Getting Beyond Headlines
Data is powerful, and today's colleges and universities are learning that lesson the hard way. As increasing amounts of information regarding their student outcomes become available, media outlets are taking advantage, running stories like this one, 11 Public Universities with the Worst Graduation Rates . The clear intent is shame and disinvestment in public education, and it's working. One of my very talented and knowledgeable colleagues shared that story on Facebook, writing "Is there any way to understand these completion rates other than dismal?" That's a good question. What I appreciate most about it is that it asks how we can understand it? Not, "who is to blame?" Too often that seems to be the goal of publishing numbers, as if the old adage about sunshine being a miracle cure would actually apply to problems involving human beings. As I flipped through the slide show of the "11 Worst," looking at the often pretty campuses of those f...