Via Inside Higher Ed:
Research presented here by researchers from Wabash College -- and based on national data sets -- finds that there may be a minimal relationship between what colleges spend on education and the quality of the education students receive. Further, the research suggests that colleges that spend a fraction of what others do, and operate with much higher student-faculty ratios and greater use of part-time faculty members, may be succeeding educationally as well as their better-financed (and more prestigious) counterparts.
Points:
- “…the study raised the question of whether those who attend a regional public master's university might be getting 90 percent of the value of an education at an elite private for 20 percent of the cost.”
- Four areas studied:
- good teaching with high quality interactions with faculty
- high expectations and academic challenge
- interaction with ideas and people different from one's own
- deep learning
- “…spending on faculty members is where the differences exist between the colleges at the low and high ends of the spending spectrum among those 10 institutions.”
- “…the quality of instruction from part-timers can be just as high as from full-timers”
- “… colleges could achieve similar educational gains without the low courseloads favored by the most elite institutions”
