A short thread from the Minister giving a sense of where he is at re: priorities for institutions. His heart is in the right place here, I think (getting a better job is students' #1 reason for going to PSE & institutions should honour that) but conclusions he draws are wonky /1
The outcome the minister seems to want, based on his proposed PBF indicators, is for students to get high-paying jobs immediately after graduation. But this is a bit off both from a logical and a measurement perspective. /2
One proposed measure of graduate outcome is graduate employment rates. But these are universally pretty high (and where they are not it's because students are going on to grad school). Unemployment among recent grads is about 5%. Hard to improve much on that. /3
Another proposed measure is graduate salaries. But these are fundamentally unrelated to what institutions do. The 2015/16 cohort in Alberta had incomes about $4k lower than the 2013/14 cohort. That;s not because institutions were worse - it's because oil prices fell. /4
So, of the two measures of "graduate outcomes" the minister is most seriously considering, one is not a measure of performance and the other is unlikely to spur much improvement. This is precisely why most states/countries who use PBFs don't measure these indicators. /5
That said, the Minister is probably right to be concerned re: seemingly low levels of interaction between firms & institutions (unclear why you'd specifically fault one side & not other for this, but whatevs). But this is fundamentally a *process* issue, not an outcome issue. /6
Have said before, will say again: PBF is a good thing, but it doesn't solve every problem. You want institutions and firms to interact more? Use external quality assurance to make them do more on that front. Using "graduate outcomes" as a way to do it is goofy & inefficient /7
