Rewarding the Wrong Types of Behavior?

"We're rewarding the wrong types of behavior, [Eloy] Oakley said (Fain, 2011)."


Eloy Oakley's comment, as president of Long Beach City College, is in response to a new initiative in the state of California to move enrollment and student retention in Higher Education - and specifically in Community Colleges - to a more performance-based model.

The state of California is well known for it emphasis on access as the first and foremost priority in Higher Education. Last year a bill was passed which required the California educational system to create a "Task Force on Student Success (Fain, 2011)." In their report this year, the Task Force found that one of the key loads on California's system was the emphasis on access irregardless of student performance. Their recommendation? Give students who demonstrate academic success based on completion and other "success metrics" priority in enrollment, advising and other services. (Fain, 2011)

In Student Affairs, one of the causes most commonly championed is increasing access to education. The rationale, which one of the members of California's Task Force - David Rattray - calls "the ideal" is that this is America and the more open-access we provide to education the greater Higher Education embodies and serves as the vehicle for the American Dream. "In an ideal world, community colleges would grant equal opportunities to all students regardless of their academic preparation...In the real world it's not working (Fain quoting Rattray, 2011)"

President Obama, in his recent speech to the Auraria Campus student body and faculty, was proud of the fact that - by executive order - they have eliminated subsidized student loans. When I asked my students what their thoughts were about this, they had no idea what the ramifications of this would be for them. While it does eliminate federal subsidies which are paid to private sector financial institutions - a popularist move with the electorate in the run-up to an election year (given the wildfire growth of Occupy Movement) - the subsidies paid to banks served a function for students who receive these loans: interest does not start to accrue until six months after they are out of school. Without subsidized student loans, the end-cost of an education goes up however it does grant the Fed more control over the dispositioning of such loans (ie - forgiveness) but this comes at a cost. There is not such thing as a free lunch and someone will have to pay for student loan bailouts. The additional problem which arises in conversations about this is the matter of accountability. What behaviors are we rewarding by doing this?