Many readers ask why AAEA was able to predict many events correctly? It must have the wisdom on doing that. The answer is clear. We use data, and set aside political interests. The Association uses logic to unveil many stories behind the data. One plus one will never be 3. It never defies the mathematical logic and common knowledge. On the other hand, politics, self-interests, group interests, short-term goals, and lobbyists will tweak common logic to fit their group-interests which are often not-in-the-best of public interests. The law makers need to start operate or behave for the interest of their constituents–not the lobbyists, or group or personal interest. Take an example what the US House and Senate public policy has made on students loans forgiveness. The question is simple. Is the rejection of the students loans forgiveness consistent with the US public interest? By now the US public and all student loans borrowers have to keep in mind when they go to the poll in future election.
Category Archives: Financially Troubled US Colleges
US Higher Education Institutions’ Financial Stress Tests: Debt to Equity Ratio
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The IRI or EA (Education Analytics) is a great approach to study all aspects of Colleges’ operations–not just teaching or learning outcomes, but also institutional financial aspects. Never been shared before, how financial strengths can be measured by IRI/EA, but in this site. Exactly ten yeas ago (March 23, 2013), the Association has completed and shared these studies to test the US higher education institutions’ financial strengths which is equivalent to the required stress tests on the Banking industry after 2018 financial crisis hit the country. To accomplish such research tasks, AAEA first pulled the college financial information along with other data found at NCES database that covered 2008 through 2010. The data set consist of 16729 observations and 63 variables or fields–which after cleaning generate the following results (please click here to access the results). This example, one again demonstrates why higher education institutions in the US is better-off to have someone who is well rounded and capable to carry out the analyses. An expert that has various business and economic knowledge along with solid statistical analyses and econometric modeling experience will help the institutions to study their historical internal data which can be utilized in making strategic decisions. Data visualization is helpful, but no longer enough in today’s world marked with hyper-competition to attract the best brains in the world (not just in the US), as well as donation dollars.
Education Analytics (EA) = Institutional Research Intelligence (IRI)
This site was established in March 2013, exactly ten years ago. We noticed there were three important developments have happened during that ten-year period.
- Data Science (DS) profession has developed faster than EA. The adoptions of DS by all industry types have begun many years ago, especially by the credit card companies. After the Association was established, DS adoption has accelerated in the fastest pace in part because of the technology advancements, market competition, availability of big data gathered through internet, and the availability of cheaper data storages.
- Majority of higher education institutions in the US are offering Data Science program at all levels, i.e., Certificates, Undergraduate, Masters’ and Ph.D.
- However, the EA adoption, by US Colleges and Universities is lagging. Compared to the non-education industry. That is to say, the growth of EA adoption is not significant enough. The question that one might have is, why?
Harvard University took the lead to encourage higher education institutions in the US to apply or use institutional historical data in decision making process. Traditionally, this role supposed to be promoted through Institutional Research Association. However, past data showed that most institutions stressed two areas (1). Reporting purposes to both federal, state entities such as IPEDS as well as private data gathering organizations such as USNEWS or College Board; and (2). The most that Colleges and Universities did in the past were to have some sort of data visualization, generated mainly using Excel, before adopting either Tableau or Power BI software.
The College of Education at Harvard, through the Center of Education Policy Research launched the so-called the Strategic Data Project (SDP) initiative. Various programs are offered under the SDP project, where recently not only higher education institutions can participate in the initiative, but also PreK-12 institutions well. Harvard has taken the lead to promote data-driven decision making process for higher ed, for it has the abundant resources to accomplish such important roles.
The move that the Center has made shown that the era of making strategic decisions based on institutional historical as well as regional, state and national data has arrived, and left BAU as a history. It is truly an exciting development. However, the work has just begun, and much more need to be done. Exciting future opportunities are awaiting to be grasped.
First ITT, and Now Westwood College $1.5 Billion Student Loans Were Cancelled
The good news for the student loans (SL) borrowers continues this week. It first started with ITT SL cancellations. On August 30, 2022 AAEA learned that the DOE announced the 79K Westwood College’s SL borrowers have been cancelled. For many years, AAEA has done analyses based on historical data, and arrived in the conclusions that, some, if not all for-profit colleges or not-for profit higher educational institutions have tainted business model. Could, however, these defunct colleges solely to be blamed? Of course, there so many factors plays important roles in creating the unfortunate situation. One of them is lack-of-government control., i.e., audit on many aspects of higher ed. There are 2 main factors contributed to the problem. They are: (1). Academic related, and (2). Money related issues. The academic related issues are hoped to be managed through accreditation agencies. But, it proved to yield mediocre results. On the money side, one cannot see real efforts from the government to control the college operating cost.
Bounded Rationality and Student Loans
Needless to say, recent policy taken on student loans by the current administration became headlines and hot national debate in the US media. From the public comments, one would be able to classified them into two groups, where are they coming from: Opponents (OG) and Supporters (SG) group.
- Including in the OG are those (1). Who never agreed on anything, if any policy comes from another isle. Called these people as a permanent opposition. This group often, if not all the time operates under the illogical and irrational countered assumptions. (2). The second cluster in this group are those who try to seize the moment to be in 15 minutes fame, even though they have to adopt irrational reasoning such as one plus one is not equal to two, but ten.
- Including in the SG or second group are the “ungrateful” folks. People classified in this group are those who never feel enough. These complainers never satisfy with what have been given to them, They want more, and more and more. However, if one asks them what have they done to help themselves, there will be zero answer. Classified in this group are those poor decision makers who cannot see the consequences of their actions. For example, in each new semester student A registers to take 12 credit hours. However, on the middle-of-the semester drop 9 credit hours, and left only with 3 hours. Consequently, it will take her or him forever to complete the program. As results, her or his loans are ballooning. These folks then say the $10K or $20K cancellations are not enough. They want more. They want someone else to pay for their mistakes. Often this group plays as if they are the victim or use the sympathy as strategies to justify and to cover-up their weaknesses.
Therefore, it does not matter what one color is. One can always be able to identify both groups as irrational. Therefore, one should not be bothered of what their comments are. The reason is simple, because both group cannot do a basic reasoning, other than complaining. They are not problem solvers, but problem makers. Otherwise, they will be genuine supporters of using data and honesty principles to make inference and to govern their lives.
A Win For America: Cancelled Student Loans
On August 24, 2022, the government announced to the American student loans borrowers that $10k or $20k for Pell recipients of their loans will be cancelled. It is truly amazing what AAEA has voiced to the American public many years ago, has finally became a reality. For years, AAEA has argued, and laid out the fundamental economic theory, the logic, and findings based on historical data and statistical analyses, of why such a policy is necessary. Some say, the timing is politically motivated because of the midterm elections. The facts are that such a cut will help million of borrowers, regardless of the political events that are going on. The average working class in America cares less about politics. Therefore, it does not matter what the motivations were, but to see the reality, the real positive impacts to the average American working class. The facts that the sufferings of young and adult Americans who have been treated as a working bees for many years to satisfy the Wall Street have been relinquished. It is all about common sense, and not because deep, blue, green, red, white, black or yellow states. Rather, the state of logic that matters. Majority of the American public follows the mass or collective consciousness or collective conscience which helps the society as a whole to navigate the ignorance, lies, deceit or disinformation. People have to start using their own rationality and consciousness in the decision making process. If every single American uses her or his own deductive reasoning to make inference, rather than believing on spread rumors or because the “Caesar” said so, kind of things, then collective conscience (CC) will or can be formed. This CC then is a powerful mechanism or tool to reject or to avoid making collective mistakes such that believing on illogical news spread among members of the American society.
CONGRATULATIONS AMERICA. You have shown your strength!!
Follow Up On ACICS Analyses
Based on the DOE’s website, written on August 19, 2022, an accrediting agency role by the name of ACICS has been terminated. ACICS stands for Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools. AAEA has written several articles about the role of this agency in the past few years. This long overdue termination does not surprise AAEA. In fact, the Association is surprise why it took two administrations to make such an important decision? Based on this fact, then, one can make an inference, which administration has prioritized the need of the working bees in the country.
Follow up on Student Loans
After so many years analyzed the US student loans, AAEA is glad to learn that on August 16, 2022 the US government made the right decision to forgive $3.9 billion student loans taken by 208,000 ITT student borrowers. AAEA wrote a special article in its BLOG about 4 years ago on the ITT student loans.
Equity Gap, Bounded Rationale and Data Science
We have discussed the role of Data Science (DS) in previous BLOG, many years ago. In the past 9 years, DS has become a hot potato. Practically speaking, every higher ed institution tries to capture this opportunity, even though some may be the followers because others did it. DS is needed because of bounded rationale of human mind to be able to analyze voluminous data, and be able to transform them into meaningful information.
DS is not someone who can write a code in R or Python alone. But a statistician and a strategist as well. DS is not a coder, but a decoder. More importantly, someone who has the ability to see the future because of what he does with the data. He is a scientific fortune teller. So, knowing how to write codes, does not make someone to be a DS. Because, it requires more than the ability to write SQL queries. It is the ability to show a better path, other than the current condition that matters most. For example, how can an institution is able to empower their employees using DS. How can DS contribute to lower cost of production. How DS can lower the product selling price. Those are what matters. It is not just to increase an entity’s bottom line, because that is too simplistic. That is not DS.
Higher ed now is challenged to come out with viable solutions on addressing equity gap. How can higher learning institutions are able to reduce equity gap using DS? This also shows that the old Institutional Research concept is dead, many years ago for its inability to address many issues, not just student loans or ever increasing college cost. The ability to transform data to increase the well-being of the society, that what matters. And that what IRI is.
WELCOME 2021
It was almost exactly a year ago when we wrote the last post. There were many events that have happened in the past 12 months. In this welcome-back post, AAEA would like to check out two important changes that have happened while the Association was taking a break. The first one is on the student loans. During the big dance, the young Americans and those who have suffered from paying students loans are the real winners in that event. Congratulations.
The second point that we would like to address on this occasion is the other kind of pandemics that the country is facing. This disease is much contiguous compared to that of C-19. In facts, it is too dangerous which may cripple the whole system for pharma companies cannot produce the cure this type of disease from their research lab. Talking lies and false claims those are the kind of pandemic that we are referring to. Living in a dream world, and defies reality. Making claims and policies that do not based on facts, is nothing but surely will lead to failures.
Some people are experimenting and try to find an un-existing equilibrium. They think that they are very smart, and combined with the ego which is bigger than the universe itself, that they can flip the world and redirect the equilibrium to a more efficient one. In this case, it is too costly to experiment with a new system which has not been proved to work better than with any other systems. Using the stock market as a sole indicator to measure how the economy works is just absurd. Otherwise, the Founding Father of the country may have written those specific in the Declaration of Independence as the sole objective and the reason why the country is formed. The fact that they are wiser not to use it as a single yardstick to measure the well being of the Americans in totality. The stock market can be manipulated as shown by the army of day traders that recently bring the short seller to find a cover.
In short, this slogan of protectionism is nothing but the weeds that grow in the spring time. When the weather gets warmer, they will die. The history shows that there are many more logical people than those of dreamers. Therefore, the country will survive though have to walk on bumpy roads. Hang in there America!!