Moving Past Loan Default Rates: Experts Discuss Additional Accountability Metrics to Improve Student Success – NASFAA
As college costs rise, more people have turned to lawmakers to hold institutions accountable for providing high quality student success outcomes. Seeking to address accountability metrics and provide recommendations to lawmakers working to reauthorize the Higher Education Act (HEA), a panel of higher education experts discussed loan repayment rates on Tuesday.
The current primary metric used to measure accountability at the institutional level is the cohort default rate (CDR), which is “outdated and insufficient as a stand alone measure,” said Michael Itzkowitz, a senior fellow at Third Way, the center-left think tank that hosted the event.
The use of the CDR metric has faced a great deal of criticism over improperly targeting community colleges and calls for improvement to more accurately reflect student success outcomes. At the event the panelists debated options to replace the CDR or add other metrics to measure institutional accountability.
“Every year [CDR] captures about 10 schools, even though we know we have thousands and thousands of schools in the system, and many more than 10 that are not serving their students well when it comes to loans,” said Lanae Erickson, senior vice president of social policy and politics at Third Way.