“The State-Supported Ohio College and University Performance Report: Student Outcomes and Experiences” was released to Gov. Bob Taft and the public after a yearlong analysis of data contributed by the state’s 38 public universities and medical, community and technical colleges. The report examines performance measures ranging from the types of faculty teaching first-year students to employment outcomes for graduates. The full document is available on the Web at www.regents.state.oh.us/perfrpt/student_outcomes.html.

Ohio State supports the statewide push to assess higher education, said Executive Vice President and Provost Edward J. Ray. “The Ohio State University is committed to measuring and evaluating the quality and effectiveness of all of our programs and the success of our students, and we strongly support the state effort to do so for all of higher education in Ohio,” he said. “As a public university, we have an obligation to the people of Ohio to provide evidence of our effective use of public resources.”

In fact, Ohio State has a history of self-assessment, and since 1997 has measured its performance against nine national benchmark institutions that are similar in organization and of highest academic standing. Those institutions are the universities of Arizona, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, Penn State, Texas, Washington and Wisconsin and the University of California at Los Angeles. In addition, Impact Ohio: An Academic Plan for the 21st Century, a five-year strategy designed to transform Ohio State into one of the world’s truly great teaching and research institutions, includes a built-in “Academic Scorecard” so that the university constantly monitors its progress.

Taft requested the annual performance report in November 1999, outlining four reasons for the analysis: to provide accountability, justify Ohio’s financial commitment to higher education, help prospective students determine which institution is best suited to their needs, and create benchmarks to help institutions identify their strengths and weaknesses.

The report notes that public institutions in Ohio vary widely in their missions and traditional populations served. The report also focuses strongly on the first-year experience in response to Taft’s suggestion that its findings would help prospective students select a school.

Ohio State and its peers
Ohio State analysts created a separate document in which the university’s data are compared to its closest peers: Ohio, Kent State, Bowling Green State and Miami universities and the University of Cincinnati. UC and Ohio State are the only two public Research I institutions in the state.

Among the findings of the comparison of OSU and its five closest Ohio peers:
• Ohio State’s in-state undergraduate tuition, at $4,383, is lower than tuition at the five peer schools and below the $4,616 overall state average, which factors in all four-year institutions. Graduate in-state tuition, at $6,048, is lower than all but Kent State and below the $6,113 overall state average.
• Ohio State’s 1998 external research funding, $124.2 million from federal sources, $40.4 million in industry funds and $23.2 million in other support, exceeds all other public schools in the state by a significant margin. The second-highest in the state, the University of Cincinnati, received $90.3 million, $24.4 million and $5.5 million, respectively.
• Ohio State’s percentages of Asian American and Hispanic students is equal to or higher than its peers; OSU matches Kent State in enrollment of African Americans at 8 percent. UC enrolls the highest percentage of African Americans among the peers, at 15 percent.
• Ohio State’s 4 percent enrollment of international students exceeds all other peer schools’ percentages of international students.
• 84 percent of law graduates pass the bar exam and go on to work in Ohio at an average salary of $52,500, compared to the overall state average of 78 percent bar exam passage and overall state average salary of $44,500.
• Ohio State’s 56 percent six-year graduation rate exceeds the overall state average of 50 percent, but is fourth among the closest peers. Miami’s 79 percent six-year graduation rate is the highest in the state.

Telling the whole story

Because of its focus on undergraduate education, the report “tells only part of the story,” said Martha Garland, vice provost and dean of undergraduate studies. “If you’re going to measure the performance of Ohio State University, you have to draw a much bigger picture.”

For example, the report does not take into account Ohio State’s impact on the state through its Extension network, its far-reaching graduate education offerings and professional programs, the university’s commitment to advancing education-industry technology partnerships or its attention to P-12 education. Ray said these and other activities “are measures which we believe add significantly to the student experience we provide and contribute greatly to the state, as well.”

Ray said that, when placed in the context of “Measuring Up 2000,” a report produced by the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, the Regents’ report underscores how well Ohio students do when they attend college, considering that they do so in a state in which higher education appears to have been undervalued historically. The national report issued Ohio a grade of D- in affordability. Ray said the report “failed to explain that tuitions at Ohio schools are higher than in some states because our level of public support has been lower historically than that of many states. It also showed that our students are less prepared for college than those in other states, noting as well our citizens’ below-average participation rate in higher education.

“The good news, which the Regents report shows, is that when Ohio students do attend college, they finish at high rates.”

Crunching the numbers

Regents analysts used the Higher Education Information (HEI) System, the Board of Regents’ information system, to compile parts of the report. HEI previously had been used to determine the state’s subsidy to institutions, providing data on credit hours taught. Ohio State officials believe the use of the data for the performance report purposes produced unexpected and sometimes puzzling results.

“The Regents have made a good-faith effort to respond to the governor’s request for information,” Garland said. “The current study asked questions that the information system wasn’t really designed to answer, and we think some of the results need further assessment before we can feel absolutely comfortable with what the data say. We are confident that once appropriate adjustments are made, the process begun this year will prove to be a valuable benchmark instrument for the institutions and the state’s policy-makers.” Ohio State officials say the future is undoubtedly brighter for higher education in the state because of what the Regents report says about colleges and universities’ role in Ohio citizens’ quality of life.

“We thank Gov. Bob Taft for asking the Regents to prepare this report,” Ray said. “Governor Taft understands the need for our graduates to be prepared to live and work in a 21st century knowledge society. We look forward to continued work with him and the Ohio Board of Regents to improve the state of higher education in Ohio.”

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