Budget WARs

This is hypothetical, but the concept it’s illustrating is real.

Let’s say you’re in charge of a college budget, and there’s money for a new staff position. You have multiple requests for positions, so you need to pick the winner.

For the sake of the example, let’s stipulate that the salaries are close enough that they don’t tip the balance and that the relative staffing levels in each area are about equally suboptimal.

The contenders are:

• A math tutor
• A librarian
• An adviser
• A financial aid staffer

Which do you choose? And, more to the point, why?

I hear a lot about “data-based” or “evidence-based” decision-making. But it’s not clear to me what data or evidence would settle the question. How would you know which one is the best choice?

I assume that any of the four would make a positive difference in student outcomes. Students who fail math are much likelier to drop out than students who don’t, and tutors help students pass. Librarians are crucial for students to learn to do research, especially in the age of AI. Academic advisers help students avoid wasting time on courses that won’t help them. Financial aid staffers enable students to get the money they need to go to college. They’re all helpful, and they’re all important. But how do you weigh one against the others?

In baseball, people with too much time on their hands came up with a single statistic to rule them all: wins above replacement. A player’s WAR score—seriously, that’s what they call it—indicates how many more (or fewer) games a team would expect to win in a given season if they used this player, as opposed to an average player at the same position. That way, a team could measure the value of a particular pitcher against the value of a particular outfielder.

We don’t have a number like that. How much more, or less, would a new tutor affect our graduation rate than a new adviser? And how would we know?

Any ambitious and quantitatively minded students in higher education administration graduate programs, you can have this research question pro bono. I’d love to see empirical evidence.

Until the dissertations come rolling in, though, I’d love to hear from my wise and worldly readers. Is there a good way to weigh these positions against each other? If anyone comes up with something good, I’ll be happy to share it in a subsequent column. As always, send your thoughtful responses to deandad (at) gmail (dot) com. Thanks!