Performance-Based Funding
...nly require a lot of manpower to develop and oversee. Missouri happens to be one state currently using the performance of its schools as the determiner for the money they receive and is meeting with relative success. In fact, other states have been following their example, using the program as a model for performance based funding. In 1994, Missouri began to utilize a performance-based funding program called “Funding for Results.” The program focuses on the college or university’s graduation rate, the quality of entering freshmen, and the numbers of graduate students and students in teacher-education program (“Missouri Financing System is Praised” 2). Joseph C. Burke, director of the higher-education program at the Rockefeller Institute of Government at the State University of New York, states that, “Missouri seems in many ways to have gotten it right, or as right as a state can get it (“Missouri Financing System is Praised" 1). In addition, performance-based funding is a way to get feedback on how colleges and universities are serving the students; these programs can also serve as a catalyst for competition among intuition leaders around the states. As with any issue concerning public money, those who oppose performance based funding also have several points to benefit their argument. Having standards that need to be meet for performance-based funding, such as the number of graduating students, might be difficult to achieve, according to Paul Gianini Jr, author of Putting Performance into Performance-Based Funding. "Graduation rates are a poor measure of performance because colleges have little control over today's mobile student" (2). Another standard that needs to be meet for colleges and universities to get funding is the high quality of entering freshman. This type of standard could truly hurt these institutions, biting them their backside just to get more money in their pockets. Restrictions such as this on entering freshman will only serve to damage their enrollment numbers, by reducing enrollment numbers. Main determiners of student quality would be standardized test scores, such as SAT or ACT, and high school grade point average. Neither of which are true indicators of a students ability to succeed in college. With a performance based funding system, these students never get the chance to excel as their very presence will lower the school’s performance score and in turn the colleges and universities may not get the money they are trying to achieve. Some higher-education leaders believes this will not be hard to achieve this type of standard in colleges and universities, as noted by Edward Henn author of, Open Eyes, Open Minds, Open Doors, "You simply admit only those who, by virtue of test scores or other indicators, have a high probability of success" (1). With this type of thinking, colleges and universities are getting away from what they are meant to be, intuitions of learning. These intuitions are now more worried about getting their money then educating the students. The introduction of a performance based funding system must also include a way to measure those results, which comes in the form of positions and paperwork. Not every college and university leader believes that performance- based funding is a good idea. As noted by Peter Sch...