Pre-collegiate program student pipeline: A model of inefficiency?

Edward Abeyta: "It seems odd there isn’t a clearinghouse to see the return on investment taxpayers made in these programs."

Edward Abeyta, who directs UC San Diego Extension’s Academic Connections K-12 programs, recently published a bylined article in "The Evolllution," a grassroots online newspaper devoted to innovative ideas in higher education.

His contention: Today’s pre-collegiate institutions lack the tools needed to efficiently reach out to students who are preparing for college.

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Selected excerpts:

• "One would imagine national data on programs and students attending university pre-collegiate programs would be collected nationally and connected to the institutions’ recruitment administration, but regrettably they aren’t."

• "Nearly 70 percent of Fortune 100 companies allocate a proportion of their total philanthropic contributions to programs that support postsecondary enrollment. One would think there would be information wealth of outcome data on these programs, but the information is limited."

• "Given the attention and investment the federal government gives to pre-collegiate programs, it seems odd there isn’t a clearinghouse to see the return on investment taxpayers made in these programs."

• "Taxpayers and education leaders need to find a way to fix this problem, and awareness of the issues may be the first step."