Building Students versus Sorting Students in College Education

 The university I teach at is part of Florida's State University System and receives "performance based funding" (or not) based on various metrics. https://www.flbog.edu/finance/performance-based-funding/

For the last year or two we've had millions of dollars taken away because we're not meeting certain targets that were set for us. The four year graduation rate for full time students is probably our biggest sticking point because it often takes our students more than four years to graduate. The main reasons are 1) we're admitting students who aren't very prepared for college academically, and 2) our students struggle with financials and time management because the cost of living is high here and students' parents often can't or don't pay their tuition and bills so the students have to work tons of hours outside of school to survive.

We're trying various things to improve our metrics, although its questionable if the things we're doing really address the two main causes I listed above. Lately our initiatives have focused on identifying and helping the students most at risk of failing or dropping out. It's nice that we do that, but there are some risks to it, such as pressure to lower academic standards and inflate grades. That brings me to the main thing I wanted to philosophize about in this post: The balance between building students and sorting students in education. 

Building means helping students develop skills and knowledge. At lower grades the enterprise of education is almost entirely focused on building, as it should be. We need to help each kid develop intellectually as much as possible so they can deal with the challenges of life and strengthen our society. 

Sorting includes matching students to endeavors that suit them and also filtering out the more capable students from the less capable ones. Sorting plays an increasing role in higher education, where it is usually acknowledged that individuals vary in type and level of abilities, and that it behooves us to select and develop individuals for the roles that they're most suited for. We want the students with high math aptitude for our engineering programs, students with good writing skills in our journalism programs, etc. The "best" colleges maintain their academic reputations not by taking an average pool of people and building them up remarkably well, but by being extremely selectively about who they take into what programs. Yes, they have brilliant faculty who can further build up those top students, but the selective filter is a huge part of how they're able to do what they do. 

Anyway, BOTH building and sorting matter, and I think its perilous to neglect the role of either. Anytime we confront a problem in education we should be prepared to think about it from both a building and a sorting perspective. Further, we should recognize the links between building and sorting. Like, if we don't do a good job with building in K-12 then we're not going to have good "pickings" when it comes to the sorting stages later. Below is a conceptual diagram I made of how I think the relative roles of building and sorting change at different levels of education.