Document Category: Policy Brief

Request to Add Measurement of Food Insecurity to the National Postsecondary Student Aid Study (2015)

The Wisconsin HOPE Lab and the American Council on Education Center for Policy Research and Strategy strongly urge the Technical Review Panel of NCES’s NPSAS study to add measurement of food insecurity to the next administration of this key national survey. This will provide policymakers with information required to assess the efficacy of Federal Student Aid in alleviating material hardships and consider the need for new programs to alleviate hunger among undergraduates, assist practitioners in examining how affordable college really is for their students, and enable researchers to produce a more accurate picture of the economic challenges inhibiting college completion.

Below, we describe the rationale for this request and proposed survey questions, drawn from standardized models of assessment that will enable comparisons with national statistics on food insecurity in the broader population.

Accountability for Community Colleges: Moving Forward (2010)

Recent calls for increased investments in postsecondary education
have been accompanied by demands for greater accountability from
colleges and universities. It is politically difficult in a time of scarce
resources to allocate new funds without requiring measurable outcomes
in return. At the same time, effective accountability systems in education
are rare. Therefore, in this chapter I consider the potential for successfully
framing and enacting accountability frameworks for community
colleges. I argue that the usual approach to accountability requires substantial
reform if it stands any chance of succeeding in this sector, but
that success is possible and likely.