<p>Thomas Toch, co-director, and Kevin Carey, policy manager, of the Washington think tank Education Sector challenge the rhetoric of excellence in American higher ed:</p>
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<p><a href=“http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/05/AR2007040501791.html[/url]”>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/05/AR2007040501791.html</a></p>
<p>“…by requiring taxpayer-subsidized colleges to disclose their performance to the public…”</p>
<p>I wonder, how do we measure the performance of colleges? I suspect the consultants who wrote the article would be willing to work on that—for a fee. And of course there are plenty of Federal regulators who would have more job opportunities in writing and enforcing regulations. I work in a highly regulated field where there are very high costs and a lot of effort going into meeting useless and obsolete regulations. Innovation and creativity usually don’t fall within the regulations and are stiffled. I think the free competition we now have in higher education is much better. Consumers can choose universities which include emphasis on research or colleges devoted to undergrad education or schools which include both.</p>
<p>I have no doubt that eventually the Federal government will increase regulations in higher education. Then we will see colleges teach toward the exams or other outcome measures. We will have standardized, politically correct textbooks and we can consider the requirements for including creationism or other politically motivated topics. We can work towards standardizing courses and curricula. We can built good citizenship by requiring courses in civics and sanitized history. We can fix the admissions issues so that admissions are made on the basis of forumlae and not subjective judgements. Since public money and the public welfare is involved we can also control the number of programs and the number of students allowed to participate in various programs and majors. There is no reason to support teaching excess numbers of anthropologists if we need more Xray techs.</p>
<p>That’s just plain depressing, Edad.</p>
<p>If you want to see something depressing, look at a grade school history text. Stalin couldn’t have done a better job in sanitizing history.</p>
<p>Get ready for a phase of testing – just like No Child Left Behind – to hit colleges and universities. This will take real resources, both time and money, that could be used to support students, upgrade facilities, modify curricula, develop curricula and internship programs, etc. In my view, public universities and colleges, which can least afford to devote resources to this, will be most affected. And, oh, it already has a name – outcomes assessment.</p>
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<p>So what? Is assigning 20+ papers a sign of educational excellence across the board? I expect that my math-major S will take mostly math/science courses in his senior year. He will be writing a senior thesis (guidelines: “no more than 30 pages”). He may or may not have fulfilled his humanities/social sciences requirements by then. Still, none of the papers he has been assigned so far in his humanities or social sciences classes have been 20+ pages; but there have been plenty of (slightly) shorter ones. </p>
<p>In fact, multiple, short papers are far better than a long one at the end of the course. Papers that are assigned and graded early on in a course can be used to guide students to improve their writings. If a long paper is assigned at the end, chances are the students won’t even pick them up, so there is often no point commenting on them extensively.
It takes a lot more work on the part of profs and TFs to grade multiple, even if shorter papers. And it also take a lot more work on the part of students to keep up with the readings and to produce these shorter papers several times per semester than to ignore the readings till the end (if that) and write a paper with minimal sources.</p>
<p>I suggest that Toch and Carey get off their high horse and really think about what educational rigor means.</p>
<p>One of the toughest classes I took in college was a philosophy course where the papers HAD to be 4 pages or LESS. Every word was scrutinized, and any word that was just padding would really hurt your grade. I workedextremely hard to pare my papers down to 4 lean pages of text. The paper topics weren’t simple ones, either. Anyone could have easily written 20 pages on them. Still, I’ve also had the experience of courses where all exams were of the multiple choice, rote memorization, please don’t think-type. (Not at the same school, though). Not surprisingly, the first class was in a top school and the second was at a large state school. Is anyone really surprised?</p>
<p>I am all for international study; I think we are building a great new generation to face the world’s challenges, BUT so often semesters abroad consist of little studying and a great deal of side travel to other interesting countries. I have a problem giving academic credit for that. Could the programs bump it up a little academically or else just call themselves international travel semesters?</p>
<p>States have some right to ask what is going on in state universities, privates need to stay just that, private.</p>
<p>The States are not the concern. It is the Federal government which has all the big sticks when it comes to regulation. Ever wonder why health care costs are going through the roof. Sure some of it is due to profits raked in by the insurance companies, but an increasing amount is due to the costs of ever growing Federal regulations. Of course, the “solution” will be more regulation.</p>
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<p>There are plenty of very demanding study abroad programs. Seems to me that it’s the consumer’s responsibility to choose a demanding program if that is what he or she wants.</p>
<p>“I am all for international study; I think we are building a great new generation to face the world’s challenges, BUT so often semesters abroad consist of little studying and a great deal of side travel to other interesting countries. I have a problem giving academic credit for that. Could the programs bump it up a little academically or else just call themselves international travel semesters?”</p>
<p>I can only speak at close secondhand of the Italian programs, and, more specifically, of the Florence-based ones. The differences among them, even among those sponsored by highly regarded institutions, are downright shocking (I have a d. and a stephnephew in two different programs at the same time.) </p>
<p>But I’m all for “international travel semesters”, although the the breeding of post-adolescent “ugly Americans” is somewhat troubling.</p>