Higher Education Accountability and Affordability: Studies of Programmatic Accreditation and Student Loans

Abstract

Even as a college credential becomes more critical than ever for economic security and social mobility, the risks associated with attending college have also grows. Many individuals leave higher education institutions without a credential but with student loan balances that they struggle to repay for years. In such an environment, it is unsurprising that higher education has come under criticism for a lack of accountability and waning affordability. This dissertation presents three empirical studies into different aspects of these two issues. Chapters 2 and 3 deal with specialized accreditation in business and nursing. Those two fields are crucial to higher education, accounting for a large share of degrees conferred annually and preparing students for entry into critical industries and roles. Both fields have longstanding accreditors that purport to define what a quality business or nursing education looks like, to evaluate programs based on the standards and criteria they define, and to certify what programs satisfy those standards. Accreditation is costly and intertwined with broader accountability practices in higher education, but it is little understood and virtually unstudied. Chapter 2 traces the evolution of specialized accreditation in business and nursing. Business is characterized by a lower prevalence of accreditation, significant stratification of institutions across accreditors, and large racial inequities in who earns degrees from accredited programs. By contrast, nursing has near-universal coverage by accreditors and smaller though long-standing disparities by race and ethnicity in access to accredited programs. Chapter 3 analyzes the impact that accreditation has on program-level degree conferrals and costs. Business accreditation is associated with small gains in degree conferrals but large impacts on instructional costs. Nursing shows just the reverse: attaining accreditation accelerates the growth of programs while causing no changes to the underlying cost of delivering education. One conspicuous failure of higher education accountability is the very real student loan crisis affecting millions of borrowers. Chapter 4, coauthored with KC Deane, Brian McCall, and Stephen DesJardins, analyzes student loan repayment patterns for up to 12 years, tracking borrowers through formative ages from early 20s to late 30s. Using social sequence and cluster analysis to understand these longitudinal repayment histories reveals five archetypes of loan repayment describing borrowers’ experiences: persistent defaulters, perpetual payers, rapid full payers, late full payers, and consolidators. There is significant stratification by race/ethnicity and social class into these repayment clusters, with minoritized borrowers, borrowers who do not graduate, and those attending for-profit institutions more likely to experience adverse borrowing outcomes and to experience them over a longer period of time. Borrowers face barriers to repayment frequently and repeatedly, with 30% defaulting at least once, 40% deferring on loans, and three out of every four borrowers missing payments at least once. Findings also show that the narrative of defaulters owing relatively small amounts is not entirely accurate. Though it is true that occasional defaulters do have low loan balances, persistent defaulters account for half of all defaulters and owe on average $15,000. These borrowers see their balances grow by 30% after beginning repayment.