Measuring Value Add of Universities
There is constant debate about the quality of Universities. Some people measure it solely by how well the graduates perform while others argue that one must measure the value added by the University. This debate applies to all educational organisations including schools (especially when it comes to ranking schools). But the difficulty is in measuring the value added.
To measure the value add, one has to try to identify how a person would have performed if they had not obtained a qualification from the University and compare it with the person’s performance after they had obtained a qualification from the University. A scientific way to address this question is to conduct an experiment with a control group. One could have two groups of school leavers who have been identified to have the same ability. One group will attend the University A and the other group will attend University B. One then measures the graduate outcomes for the two groups. This is clearly very difficult to conduct in real life.
If University A has very high admission standards (say they accept only 1% of the applicants), one needs a group of students who would have qualified for University A but choose not to attend University A and opt for University B. Given that University A is likely to have a solid reputation, the number of students willing to give up the opportunity to attend University A will be vanishingly small. So it will be hard to conclude that the group of students admitted have similar ability. Here ability is not just academic knowledge – it could be the drive to work hard, personality traits such as resilience when faced with adversity etc.
Furthermore there is no agreement on what is meant by graduate outcomes. A lot would depend on the career goals of the students. These goals could change as the student progresses through their studies and get exposed to different options. So more students from University A might show an entrepreneurial flair than from University B because University A while more students from University B might undertake a research career.
Given the difficulty (or impossibility) of conducting a control experiment, one has to rely on other techniques. But perhaps that is a topic for another blog.
Personally I feel trying to measure the reputation of a University by its value add is not going
to work. The only acceptable measure is what others say about the graduates from the University.
To measure the value add, one has to try to identify how a person would have performed if they had not obtained a qualification from the University and compare it with the person’s performance after they had obtained a qualification from the University. A scientific way to address this question is to conduct an experiment with a control group. One could have two groups of school leavers who have been identified to have the same ability. One group will attend the University A and the other group will attend University B. One then measures the graduate outcomes for the two groups. This is clearly very difficult to conduct in real life.
If University A has very high admission standards (say they accept only 1% of the applicants), one needs a group of students who would have qualified for University A but choose not to attend University A and opt for University B. Given that University A is likely to have a solid reputation, the number of students willing to give up the opportunity to attend University A will be vanishingly small. So it will be hard to conclude that the group of students admitted have similar ability. Here ability is not just academic knowledge – it could be the drive to work hard, personality traits such as resilience when faced with adversity etc.
Furthermore there is no agreement on what is meant by graduate outcomes. A lot would depend on the career goals of the students. These goals could change as the student progresses through their studies and get exposed to different options. So more students from University A might show an entrepreneurial flair than from University B because University A while more students from University B might undertake a research career.
Given the difficulty (or impossibility) of conducting a control experiment, one has to rely on other techniques. But perhaps that is a topic for another blog.
Personally I feel trying to measure the reputation of a University by its value add is not going
to work. The only acceptable measure is what others say about the graduates from the University.
posted by PK at
4:27 PM
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