Another Bad Decision by the NFL

_{NFL football commissioner Roger Goodell speaks during a news conference following a meeting of NFL owners and executives in New York, Wednesday, Oct. 8, 2014. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)}

RCEd Commentary

Earlier this month, the NFL announced its 2015 draft will be held at Roosevelt University in Chicago, Illinois.  For 256 college students and pro football hopefuls, it will be a dream come true next April when Commissioner Roger Goodell announces their names in Roosevelt’s Auditorium Theatre.

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for Roosevelt’s students. Of 312 full-time students in the freshman class, the latest data indicate only four in 10 -- 131 -- can expect to hear their names called on graduation day, which ironically also takes place in Auditorium Theatre. Even worse, only one in 10 of Roosevelt’s black students will walk that stage within six years of initial enrollment. No, the majority of Roosevelt’s freshmen class will walk away with their dream of graduating unfulfilled and an average of $7,000 in debt for each year attended.   

Roosevelt is not alone. National figures indicate just six in 10 freshmen will graduate within six years from and only 4 in 10 black students will. The average graduation rate among Roosevelt’s peer institutions - similar colleges serving similar students - is a sobering 52 percent. Even so Roosevelt is among the worst, ranking near the bottom of its peer group every single year for the past ten years.

So why is a low-performing college like Roosevelt University being rewarded with a prime time occasion like hosting the NFL Draft? Why isn’t a better school -- one with higher success rates, lower prices, and more economic diversity - like the University of Illinois Chicago -- getting the fame instead? UIC’s Pavilion can fit more than twice as many people as Auditorium Theatre. And like the Theatre, it hosts presidential guests and musical performances.

The short answer is few standards exist to determine what makes a college good or bad, and too few in power care about indicators that do exist. As long as two players -- an accrediting body and the state -- deem an entity “capable” of providing postsecondary education based on inputs like infrastructure, faculty, and curriculum, a college is born and automatically receives federal financial aid from the students it enrolls. Whether or not the school produces decent outcomes is irrelevant.  That needs to change.

Ignoring performance in higher education has led to some depressing statistics:

• We have the lowest college completion rate in the developed world. The college dropout problem is worse than the high school dropout rate;
• Working class students and students of color are neither going to nor graduating college at nearly the same rate as their higher-income or white peers; and
• Unprecedented and fast rising levels of student loan debt leave graduates and dropouts struggling to make -- and often defaulting on -- college loan payments.

The good news is change may be afoot.  The Obama administration has made part of its agenda advancing quality assurance into higher education, as a matter of consumer protection not just for students and families but also taxpayers.

This fall, three major efforts should come to fruition forming a more muscular accountability system for higher education:

• Gainful Employment regulations ensuring students enrolled in career training programs have a decent chance at earning economic benefits commensurate to the debt they incur.
• Teacher Preparation regulations ensuring quality vocational programs of another kind: we’ll find out which schools of education and alternative route programs like Teach For America do a good job producing teachers with skills capable of improving K-12 achievement and which don’t; and finally
• A college ratings system evaluating each college’s performance on access, affordability, and completion metrics, hopefully disaggregated for minority groups.  Similar colleges with similar levels of student selectivity often get very different results.

What these efforts require of programs and colleges is they demonstrate bare minimum results to receive federal dollars. Programs and colleges that perform well will get more money. Those that don’t and don’t improve will lose some. Assuming Congress doesn’t stop the insistence on results, gone will be the days where colleges receive a blank check, year after year, unquestioned.

With a shortfall of 3 million college degrees by 2018, the time is ripe for change. If the Obama administration is successful, colleges like Roosevelt will have to shape up and ensure more of their students’ names are announced on graduation day. Because it’s a problem if the only genuine opportunity most students have to see their dreams achieved is next spring on ESPN.