The Kept-Up Academic Librarian

A 'No Child" Assessment System For Higher Education Is A Bad Idea

Everyone wants accountability in higher education: You do; I do; so does the guy next door. After all, students, parents, and taxpayers are investing lots of money in higher education and they want a return. We all agree on that. But please: Let’s get it right this time! The truth is that there will never be one perfect test that represents the Holy Grail for assessment. If you want to search for a Holy Grail, see a Monty Python movie. Don’t look for it in standardized tests. Let’s seek accountability, but this time, let’s do it right. Our last attempt at the Holy Grail, “No Child Left Behind,” may get an A for effort, but it gets an F for its outcomes. Read more at:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/college-inc/post/no-college-left-behind-a-guest-post/2012/05/08/gIQAnkypAU_blog.html?wprss=rss_college-inc

Placement Testing In Higher Education Creating More Problems Than It Solves

Most community colleges and many nonselective four-year institutions require students to take placement exams in reading, writing and math before initial registration, even if they had good grades in high school, and even if they have done well in college courses at another institution. Those that fail these exams are referred to remedial coursework — which costs money but does not count toward a degree — in the hopes that this will improve their likelihood of future college success. evidence is beginning to accumulate that early detection and treatment, in some cases, may harm the healthy more than it helps those truly ailing. Read more at:
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/20/are-college-entrants-overdiagnosed-as-underprepared/?ref=business

 

This Is The Beginning Of College Reform: Do Students Learn Here

There’s an atmosphere of grand fragility hanging over America’s colleges. The grandeur comes from the surging application rates, the international renown, the fancy new dining and athletic facilities. The fragility comes from the fact that colleges are charging more money, but it’s not clear how much actual benefit they are providing. This is the beginning of college reform. If you’ve got a student at or applying to college, ask the administrators these questions: “How much do students here learn? How do you know?” Read more at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/20/opinion/brooks-testing-the-teachers.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120420

Colleges Look For Best Ways To Conduct Student Assessment

How well does a college teach, and what do its students learn? Rankings based on the credentials of entering freshmen are not hard to find, but how can students, parents and policy makers assess how well a college builds on that foundation? In January, the New Leadership Alliance released guidelines calling on colleges to systematically “gather evidence of student learning” and release the results. The report was endorsed by several major organizations of colleges and universities. Advocates say the point is not to measure how each college’s students perform after four years, which depends heavily on the caliber of students it enrolls in the first place, but to see how much they improve along the way. Read more at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/08/education/trying-to-find-a-measure-for-how-well-colleges-do.html?_r=1

Conference Will Examine The Value Of Higher Education

With the cost of higher education soaring, from Ivy League schools to community colleges, an increasingly loud chorus of voices is questioning whether the results justify the cost, and whether the traditional liberal arts education, with its ideal of shaping well-rounded lives, is outmoded in the contemporary world of high-tech work. To answer those questions, Wake Forest is convening a gathering of faculty, administrators and thinkers from around the country to examine the value of higher education. One of the major tasks confronting higher education today is responding to skeptics who question the value of, say, a philosophy degree. Read more at:
http://www.greenwichtime.com/news/article/Wake-Forest-examines-value-of-college-education-3465845.php#ixzz1rY4TdqrJ

More Colleges Are Joining The Assessment Movement

The accountability movement has arrived in higher education. Hundreds of colleges are testing freshmen and seniors to measure learning from enrollment to graduation. More than 100 schools have voluntarily published results from new learning assessments, offering parents, prospective students and government regulators a gauge of the value colleges add to the acquisition of knowledge and critical thinking skills. The assessment movement began as a means for institutions to measure the critical thinking and communication skills of their students, as a purely internal exercise. But the conversation shifted dramatically last year, when sociologists Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa used CLA results to critique American higher education. Read more at:
http://azstarnet.com/news/national/more-colleges-join-age-of-assessing-student-learning/article_027c3ec8-7411-5c59-a0a4-1c64760ca946.html#ixzz1pg1Tx5Bf

Higher Education Just Doesn't Know If Students Are Learning

But here's the big open secret in American higher education: Most institutions have no meaningful way to measure the quality of their instruction. At most institutions, including my own, we have no idea if they are. Sure, professors assign grades in their courses, and students are asked to evaluate the classes they take and the professors who teach them. But neither measure gives us any real answer to the $200,000 question: What knowledge or skills are students acquiring in exchange for the skyrocketing tuition they pay? And we now have some alarming national data to suggest the answer: not nearly enough. Read more at:
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-zimmerman-are-college-students-learning-20120131,0,3266290.story

Myths And Realities Of Graduation Rate Data

Dropouts.  Lost. Vanished. According to the federal formula for calculating the graduation rates of colleges and universities, close to a majority of all college students are dropouts or lost to the system entirely, even if they have earned degrees. The collegiate graduation rate may well be the most poorly constructed and misunderstood statistic in all of higher education. What’s wrong with the current graduation rate data?  Consider these myths and realities. Read more at:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/college-inc/post/college-grad-rates-are-bad-data/2012/01/26/gIQAfmdKTQ_blog.html

SUNY System Will Produce Report Cards For Its Campuses

The State University of New York is getting into the report card game. But rather than ranking schools or comparing them against one another like U.S. News and World Report or the Princeton Review, SUNY's Report Card will compare the vast 64-campus system against itself on a year-by-year basis. In addition to the more commonly seen report card criteria such as graduation rates and student-faculty ratios, the SUNY study will include measures such as the number of patents resulting from the work of its researchers; energy efficiency of its buildings; and even the impact that students and staff have through their volunteer work. Read more at: 
http://www.timesunion.com/default/article/Reality-check-for-SUNY-1384215.php#ixzz1MiLdZ0KU

IHEs Try To Figure Out Just Exactly What Grades Mean

With college grades creeping ever higher, a few universities have taken direct action against grade inflation. Most notably, Princeton adopted guidelines in 2004 providing that no more than 35 percent of undergraduate grades should be A’s, a policy that remains controversial on campus. Others have taken a less direct approach, leaving instructors free to award whatever grades they like but expanding their transcripts to include information giving graduate schools and employers a fuller picture of what the grades mean. Read more at: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/26/education/26grades.html?partner=rss&emc=rss