Quality, Value, and Justice in Higher Education: Engaging the Postsecondary Institutions Rating System

• In Event: 73.032 - Educational Policy Reform and Issues of Justice

Abstract

We analyze assumptions regarding access and affordability embedded in the proposed federal Postsecondary Institutions Rating System (PIRS). Relying on an analytical review of the literature on access and finance, quantitative analysis of cost trends, and discourse analysis of the official documents on this initiative, we argue that a deeper engagement with quality and value in higher education—from a perspective of justice—is required. Champions of tighter accountability for institutions of higher education present access and affordability as their central arguments. Access and affordability, along with value and quality, are contested and stakeholder dependent. As a result, a data informed conceptual discussion of these notions is long overdue and advanced in this proposal.

Authors

• Ray Franke, University of Massachusetts - Boston

• Gerardo Blanco Ramirez, University of Massachusetts Boston