[Wsssc] Equity Practices - Gates Foundation Article

[Luca Lewis]

Good Afternoon, Colleagues,

I may have sent this previously to this group, my apologies if I've duplicated. The following article written by Dr. Jennifer Engle entitled, "Answering the Call: Institutions and States Lead the Way Toward Better Measures of Postsecondary Performance".

A substantial amount of challenging, difficult work in looking at data has been accomplished with the National Student Clearinghouse<https://studentclearinghouse.org/> in close partnerships with the Gates Foundation and the Lumina Foundation. That being said, this is a little bit of an older article, but relevant in addressing our discussions of addressing equity gaps at the national level and that have a very real prevailing impact at the state and college level. Specifically, Dr. Engle critically calls out the following questions that we should consider to capture as indicators:

  1.  How many “post-traditional” students—the low-income, first-generation, adult, transfer, and part-time students who make up the new majority on today’s campuses—attend college? Do they reach graduation and how long does it take them?
  2.  Are students making sufficient progress toward timely completion, particularly students who enter with less academic preparation or fewer financial resources?
  3.  Do the students who don’t graduate transfer to other colleges and earn credentials, or do they drop out completely?
  4.  How much debt are students accumulating from the college(s) they attend—and can they repay their loans?
  5.  Are students gaining employment in their chosen field after attending college, and how much do they earn?
  6.  How much are students learning from their college experience, and how are they using their knowledge and skills to contribute to their communities?

Full disclosure and my shared perspective, I find that some of the language that we choose to collectively use is somewhat jargony and lack specific meaning and context. These kinds of questions may help us get to Dr. Hunt's (thank you, Dr. Hunt) responses in getting to the root in order to identify, address, and close equity gaps.

Thoughts?

Sincerely,

Luca

Luca E. Lewis, Ph.D.
Vice President for Student Services
Whatcom Community College
237 West Kellogg Road | Bellingham, WA 98226
P: 360.383.3076
F: 360.383.4000

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