Posted on 09/29/2007 3:26:32 AM PDT by shrinkermd
AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CHARLESTON, a not-exactly-selective institution on the banks of the Kanawha River in the capital city of West Virginia, incoming students take a standardized test designed to measure reasoning and writing skills and then take the test again after sophomore year and once again as seniors — to see if their education is doing them any good. Courses are constructed around a series of defined “liberal learning outcomes” like critical thinking and creativity, and if the students’ work shows that many of them aren’t hitting the outcomes, the teachers go back to the drawing board. Ditto with the standardized tests. “We take data seriously,” says Alan Belcher, a member of the Faculty Center that rides herd on the whole process, “and we act on it.” Apparently they act well: in its promotional materials, U.C. boasts that it posted “the largest learning gain from first to final year” of any of the 40 schools that participated in a trial of the Collegiate Learning Assessment, one test it uses.
This orientation toward measurable outcomes has already colonized many spheres of life — K-12 education, medicine, government services — but in the world of higher education, places like the University of Charleston are lonely outliers. They may soon become the vanguard...
The culture of assessment has provided a bracing discipline for the University of Charleston and for a small but growing number of other public and private institutions. But it’s fair to ask whether Stanford, say, or the University of Michigan needs any bracing... In the upper reaches of academe there is an anxiety, sometimes bordering on panic, that the Bush administration is trying to turn everybody into the University of Charleston.... It wouldn’t try to do that, would they?
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
The problem is that the feds have no business managing higher education, therefore no business assigning universal purpose or standards to colleges, nor determining how they should be measured. Our mix of public and private colleges, universities, junior colleges, and community colleges create a wide and effective range of options for a wide range of customers. The feds should stay out of it. (The feds should also not fund institutes of higher education, but I think most universities would balk at this idea).
Pigeonholing... GREAT... that’s just what we need for higher education.
You know, not all college students are full-timers or take the same courses, and even in “general education” the requirements vary so much that trying to standardize what’s been learned is hopeless.
You want a McDegree? Institute standardized testing like this.
Yes, your point is well taken. I agree.
You can’t “measure” critical thinking (I’m talking the classical definition, not the modern one).
The criteria would be ... what ? You get an A if you can come up with 3 reasons why you hate George Bush ?
How would you measure the learning taking place in a “Womyn Studies” curriculum, or “Marxist Critique of Shakespeare” ?
You determine the objectives of that kind of education then figure out a method to see (measure) if they are being accomplished. You and I might disagree with the objectives, but that is how you would do it. A lot of successful companies have objectives I disagree with, but they are still successful at doing what they want to do.
A pig is a pig is a pig.
You can measure a pile of crap but quantifying it doesn’t make it any better than any other pile of crap.
True, but that has nothing to do with the article.
The article is about colleges measuring how they are performing. Whether a particular school or department or curriculum is teaching what you think they should teach is another matter. They are serving a market, and ultimately, that market will judge their success, by cutting funding in some cases, buy enrolling somewhere else in others.
Education operates within a market like any other enterprise. Just because you don’t want to buy their product doesn’t mean no one does, and it doesn’t mean that no one should. Enough urban studies and women’s studies majors are working at fast food jobs to prove that point. Potential students see it, and respond appropriately. That’s how it gets changed.
I don’t understand how some people can call themselves conservative and still fear free thought and free markets.
I can't figure how you got that out of my post.
Measuring gives a validity to something that deserves none. You can't tell me at age 20 that the average student knows what the job market is like for any given major. The bright ones, yes, but then they major in something worthwhile.
While kids may know after the fact what their major is worth on the job market, I'd bet you anything they don't know it going in, and their parents don't ask either. Heck, one of my friends is a business professor at a major university. Her son, now a junior at a different university, has never shown his parents his grades, and they have no idea what he's majoring in, yet they pay the bill. And these are highly educated people with good jobs.
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