Rewarding colleges for performance
There is something inspirational in the language of Harper College President Kenneth Ender, a refreshingly fearless educator who refuses to be cowed by challenge, change or vested interests.
In a discussion last week with our editorial board on the concept of performance-based funding for community colleges and public universities, he observed: "What we're doing isn't working. We've gotta try something new."
On Monday, the Palatine community college will host a meeting of the Higher Education Finance Study Commission to examine practices in other states to incent improved graduation rates. Eric Fingerhut, chancellor with the Ohio Board of Regents, will make a presentation on that state's recently adopted State Share of Instruction formula based on course completion.
Ender, for one, is all for it.
"If the discussion can change from how many students you enroll to how many students you graduate," he told us, "just changing that dialogue starts to put an emphasis on what's going to count at the end of the day in our own district, state and across the country in respect to an educated America."
It's bound to be a controversial topic. While performance-based funding for colleges and universities has been tried in 26 states in the past three decades, according to an article last year in The Chronicle of Higher Education, it's been scrapped in more than a dozen of them - usually after little in the way of a real trial and often because of resistance from public colleges and the political vagaries of state spending.
It certainly would run into political gamesmanship and vested interests in Illinois, and so the devil, as it so often is, would be in the details.
State Rep. Fred Crespo of Hoffman Estates, a member of the study commission and one of the sponsors of the resolution that created it, is optimistic that a workable formula for performance-based funding can be developed if all the affected parties can work together to arrive at a solution that truly does incent rather than penalize.
Wishful thinking? Most likely, at least to a degree. Even Crespo acknowledges that it is a "paradigm shift in the state that will take a while."
Our view? Well, we're intrigued. We go into this supportive of the concept, skeptical whether the political minefields can be maneuvered and interested in learning more.
As we said, the devil is in the details.
One of the points Ender made in discussing the performance-based funding formula was that he hopes the commission could "find a way to finance the taking of risk." He believes risk is inherent in finding new ways to meet the challenges facing education.
If true, the attempt at performance-based funding is an appropriate way to start.