Scribd Logo
Upload

Welcome to Scribd!

  • 41 views

    Return On Investment in Education

    Uploaded by

    Eri Jorge
    This document discusses return on investment in higher education and proposes applying Lean Six Sigma thinking to make education decisions. It suggests: [1] Defining what return you want from college, such as skills, knowledge or connections; [2] Measuring how well colleges deliver on that critical metric; [3] Analyzing what factors contribute to higher values, such as majors or internships; [4] Improving your experience by focusing on critical factors; and [5] Continually controlling your goals and focusing on improving critical factors for lifelong learning. While most students currently lack the maturity for this approach, high-potential students are able to apply critical thinking to achieve benefits. Parental engagement is also important for project success

    Copyright:

    Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd

    Return On Investment in Education

    Uploaded by

    Eri Jorge
    41 views2 pages
    This document discusses return on investment in higher education and proposes applying Lean Six Sigma thinking to make education decisions. It suggests: [1] Defining what return you want from college, such as skills, knowledge or connections; [2] Measuring how well colleges deliver on that critical metric; [3] Analyzing what factors contribute to higher values, such as majors or internships; [4] Improving your experience by focusing on critical factors; and [5] Continually controlling your goals and focusing on improving critical factors for lifelong learning. While most students currently lack the maturity for this approach, high-potential students are able to apply critical thinking to achieve benefits. Parental engagement is also important for project success

    Original Description:

    Original Title

    Return on Investment in Education

    Copyright

    © Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)

    Available Formats

    DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd

    Did you find this document useful?

    Is this content inappropriate?

    This document discusses return on investment in higher education and proposes applying Lean Six Sigma thinking to make education decisions. It suggests: [1] Defining what return you want from college, such as skills, knowledge or connections; [2] Measuring how well colleges deliver on that critical metric; [3] Analyzing what factors contribute to higher values, such as majors or internships; [4] Improving your experience by focusing on critical factors; and [5] Continually controlling your goals and focusing on improving critical factors for lifelong learning. While most students currently lack the maturity for this approach, high-potential students are able to apply critical thinking to achieve benefits. Parental engagement is also important for project success

    Copyright:

    Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    41 views2 pages

    Return On Investment in Education

    Uploaded by

    Eri Jorge
    This document discusses return on investment in higher education and proposes applying Lean Six Sigma thinking to make education decisions. It suggests: [1] Defining what return you want from college, such as skills, knowledge or connections; [2] Measuring how well colleges deliver on that critical metric; [3] Analyzing what factors contribute to higher values, such as majors or internships; [4] Improving your experience by focusing on critical factors; and [5] Continually controlling your goals and focusing on improving critical factors for lifelong learning. While most students currently lack the maturity for this approach, high-potential students are able to apply critical thinking to achieve benefits. Parental engagement is also important for project success

    Copyright:

    Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    of 2

    Return On Investment in Education

    The September issue of US News & World Report has the most recent rankings of the Best
    Colleges. However, I think what's interesting is the article "Is College Still Worth it?" Instead of which college to
    attend, the question it asks is whether to go to college, given the rising costs at as much as $50,000 a year.

    What is the return on investment in higher education? What is the return? How do we measure? The article
    didn’t answer these questions but pointed in the right direction.

    Unfortunately, what's not clear is whether the product an education is getting any better or any easier to
    evaluate.

    If colleges were businesses, they would be ripe for hostile takeovers, complete with serious cost-cutting and
    painful reorganizations. You can be sure those business analysts would ask: Is the consumer getting the
    product we promised? What do you actually learn here? Can you guarantee a job? Admission to graduate
    school? There are ways to gauge these things, but colleges have just recently fended off a movement to
    demand such outcomes measures.

    The common argument to support the ROI has been the fact that, on average, "people with a college degree
    earn significantly more money over their lifetimes than those without a college degree." But the flaw is in the
    unspoken "on average" in such data and the meaning of "significantly". The Six Sigma training in me always
    makes me ask "what is the variation in each group?" and "what are the factors that contribute to the variation?”

    People making decisions based on such general differences between averages run the risk of not getting
    sufficient ROI or any at all. Although education decisions are highly personal, people could apply DMAIC
    thinking to make it a more informed decision.

     Define: Decide what return you want from higher education. The metrics can be money (marketable
    skills), connection/networking, joy of learning, knowledge and understanding of the world itself,
    etc. Prioritize what is most Critical to your Education (CTE) and focus on maximizing that, very much
    like a CTQ defined for a LSS project.
     Measure: Collect data on how well each college delivers the CTE metric, and make sure that all data
    are equivalent or measured similarly before comparing them.
     Analyze: Ask the question "what critical factors contribute to the higher value of the CTE metric?" For
    example, if your CTE is marketable skills that pay well and you identified colleges whose graduates
    received the highest starting salaries, the question is "what factors helped them achieve these
    skills?"They can be academic disciplines, participation in Co-operative programs, leading a student
    organization, faculty quality, student quality, student/faculty ratio, or some other indicators used by US
    News in their rankings. The factors that are most critical to learning marketable skills may not help
    you understand the world better, and vice versa. Based on a better understanding of relevant causal
    relationships, choose colleges that excel at those critical factors.
     Improve: Now you are in a college. Focus on critical factors: choose the right major, team up with the
    best students, apply for an intern program, join a student club, etc. This is where you realize the
    return, but only if you focus on the critical factors.
     Control: The world changes. Your goals and priorities change, too. You will discover new critical
    factors that are more important to your current goal. Whether you are still in college or have started
    your career, continue to understand and focus on the critical factors that help you improve. That's
    lifetime learning. That's the spirit of Lean Six Sigma continuous improvement.

    [I will write about applying LSS in education and about ROI in LSS training vs. conventional education in my
    future blogs.]

    I enjoyed this article and can relate to it having put one son through college, one now a Freshman, and one two years
    out. As an MBB, I just wish it this easy. First, I concur that the higher education system needs to be revamped but
    colleges are pillars of resistance to change much like healthcare so I don’t expect much difference between my first
    and third son’s experience. That aside, the biggest challenge I see between my professional DMAIC application and
    my sons’ college experiences is that most of my professional associates can spell DMAIC. My sons, during their high
    school and early college years, have neither the maturity nor critical thinking skills to run through the phases. I would
    say that they fit within the 1st StDev of average. On the other hand, I have had the pleasure of association with some
    high potential HS seniors (top 5-10%), and it is interesting to observe how they apply their fledgling critical thinking
    skills to do just what the author describes…and then reap the benefits. These are our future leaders. Yet, there is one
    other intergradient that the author failed to mention and that is the critical importance of the engagement of parents.
    In terms of DMAIC, these are the project sponsors. Projects seldom succeed with out strong sponsors…Six Sigma is
    not a spectator’s sport! There could be a blog on just this subject alone.

    You might also like