Walker proposes ranking UW campuses to divide new money
Funding would be based on performance
Think of prospective University of Wisconsin students as consumers shopping for a car they can count on to get them where they want to go, when they need to get there, without guzzling too much gas.
Educators cringe at such analogies, but the days of giving taxpayer dollars to public universities without performance expectations attached — and students not questioning what they’ll get for their money — are over. Students want to know their investment in a college education will prepare them for life after graduation in a reasonable amount of time so they don’t end up holding hefty student loan debt on the side of the road.
With that in mind, Gov. Scott Walker is proposing in his 2017-’19 budget a strategy he says will provide some insurance for students at UW System campuses, called performance-based funding. The Wisconsin College Technical System already receives a percentage of its funding through this kind of report card.
Walker wants UW campuses to compete for $42.5 million in new funding based on graduation rates, average time to degree, percentage of graduates who get jobs, and how many of them work in high-demand fields in Wisconsin, among other measures. Each university would be required to create a report card revealing how well they do by each measure, and post it publicly so students and parents can evaluate for themselves what they would get for their money.
The governor’s budget bill calls for distributing 30% of the $42.5 million based on campus rankings for “affordability and attainability” — measures such as average time to degree, graduation rate of low-income students and faculty instructional hours during the prior fiscal year.
Another 45% would be distributed based on workforce preparation and success: “work readiness” (15%) to reward campuses for percentage of students with internships or other work experience in their field and “student success in state workforce” (30%) to reward a campus for its percentage of graduates in the prior fiscal year who obtain full-time employment, as well as full-time employment in a field related to their degree, and employment in high-demand fields.
The remaining 25% would be divided among campuses based on administrative efficiency (10%), service to state residents (5%) and two additional criteria (10%) determined by the Board of Regents.
The $42.5 million in performance funding may not amount to as much as it sounds when divided among 26 campuses. But it’s still 5% of the total $832.9 million in state funding that can be used toward instruction costs.
The UW System already has a solid reputation for accountability reporting, including measures on access and affordability, educational performance and the undergraduate experience, according to spokeswoman Stephanie Marquis.
“We were the first higher education system in the nation to implement an accountability report, which is available online,” Marquis said in a statement.
The UW System gets about 15% ($1 billion) of its $6.2 billion operating budget through state taxpayer dollars, but only $832.9 million of that can be used toward instruction costs. The rest covers other costs, such as debt service payments on buildings.
UW campuses have known performancebased funding was coming, as more than 30 other states already use it. But is the rankings model Walker proposed the best way to go? And would basing funding on performance measures lead to better performance?
Would it work?
The devil is always in the details.
UW System campuses have long been tracking and sharing much of the performance data the governor values, but state funding hasn’t depended on performance.
Walker is proposing some benchmarks that UW System currently isn’t tracking, or that campuses are measuring differently, Marquis said.
For example, some campuses track the number of former students who graduated the previous year and are working in a field related to their degree, but it’s not consistently monitored systemwide. UW System also analyzes and tracks expenditures, but hasn’t ranked them by institution, Marquis said.
Like the governor, Marquis said, the UW System is focused on improving college affordability, time to degree, efficiencies and student success.
“We believe the Board of Regents should be the primary decision maker in performance-based funding decisions for institutions,” she said.
Studies suggest it’s better not to pit institutions against each other, but to judge each campus based on its own past performance, said Nicholas Hillman, an assistant professor of educational leadership and policy analysis at UW-Madison, who has studied performancebased funding.
He views performance-based funding as merit-based aid to colleges rather than money to help colleges build capacity for delivering quality.
The question to ask, Hillman said, is what design gets the kind of outcomes you want.
“A one-size-fits-all approach is not a sustainable one,” he said.
The trend nationally is away from rankings and toward ratings, Hillman said.
Ranking UW campuses and having them compete against each other “is not an ideal way to do it,” agreed UW-Milwaukee Chancellor Mark Mone, who noted that could pose unfair advantages and disadvantages because campuses have different missions and student populations.
The average age of a UWM student is 26, and 40% of UWM students are the first generation in their family to attend college. They may take longer to graduate because they only go part time while holding down a job, Mone said.
The average time to degree for UW-Madison undergrads is 4.03 years, while it was 4.75 years for spring 2016 grads at UWM.
If UWM competes with UW-Madison for performance-based funding, would that create a financial incentive for UWM to accept fewer students who are less prepared for college, despite the university’s mission of access to anyone who wants a college education, while also functioning as a research institution?
That said, accountability is a reasonable expectation, Mone said.
“We all need to focus on improving graduation, retention, affordability and time to degree,” he said.