Bettersworth: Traditional college funding incentivizes selling rather than student placement
Michael Bettersworth · Texas State Technical College: The School With a Money-Back Guarantee · Joe Lonsdale · Jan 6, 2022 · at 4:42
Michael Bettersworth, Chief Innovation Officer at Texas State Technical College, contrasts traditional higher education enrollment funding models with placement-driven funding.
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“The mission, however, with Contact Hour funding, the traditional way of funding higher education, Is really focused on what can I sell to a student? So I'm selling programs into the student customer. When we shift the funding model to placement and earnings, now the primary market is where can I place my students?”
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More from Michael Bettersworth
Bettersworth: Contact hour funding incentivizes colleges to prolong student enrollment
“The contact hour model encourages you to keep as many students enrolled for as long as you can because you're selling units, semester credit hour units.”
Bettersworth: Outcomes-based funding models must minimize variables to avoid perverse incentives
“So one of the rules of anybody considering models like this is the fewer variables, the better. Every additional variable that we add adds complexity, it adds confusion, and it will drive behavior in unintended ways.”
Bettersworth: TSTC enrollment dropped to 12K while completions and placements increased
“The total enrollment now is around 12,000. We used to be 20,000 back in, in days when I think we were more focused on enrollment than placement. Got it. So while our enrollment number has actually contracted over this transition, the placement numbers and the …”
Bettersworth: TSTC charges higher tuition for programs with higher economic returns
“We have implemented variable tuition across our programs now, so certain programs that have a higher economic return, we can price at a higher rate.”