U.S. News Anticipates Higher Year-Over-Year Changes in Upcoming Rankings

[AustenNut]

@prezbucky

Until they (or anyone) can come up with a reasonable formula to represent the quality of education/teaching, to me, the rest is just window-dressing.

Just as the federal government has found a way to get income data on student loan recipients (so a potential picture on ROI), it has additional resources to get data on academic quality. For instance, if a school wants to be eligible to receive disbursements from federal student loans, then the government could require the colleges to provide information on the academic quality. Here are two such indicators that could be used:

@AustenNut

The Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA) is a test some colleges give to its incoming freshmen and graduating seniors. It “measures critical thinking, reasoning, writing, and problem solving”* rather than particular subjects like history, biology, etc (164). Unfortunately, although many colleges have students take the CLA, there aren’t many that share the results. In a study from 2005 to 2009, “36% of the students managed to graduate from college without learning much of anything” (164). Having all colleges collect and share this data would be wonderful in my dream methodology. Perhaps the feds could make it a requirement for any schools that have students receiving Pell grants or federal loans?

Also, there’s the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) which would be another addition to the academics portion. It’s a survey that students respond to regarding “academic rigor, interactions with professors, and active and collaborative learning.” Getting high marks from students for these areas would also be a boost to the academics portion and give some kind of a measure on instructional quality.

*Quotes are from the second edition of Lynn O’Shaughnessy’s The College Solution