Policy makers of all political stripes have been pushing to hold colleges and universities accountable by looking at the outcomes of their former students in the labor force -- whether they are employed full time, how much they earn, etc.
Last year, the Obama administration included median postcollege earnings for over 4,000 colleges and universities in its College Scorecard data. Plus, as of 2015, 32 states had some form of performance or "outcome-based" funding for public institutions of higher education. In fact, one institution -- the Texas State Technical College System -- makes funding recommendations to the state Legislature solely by analyzing data on students’ postcollege earnings.
Such approaches often draw criticism for embracing an overly vocational view of what higher education is for, for focusing too narrowly on a small set of indicators or for thinking too short term.
A new study examining the use of labor market outcomes concludes that use of a single metric cannot accurately evaluate institutional performance, but that a mix of several different measures sorts institutions better than using no labor market indicator at all.
Read more at Inside Higher Ed: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/12/06/study-higher-ed-accountability-should-be-based-multiple-metrics-not-one