Return to the Top: The Role of Increasing College Productivity in America's Quest for Global Leadership in Degree Attainment

Abstract

As America's supply of skilled workers falls behind demand, the country is losing its long-held advantage over competing nations. Many leaders -- most notably President Obama -- have made it a national priority to return the United States to its former place as number one in the world in degree attainment. However, declines in the production of college graduates pose a major challenge to achieving this goal; this is unsurprising, partly because little research has explored the cost-effectiveness of various college programs.

Professors Harris and Goldrick-Rab will present findings from a study that begins to fill this void by combining rigorous evidence on the impacts of prominent programs with information about costs to produce estimates of cost-effectiveness. They consider policies ranging from smaller faculty-student ratios to need-based financial aid and the TRIO programs, concluding that many of these programs have high costs compared with their relatively small impact on students.