantifying the ideal balance would help tremendously.
So, aspiring and/or ambitious scholars, if you do this well, those of us in the field would be much obliged. I won’t even ask for credit.
Thanks!
