What Does It Mean to Say That a Group of Institutions Are 'Comparable'

Writing in the TLT Group's blog, Steve Ehrmann muses about a thread he has been following in the ASSESS email list in which some are questioning the value of collecting certain kinds of comparable data from comparable institutions. To Ehrmann, the biggest reason for caution is research by Howard Bowen:

Howard Bowen tested the hypothesis that higher education instruction has a production function, i.e., that there is some normal relationship between spending and outcomes. When someone remarks that "I can't run a program with that budget; it's too little money," or enviously comments about another program, "With that endowment and budget, they must be wasting a lot of money," or simply spends time collecting comparable data in order to compare their program with the norm (can we boast our results are 5% better than those achieved by other programs that have about our same budget? can we use below average budgets to justify a request for an increase?) --- all of those imply a faith in a production function . . . [He]found no such evidence to support the belief in a production function.

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Regional SCUP Events! Enjoy the F2F company of your colleagues and peers at one of three SCUP regional conferences this spring:

• March 14–16: Baltimore, MD
• March 24–26: Cambridge, MA
• April 5–7, San Diego, CA