Individuals and Types

“Begin with an individual, and before you know it you find that you have created a type; begin with a type, and you find that you have created—nothing” (F. Scott Fitzgerald, “The Rich Boy”). In spite of our recognition that Fitzgerald is right, we continue to work from the general back to the specific, which is why we so often have misquided policy. If we pay attention to a new report from the Department of Education, there is a chance that this time we might see that community colleges are different--not just from the rest of academe, but from each other.

The report, titled "Differential Characteristics of Post-Secondary 2-Year Institutions," establishes seven categories of two-year colleges; small, medium, and large publics, allied health non-for-profits, other not-for-profits, degree-granting for-profits, and other for-profits." This is a start, and it begins to give us good information on who attends what category of two-year college, what the faculty cohort looks like in very general terms, and what kinds of completion (or non-completion) experience students have. Maybe this beginning categorization will help us see that we need to step back to look at what an education ought to provide, how it ought to provide it, and how we need to educate all our publics about the purpose, value, and significance of post-secondary education.

Of course, I could make the same argument for Post-Secondary 4-Year Institutions as well as for all of higher education. The Commission on the Future of Higher Education's report last year highlighted that. It treated all of higher education as the type. So those of us who understand our individual institutions could easily say, "Doesn't really apply to me." And that is why the call for some easy method of comparability must be answered with our knowledge that we are not all of a type, but that our differences are good.

That also means that we in the academy must educate ourselves to our individual institutions, and work with our colleagues at their individually different institutions, to find the underlying principles and values that should be established as comparable educational benefits. Then we can show that not all post-secondary educations are the same, nor that they ought to be the same. Students should attend the institution(s) based upon what they see as their educational needs. But first we have to clearly identify and articulate those various outcomes, needs, and values and correspond them to the individual institutions.

Campus Accountability; Or, Assessment for "Them"

When the Commission on the Future of Higher Education's report, "A Test of Leadership," called for accountability, they were suggesting the idea that institutional success ought to be easily compared to other institutions--you could then "buy" an education, kind of like buying a car. Of course I am oversimplifying, but oversimplification is what the report did as well.

Assessment has always been a central part of education, but it has most often been the formative kind of assessment that we used in the classrooms and offices to see how we were doing, where we were slipping, and figure out how we could do better. That kind of assessment, however, seldom tells others how good our stuff is. And that telling others is both what the Commission called for, and what the Department of Education is striving for.

In the meantime, the two big public institution organizations, NASULGC and AASCU, have banded together to offer a voluntary program for their institutions to use. It works like this. Using a template devised by NASULGC and AASCU, institutions will post information on the web that allows parents and students to figure out cost, program availability, graduation rates, enrollment continuance, value-added learning outcomes (through CLA, MAPP, CAAP--all national tests that measure aspects of critical and broad-based thinking), engagement levels (through the NSSE family of assessments) and other bits and pieces of information to allow prospective students and their funders to see what they will get.

This is a step for transparency. If it stops here, it will do more harm than good, as it will begin to be reductive, and we will learn how to use this data for all the wrong purposes. What we need to do is continue to find more and better methods and processes to assess student growth and learning in our courses and across our courses and institutions. We must clearly indicate what is good formative work and what is good summative work. And we must articulate very clearly when those two kinds of assessment come together to give us a more complete picture. We must interpret the data.

Here is what I mean. I do believe that data ought to drive decisions, but, too often, raw data is incomplete. I have gone from drinking caffeinated coffee to drinking non-caf tea, to non-caf coffee, and now I am happily back on the drug. All because of the reports of the effects of caffeine on my system. What we need to remember is that all assessments give us information. The next step is to take all that information from as many assessments as possible and build an interpretation that is clear, articulate, meaningful, and trusted.

Otherwise, the assessment tool will drive the system, rather than the assessment tool informing the interpretations which will drive the system. When I go to my doctor, and he says that my last blood test showed something that he isn't sure about, but he would like me to take more tests, I comply. At our next visit, he tells me that he read the results, talked to so-and-so who is a specialist in this, and their conclusion is that maybe we should think about modifying my prescriptions. I feel good that he is using multiple assessments to gather data, and that he and his colleagues are using their best professional judgement to interpret that data, and that the interpretation may be different when we have more sophisticated tests. That is good assessment.

Good assessment begins with multiple tools, provides trustworthy data, ensures consistency, and is interpreted by professionally competent and knowledgeable people.

FIPSE Earmarks

If it quacks, flies, looks like a duck . . . I suppose could be said of earmarks. In 2005, congressional earmarks for higher education out of the Fund for the Improvement of Post Secondary Education (FIPSE) eliminated the grant competition. Since then, congressional earmarks funded by FIPSE have disappeared, but that does not mean that the whole FIPSE budget will be in the open grant program for the next year. As the Chronicle of Higher Education reports, Secretary Spellings has set aside almost half of the money budgeted for this year for FIPSE.

It is completely within the Secretary's purview to do this, but it is unusual. The original intent of the program is to promote the improvement and innovation of higher education without particular limitations. However, the Secretary has made it clear in several instances that she wants to move forward on the recommendations from the Commission of the Future of Higher Education's report, "A Test of Leadership." The two areas receiving the most attention from the Department of Education have been accountability, and you should spell that a-c-c-r-e-d-i-t-a-t-i-o-n, and K-12 to college alignment. Expect to see programs addressing transparency in accountability and high school to college alignment privileged in this round of applications. Not exactly an earmark, but still quacks a bit.

Issue One--Accreditation

The Department of Education has already begun to move forward on the recommendations of the report, "A Test of Leadership: Charting the Future of U. S. Higher Education." Secretary Spellings' action plan listed three issues she would address; accessibility, affordability, and accountability. The first issue on her agenda is accountability, and the first item under that umbrella is accreditation. On November 29, 2006, the DOE held the "Accreditation Forum" to begin the discussion. Secretary Spellings emphasized when she charged the commission in the fall of 2005 that this would be the beginning of a dialogue, and that was reinforced both by the Forum's organizer, Vicky Schray, Senior Advisor, Office of the Undersecretary, DOE and Secretary Spellings at the Forum. Schray said that we are not here to lay blame or to come to consensus, but to spell out the issues that we should address. Spellings said that she was heartened by the response to the Forum and the work of the members, and that she wanted the higher education community to address the issues.

I must confess that I was initially ambivalent about this meeting, as I assumed accreditation would only include accreditors. But the roomful of invited participants, and Schray's opening comments, showed otherwise. She said that the Forum was convened to address the accreditation process with all the players, not just the accreditation agencies. In attendance were about 70 higher education professionals from around the country representing some of the major accrediting agencies, university/college system officers, institutional officers, policy/think-tank associations, and some of the higher education associations.

If you have not already read the Inside Higher Education and Chronicle of Higher Education stories on the Forum, they give a full picture of the meeting. I will comment on where our place is in this discussion.

Jane Wellman, a Senior Associate at The Institute for Higher Education Policy, in framing the day’s work, emphasized that the accreditation process is an evolved process, not a designed one. Peg Miller, the Director of the National Forum on College-Level Learning stated that one of the conclusions she has come to is that campus assessment cannot serve accountability. Peter Ewell said this in a different way when he said that there is a tension within the accreditation process between three roles: improvement-based peer review, quality assurance, and public information. He contended that current accreditation processes are pretty good at the first of these roles, but they diminish through the other two. Ewell’s concluding point was that maybe the assessment process is being asked to do too much, or if it is to fulfill all those roles it is woefully resource-poor to do it.

The working structure of the Forum was two sessions of discussion tables for the invited participants to address two issues: 1) student learning outcomes, and 2) institutional inputs (resources) and process standards. Not being an invited participant, I had to wait until the groups had worked through their questions and reported out. Kind of like watching student group work.

The report-out revealed that the discussions had been complex and generative. On the issue of student learning outcomes, the groups called for multiple measures, complex processes, establishment of clear outcomes, external audits, clarification between student achievement and student learning, need for common definitions and comparable data systems, clarification of expectations of learning for various degree levels, and the question of whether institutions or student learning should be the center of accountability. Like most good group work, the process prompted strong discussions.

The input or resource issue discussion, coming at the end of the day, still elicited good responses. First off, most of the groups argued with the question, saying that inputs cannot be established until outcomes are clarified. In that light, almost all of the groups said that outcomes trumps inputs. One group said that if the institution can document good outcomes, who cares what the inputs are. Another group said that institutions should be able to make the case for varying from input standards if they can achieve good outcomes. The argument, and we have heard it before, was that by establishing very strong input standards, you stifle creativity and innovation to achieve outcomes. One group did remind us that it is a balance between inputs and outcomes. You cannot have good outcomes if you do not have good inputs. The tension between inputs and outcomes is, of course, problematic. Too often we have agreed to focus on results, and the result has been an incomplete outcome clarification that shortchanges us. On the other hand, too strict an adherence to input standards increases the bureaucratic stasis too often found in our work.

Coming out of this discussion was a stronger and stronger argument for establishing outcomes, particularly in the core expectations for a degree. Writing, reading, and numeracy were specifically cited. Interestingly, no one from any of the discussion groups said we need to talk to disciplinary folks. When I said at the beginning of this report that it was a mixture of higher education professionals and stakeholders, two major groups were not at the table--faculty representing disciplines, and students.

The Forum did succeed in placing good stuff on the table. DOE will sift through all the notes, do a report, and then, in the words of Ms. Schray, "see what comes next."

So, where are we? There was a strong call for more meetings on this issue, and DOE heard that, loud and clear. The discussion raised come good issues, but a full explication of the issues and a clear articulation of progress will require that more stakeholders are at the table. If standards or outcomes are going to be articulated for reading and writing, we need to be part of that discussion.

The Secretary's Plan of Action

Department of Education Secretary Margaret Spellings announced her plan of action for the Commission on the Future of Higher Education Report. When she created the Commission, she identified four areas of study for the Commission; accountability, access, affordability, and quality. Her plan of action addresses the first three.

The Commission’s Report

The Department of Education’s Commission on the Future of Higher Education has just released its report, “A Test of Leadership: Charting the Future of U. S. Higher Education.”

In addition, in my last blog I commented that AAUP is hosting “A Dialogue on Contingent Faculty” on November 17 in Washington, DC. Invited will be the higher education groups in the Washington, DC area. I have been asked to be a discussion leader at one of the tables where we will address the issue of the faculty appointments that fall outside of traditional full-time, tenured positions. At that meeting, AAUP will release a new report on the utilization of contingent faculty. This study will be an index of contingent faculty appointments, institution by institution. It will attempt to include all faculty positions, teaching and non-teaching, to give a picture of just what the full faculty cohort looks like at each institution.

Dispatch from DC

Welcome back to the new term. Or, as Emerson says in “The American Scholar,” “I greet you on the re-commencement of our literary year.” There is a peaceful, albeit warm and muggy, lassitude about DC in August. All the major players are on vacation or back in their home territories, and the streets, sights, and restaurants are relaxingly taking care of those of us who remain with the tourists to enjoy the city.

Labor Day changes all that. Once again, ties and coats replace open shirts. Business skirts and jackets replace slacks and blouses or summer dresses. Dark blue and black becomes the color of the day. We walk between meetings with serious intensity, no longer wandering over to the pond to watch the ducks. Business calls, and we answer.

With the return to work come the updates and notices to get us started—kind of like a close look at the syllabus. I have always understood a syllabus in the hands of a good teacher, like a recipe in the hands of a good cook, as a suggested journey, and it may include some interesting digressions and variances along the way; but it will inevitably lead to a dish that delights, surprises, and educates both cook and partakers. The mixing of metaphors was deliberate, and may show that I am not the cook I imagine. Therefore, the updates and an attempt at a syllabus—remember to season to taste:

National Humanities Alliance

Every month the National Humanities Alliance (NHA), of which we are a member, issues an update. Here is September’s: https://mail2.cni.org/lists/nha-announce/Message/20189.html. For the yearly syllabus, there is a change in the date of the NHA annual membership meeting. Previously, the annual meeting has been held in conjunction with the ACLS annual meeting in May, but this year the NHA will hold its annual membership meeting in conjunction with Humanities Advocacy Day, March 19-20, 2007. While many of you will probably be in New York the preceding week for the CCCC Annual Convention, if you are in the area, the NHA meeting and Humanities Advocacy Day are great opportunities to address concerns for academic humanities and to advocate for humanities support from Congress. One of the advantages of having a DC-based office is that I can become more involved in NHA work, and I am on the planning committee for the NHA meeting next spring. Feel free to contact me if you have ideas for speakers. Because of the close alliance between NHA and ACLS, there will be a session or two of NHA sponsored events at the ACLS meeting as well.

American Council of Learned Societies

Speaking of the ACLS, their annual meeting next May will be in Montreal, May 10-12. For those of you (like me) who do not do much international travel, remember that you will need a passport to enter Canada, so if you are planning on the ACLS, you might want to start that process. But the big news for ACLS, as Patti Stock, our ACLS delegate, and I have mentioned before, is the expansion of their fellowship program. They have expanded some existing fellowships, and added new ones, particularly in technology. You can also see a report on last spring’s convention on their site.

The Spellings’ Commission

The full title is “A National Dialogue: The Secretary of Education’s Commission on the Future of Higher Education.” The Commission has published the final working draft of the report, and will deliver the final copy to the Secretary of Education on September 25, 2006. Already there are various rumblings about the report, with responses I have already referred to in previous blogs (see below). An interesting new development, however, is the response to the announcement that DOE will use its rule-making meetings to implement some of the report’s findings. That brought a response from members of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions saying that most of the recommendations would require legislative action. This might be one of those interesting digressions in the syllabus.

AAUP Statement on Adjuncts

The American Association of University Professors is preparing to vote on adding recommendations for part-time faculty appointments as an addition to “Recommended Institutional Regulations on Academic Freedom and Tenure.” As reported in Inside Higher Education, this places the issue on the agenda for the year. The AAUP invites comments on its draft that will be voted on at its annual meeting next spring. The AAUP is also sponsoring a “Dialogue on Contingent Faculty” with other Washington, DC based higher education groups on November 17, 2006. More on this when I know more.

The “not quite” Syllabus

What we have before us is more of a reading list than a syllabus. We may have been able to get by with that in the 20th century, but we will need to get used to our syllabi containing clearly stated outcomes in the 21st century. Here is a start:

Outcome 1: By the end of the literary year, we will have clearly articulated the humanities values in English and language arts studies at all levels of education.
Outcome 2: By the end of the literary year, we will have a clear plan to articulate our proposals for the future of higher education in English studies.
Outcome 3: By the end of the literary year, we will have helped shape the beginnings of a national policy for all faculty appointments in the academic workforce.

While I am being somewhat facetious in stating outcomes, I am serious on the issues. We need to reassert the fundamental human values of the work we do at all levels. We need to clarify how we can improve learning results at all levels, and higher education’s role in that. And we need to address the state of the faculty who teach all of our courses.

Looks like good work before us.

Response to the Commish

When Chicken Little comes running into the room exclaiming, “The sky is falling, the sky is falling,” as academics, our response should be, “and is that necessarily a bad thing?” What do we mean by the sky is falling? Is it the sky or the ceiling? On whom is it falling? In its fall, what is revealed behind the “apparent” sky that is “apparently” falling? The questions can go on, but our response to a statement of alarm should be a reasoned reflection leading to a broader understanding of the reported phenomenon.

Which brings us to the report of the Commission on the Future of Higher Education. Are there problems in higher education? Obviously, yes. Are the problems the Commission identifies the real problems? Well, yes and no. In my first blog on the Commission (see below), published September 21, I questioned whether the questions Secretary Spellings asked were the right questions. I postulated that we would find out more about finances, enrollments, and global competitiveness, but I questioned whether the report would address the real issues that impact finances, enrollments, and global competitiveness. While I still see much potential in a Commission on the Future of Higher Education, I think this study was too quick, too pre-conceived, and too superficial to address the real needs. Chicken Little has cried, and we must now do the analysis of his cry to support and promote the real changes needed in higher education.

So . . . let’s see what the Commish wants.

1. Every student should have the opportunity to pursue postsecondary education. That means students need to have the appropriate preparation to enter college, understandable directions on how to get into college, and the financial opportunities to afford college.
2. The financial aid system should be restructured to privilege needs over merit and to be simple enough that the average student can apply. Furthermore, institutions should be rewarded for finding innovative ways to control costs.
3. We need to create a robust culture of accountability and transparency throughout higher education. That means knowing how well we actually educate our students.
4. We must change our academic programs to serve the needs of a knowledge economy by embracing a culture of continuous innovation and quality improvement through new pedagogies, curricula, and technologies.
5. Our citizens must have access to high quality and affordable education throughout their lives through promotion of life-long learning opportunities.
6. The United States must ensure capacity to achieve global leadership in science, engineering, medicine, and other knowledge-intensive programs.

Well, on the surface that doesn’t seem so bad. In fact, I could get behind most of them. Except that the report goes on in each area to spell out what they mean. And the problem is that they are applying action-oriented, quick-fix responses to complex issues that, I agree, need fixing, but cannot be done overnight.

The truth of the matter is, higher education is already addressing most of those concerns. Most of the knowledge about them is relatively public for the higher education community, being noted in the Chronicle of Higher Education and Inside Higher Education to name the two most obvious sources. In addition, a report issued by the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education titled “American Higher Education: How Does It Measure Up for the 21st Century?” highlights most of the same issues.

So, why the fuss and overzealous tone and frustration about the Commission’s report? Well, it might be that, yes, we know about these issues, but, no, we haven’t really placed them at the top of our agendas. Instead, we have been very busy denying that Chicken Little is seeing anything. And maybe we have been too busy debating whether it really is the sky that is falling. So, our job as academics needs to follow the next step, what Emerson called the scholar as actor. We must act on our knowledge.

At the AAC&U annual convention in Washington, DC last January, one of the deans of a large research university talked about how he initiates change in undergraduate general education. When questioned how to do it on his type of campus, he said it was “little by little and piece by piece.” He is right. All change must start where it can get a foothold. And meaningful change cannot be mandated from a policy board, it must come from the people most involved in making the change happen. But it is time to get beyond “little by little and piece by piece.”

We know we need to improve the success rate for all our students. We need to accelerate the adoption of the scholarship of teaching and learning on all our campuses. We need to ensure that the students who come to our classes are met with faculty who are prepared to engage them in an interactive dialogue that makes their learning real. We need to look closely at what succeeds and what does not, and not be satisfied that it is “the student’s fault” when she or he has trouble in our class. The students don’t come through the door reluctantly, but their reluctance to persevere has a whole lot to do with the nature of what they find when they come through the door.

Improving higher education is a complicated business. David Ward’s interview in the Chonicle of Higher Education about his refusal to sign the report articulates some of that complexity. The change won’t come in mandated quick fixes that the report advocates, but in the serious, hard work of the higher education community and its partners. We know what to do, let’s do it.

News and Notes

Once again, the updates from the National Humanities Alliance can be found on their website. Here is the August report.

The Commission on the Future of Higher Education met on August 10 to ratify their report that will be edited and prepared for delivery to Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings in September. The DOE has already announced that they will hold a series of meetings to discuss how the federal rule making process can be used to implement parts of the report. With the release of the near final draft, several organizations have weighed in with comments. The Association of American Colleges and Universities has been working for most of this century on improving undergraduate education with their Greater Expectations initiative. Their response to the Commission is quite pointed about what was missed. Also, the Association of American Universities issued a report earlier that was critical of draft two of the report.

And finally, for those of you who have enjoyed Cliff Adelman’s reports from the Department of Education, he is moving to the Institute for Higher Education Policy, as reported in Inside Higher Education.

More news sans reflection

The Commission on the Future of Higher Education has issued a second draft of its report. Both Inside Higher Education and the Chronicle of Higher Education have stories on it. As with most works in progress, we can see possibilities of where it will go, but we need to wait for that final draft.

The American Council of Learned Societies has announced its new round of grant and fellowship competitions. In addition to its traditional grants and fellowships, ACLS introduced several new programs this year. New programs include doctoral dissertations, increased funding for full professors, and the second year of digital innovation in the humanities.

The National Humanities Alliance reported that the Senate committee is recommending flat funding for the NEH as opposed to a slight increase from the House. Here is the full NHA report on activities so far this summer: https://mail2.cni.org/lists/nha-announce/Message/20186.html.

The other news is that it is hot and humid. That’s not news, that is the chronic condition across the country. Sorry folks, just have to grin and bear it.

News, not reflection

My impression of a blog is that it is personal—my take on something. But today I am sending a link to the Commission on the Future of Higher Education’s report. This is the first draft of their report, and, remember, it is a first draft. My first drafts are usually quite uneven in tone, and often are more a conversation to me than a conversation to the public. That is why I am hesitant to look too closely at a first draft. But what I do look for is whether it has the major things in it that it needs to have, and my subsequent drafts will refine, tune, sometimes drop major chunks, sometimes realize I am missing major chunks, sometimes add quite a bit of context, and then prepare it for public appearance. I am reading this draft to look for whether they have actually addressed the major issues we need to face in higher education. Here it is. http://insidehighered.com/index.php/content/download/70817/971018/file/Draft%20Report%206.22%20watermarked.pdf

I intend to reflect on what is in here in relation to the higher education landscape I am familiar with to see the connections. That will come later. For now, read and ponder

Commission Readies to Write

I attended the first Commission on the Future of Higher Education meeting last October, and watched them struggle with who was representing what, what they were doing, and would it matter. Like a first day of any group work, there was a lot of checking out to see who had the power, what was going to happen, and was this going to work. I wrote several blogs about the Commission work over the next few months (see below), as I saw them gathering all kinds of information—some interesting, some good, some really strange. However, my initial impression was that they would not accomplish what needed to be accomplished because they had the wrong questions. Which were, access, affordability, accountability, and quality. It kind of looked like slam-dunk for NCLB-like testing and cost-cutting.

Last week watching them work, it was like the final days of a good seminar, retreat, or class that had really worked through some issues. The two higher education journals had different takes on the meeting, Inside Higher Ed being more caustic and trying to create an edge while CHE was, in my mind, more to the point. Keep in mind that the purpose of this meeting was to prepare for writing the draft—to get on the table what needed to be on the table, but not to say what the conclusions were yet. What I found good is that the Commissioners were openly struggling with the issues that needed more clarification. They were agreeing to disagree and agreeing to compromise. They were getting the stuff out there in the open for the staff to work through and try to draft a position. What they talked about were the real problems that we do need to address. They were laying the complexities out on the table. It was good sausage making.

The first draft will be circulated to the Commission around the first of August, and the final draft released to the public in mid-September.

So, what does it look like?

It sounds like they would like a report that is quite succinct, that has a few solid, well-documented points, and that significantly forecasts the changes that will need to happen in higher education. Specifically:

• On access and preparation, we need to “ensure that every person who can benefit and desires to go to post-secondary education should have a place and it should be affordable.” Naturally this resulted in much discussion about affordability, the financial aid packages, the kinds of education (degree or not—traditional “college” or not), kinds of preparation (academic [seemed to be agreement that preparation for work requires same high school graduation skills as preparation for college], cultural, financial) that will be fleshed out.
  
  
• Affordability was the natural next topic, and that came down to two questions, the costs the student or payer must provide, and the efficiencies of the institutions. The problem was stated, “Postsecondary education is becoming increasingly unaffordable for greater numbers of Americans, especially low-income and minorities (who represent an increasing percentage of our population/workforce).” They are playing with some recommendations here ranging from “nuking” the present financial aid system to shifting it towards the lower income quartiles to adding to it. At one point, one of the commissioners brought up the idea of a “GI Bill” concept. Consensus was that the current system of 17 programs has got to be fixed. Another recommendation was for removing barriers to other institutional models (Western Governors hovered in the background on this one, as well as the for-profits) to promote efficiencies.
  
  
• Accountability broke out into two areas as well, one for student learning and one for institutional quality. The first problem statement for accountability is, “Information about institutions of higher education is inadequate or unavailable for a large set of ‘consumers,’ to include students, families, taxpayers, policy makers, employers, contributors, academic institutions, and media.” What it amounts to is that we don’t know what we know, and we certainly are not making it transparent. All the commissioners seemed to agree that getting more data and making it meaningful was important. Charles Vest, former president of MIT, said the academy’s fear of assessment is grounded in using simplistic measures that lead to wrong numbers, give us the wrong answers, and force us to teach to the wrong values. There is a fear that a bureaucratic control of a large assessment process would quash innovation. The point was made several times that we need multiple measures of multiple competencies, one size does not fit all, and we need to, first of all, clarify the outcomes we want—what are we assessing for? What do we mean by student learning? At one point Rick Stephens, the commissioner from Boeing said that what he wanted his engineers to do was think, communicate, relate, collaborate, respect and enjoy diversity—the liberal arts skills. David Ward, from ACE, said that the academy would welcome assessment if we get it right—know what we need to know, use reliable instruments to get what we need, and be open about what it means and how it will be used. Vest concurred and said the academy will buy in if it makes a difference, is meaningful, fits the context, and actually leads to improvement.
  
  The second part of the accountability question dealt with accreditation. The discussion here ranged from, again, nuke it to ignore it. The nuke it part was a question raised—if we are doing good assessment, and it is transparent, do we need it? That argument was countered with the realization that the good assessment that is transparent is not here now, so we still need accreditation. But there was a call for more transparency in the accreditation process, what it means for the institution and for the stakeholders of that institution, and for more rigor in the accreditation so that it means something. At present it really is the foxes guarding the henhouse.
  
  
• The fourth area that Secretary Spellings had indicated the Commission should explore was Quality. Because that is such a nebulous term—quality for what, to whom, and accountable where, the Commission did work their way through to three areas of focus on quality in higher education: 1) workforce development and meeting labor needs, 2) increasing the supply to address capacity, and 3) innovation. Given the players at the table, one could predict what they wanted to focus on, but they did mull around with a multitude of ideas.
  
  
  1. Workforce Development: The problem statement for this area of the report is this: “The global environment requires changes in the US higher education system so that it 1) must be accessible to all groups of people—all economic [read racial and ethnic here as well] groups and all ages, and 2) must be flexible in providing both degree-based and career advancement skills.” Discussion points on this issue came primarily from the captains of industry. Their point was that a high school diploma, even with a good high school education, is simply not enough. Everyone will need some post secondary education. Rick Stephens from Boeing said that we have to ask “Are we teaching students to solve problems and pull information together.” As they all talked about how STEM is important, because that is the innovation for development, they talked about what place the US will play in a global world. Boeing, IBM, and Microsoft all said (and IBM was loudest here) that our forte may not be technical skills, but we are still way ahead in terms of the idea creation and management part of a global economy. If we work now, we can maintain that. They key is not just technical training, it is the critical thinking and communication and collaboration and diversity of our liberal arts education goals, coupled with our scientific and technological creativity that will keep us leading.
     
     
  2. Increasing Capacity: Those really embedded in academic culture will rebel at the language here, but this report is being controlled by non-academics—and that isn’t all bad. But it does make some of us a bit uncomfortable. Increasing supply to address capacity is business terminology for we have too many students and too few resources and no way of checking our quality controls. We don’t know where our money is coming from because the sources are drying up. On the other hand, we don’t know where the money is going, because no one can really tell why the costs are escalating. Here is the problem statement they suggested the report work on: “How can we emphasize good learning? The data we have suggests achievement is not good” (apropos studies published the last few years). That translates to a business model that if the data we have suggests we have a problem, we need to look at our capacity to meet our needs. We need to change higher education culture that has been content with students trying to find their own way through it. We have way too much attrition, and we offer virtually no help for students to improve retention, to understand the financial aid picture, to create a culture of college success. We need to work with emerging pedagogies and technologies to improve the efficiencies of the system. Okay, that might be business model language, but we can translate.
     
     
  3. Innovation: The problem was succinctly stated as “We are being challenged as never before, and the future is not looking good.” The specific points, or weaknesses, are an obsolete curriculum, adversity to taking risks, expensive tuition, not enough STEM students, and that higher education is out of touch with the needs of the 21st century. In the discussion, the Commissioners brought out that education needs to emphasize more communication, collaboration and relationship building with a strong centering in the liberal arts. Innovation must be turned over to the faculty, as that is where it will happen—faculty need to be encouraged and supported in innovative teaching, scholarship, and cross-disciplinary work. And finally, America must re-establish the fundamental purpose of higher education as a public good, serving all of society.
     
     What we might worry about a bit is that traditional routes to teacher education were touted as insufficient. There is an interesting contradiction here, as in much of the discussion about teacher education programs. Even though most of the good, creative work in teacher education is occurring in higher education institutions, and the call from this Commission and most other reports on education is for creatively studying and applying research on teaching and learning, they distrust the very institutions that are doing the work. The call for alternate routes to teacher certification is loud, but the alternate routes that are touted are quick fixes rather than solid research on teaching and learning.

Where does all this leave us?

It is no secret that there are major problems in higher education. The undergraduate curriculum that was centered on a fairly good agreement of general education courses in the middle of the 20th century has become such a large smorgasbord of courses that it is no longer meaningful. Costs have skyrocketed, and sources of funding are getting scarce. At the same time that education beyond high school is becoming more of a universal necessity, access to higher education, both financial and curricular, is deemed problematic and inequitable. When over 50 percent, and higher than that for some disciplines, of the courses, particularly for beginning students, are taught by a faculty cohort that is not a full-time participant of the institutional culture, the faculty role is shifting. In short, we are going through a major shift in how we operate. The question is whether this commission will make recommendations that will address these problems or not. My initial reaction last fall was that they would not. My reaction last week as I watched them work is that they just might.

Here is what I think they will say. We need more good data to show that what we want to happen is actually happening. We need transparency so we all, the town and the gown, understand what to expect from the institutions and whether they deliver it. We need to be open to and encourage new ways of providing and nurturing education, not just degrees, so that we as a nation are comfortable and profitable in a life of learning.

If the report can indicate what we need to do in light of the above areas, this may help us all re-conceive what needs re-conceptualization to address the major issues facing us. The risk in anything like this is that the Commission report will define too narrowly what the solutions are. I was hopeful in that I heard a lot of language that suggested the Commission saw this as a problem best solved by higher education, not for higher education. But then, I have always been an optimist.

What is the Real Cost of Education?

In my last blog (see below), I began a commentary on Daniel Hamermesh’s report to the US Department of Education Commission on the Future of Higher Education. My comment in that blog was on the economic benefit of a general education rather than vocational training. In this blog I would like to address issues of cost on student attendance.

Let’s start with an a priori assumption: It is the desire of the Commission to recommend solutions that provide access and affordability to all American citizens to attend an institution of higher education and achieve the educational goals they desire.

When discussing cost, I need to clarify what cost I mean. There is, of course, the financial cost to society to create the infrastructure of institutions to provide access. This has been addressed over the past century and a half through national policy. The United States built an infrastructure of higher education institutions that provides the basics of higher education in almost every section of the country. The Morrell Act and system of land-grant institutions along with the state normal schools were designed to provide access and affordability. In the middle of the twentieth century, the community college movement continued that policy with a huge network of colleges. Add to that the network of private institutions, and we have a large network of higher education institutions. Only the most remote citizens do not have physical access to a college. And, if they have the internet, they have access through electronics to a college curriculum.

The issue of cost I want to reflect on is the cost to the student. Here, again, we can look to the support developed by our society in the concept of financial aid. Starting with the GI Bill that became Pell grants that became loans, we have provided a network of financial aid structures to provide financial support for college students. The question is whether or not this will help us achieve the assumption mentioned above. Does our financial aid policy, or the suggested revisions to it, really help provide financial support that will extend higher educational opportunity to all our citizens?

After reading Hamermesh’s report, I am inclined to question whether it will.

The first thing we need to consider is the cost, to the student, of a college education. There are two costs, the tuition, fees, and associated costs for attending an institution, and what Hamermesh calls the “opportunity cost” of attending college. This is the income the student foregoes while attending college. In his calculations, the opportunity cost of a year of education in 2004 for a student population in the 18-24 age bracket was $10,000 per year. If students receive no financial aid and no subsidies, the cost of a year of higher education is quite high. So, subsidizing tuition will not make a big difference in the demand for higher education. The rationale is that reducing tuition and fees still leaves the overall cost (opportunity cost plus associated educational costs) quite high.

The next thing to consider is that the cost of tuition has not dampened college enrollments. In other words, using a simple “what the market will bear” theory of pricing education, the market does not respond negatively to higher costs—overall. Offering financial aid slightly increases the enrollment and completion rates, but, in economic terms, not enough to warrant increasing the overall subsidies. Even a generous grant program “cannot reduce the price of attending college by enough to generate large increases in enrollment. In short, offering further subsidies to college attendance, or cutting back on existing subsidies, is unlikely to alter greatly the average number of students attending and completing higher education” (6) [emphasis mine]. Hamermesh is using good economics logic. Our current subsidy program, even if amplified, is not the silver bullet.

I emphasized part of that last quote. Because averages aggregate individuals and groups. And that is the point. Who are the people that make up the average, and what happens when we disaggregate? Part of the aggregate is the “traditional” American college student population—students from upper and middle income groups for whom a college education is a foregone conclusion, and this group is willing to take out the necessary loans to achieve that end. This group is still the large majority of college students. The other part of the aggregate comprises the students from low-and middle-income backgrounds for whom college is not a foregone conclusion, but requires a serious decision to leap some hurdles. Financial debt for college is not a high priority for this cohort. According to Hamermesh, “cutting public subsidies . . . would especially deter potential students from lower-income families”(7). This is particularly noticeable in the area of student loans. We do know that low- to middle-income students are much less likely to incur large debt to attend college.

What this means is that the most common answers we have heard for addressing the cost to the student of higher education will not provide better access for all potential college students. One suggestion has been vouchers, allowing students to attend whatever college they want to attend. If the vouchers applied to private institutions as well as public, as our current financial aid does, a large block of that aid would go to students at private institutions, therefore not providing as much money for low- and middle-income students, who primarily attend the lower cost public institution near where they live.

Another suggestion is privatization. The extreme of this is the private, for-profit and proprietary institutions, but it also includes the non-profits. This limits access in terms of location. Our policy established through land-grant, normal, and community colleges has created a pretty universal network of available colleges. These were public investments to provide higher education to a broader and broader audience. Again, Hamermesh: “Any policy that especially reduces access to college for children from families in the bottom two-thirds of the income distribution will exacerbate the already strong trends toward greater income inequality, both within and across generations”(7).

It is important to remember that any public action establishes policy. For instance, our shift from grants to loans for higher education, while saying on one hand that the person who benefits from the education should ultimately pay for it, also disenfranchises those people for whom a loan is not an option, either because of lack of credit or because their cultural values can not comprehend incurring that kind of debt. In other words, actions result in policy that privileges or disenfranchises different parts of our society.

What we have now is a policy that privileges the already privileged and limits the low- and middle-income students. If what we have is not working to make higher education accessible and affordable for all our citizens, what will work? I don’t have the answer, but we can begin by speaking up about what we value and what we want in higher education. We can also look at models of providing money for both the direct and opportunity costs based on need. One model Hamermesh points to is the Australian program. There they developed an income-contingent loan repayment plan that provides substantial tuition/fees “waivers subject to their being paid back through additional future tax payments that depended on the student’s subsequent earnings” (9). This may not be our answer, but we need to creatively think about solutions that provide the money where it is needed. We need to ensure that the Commission and policy makers do not take an easy out that provides a seemingly helpful response when evidence shows that, in the long run, we will not serve our citizens with the higher education they as individuals and we as society need.

More Musings on the Commission on the Future of Higher Education

When the Department of Education’s Commission on the Future of Higher Education met in Nashville last week, most of the stories covering the two-day event focused on high profile announcements and attendees. The chair of the Commission, Charles Miller, was quoted in several sources about testing college students (http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2005-12-07-college-testing_x.htm, http://chronicle.com/daily/2005/12/2005120902n.htm, http://insidehighered.com/news/2005/12/09/commission). Senator Lamar Alexander, former Secretary of Education, also got good press coverage (http://chronicle.com/daily/2005/12/2005121201n.htm, http://insidehighered.com/news/2005/12/12/commission). In his remarks, Alexander calls for 1) supporting research in our institutions, 2) appoint a lead advisor to coordinate US higher education, 3) deregulation of higher education, and 4) overhaul Medicaid to free states to fund higher education.

Amidst all the high profile comments and reports, the one that stands out to me is a report by Daniel S. Hamermesh of the University of Texas at Austin. He is the Edward Everett Hale Centennial Professor of Economics; Research Associate, National Bureau of Economic Research, and Program Director, Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit (IZA). His report, “Four Questions on Labor Economics of Higher Education,” quietly, and in academic economics language, sets the value of higher education for both the students and the society—the private and the public good.

My fear is that his report will be ignored because it actually sets a framework for improving higher education. He frames his points with four questions: 1) How much higher education should there be? 2) What kind of higher education—general vs. “vocational”? 3) What are the disincentive effects of prices on college attendance and completion? And 4) How to fund higher education, public vs. private?

He is an economist, so he gives economics answers. And that is good, particularly from my point of view. The quick answer to the first question is that the payoff is better for students and the public now than in the 1970’s. The second, third, and fourth questions are more interesting to me, however, and I will talk about each in separate blogs, beginning with question two today.

II. What Kind of Higher Education—General vs. “Vocational”? is Hamersmesh’s title to this section of his report. As a person who spent over 30 years in a community college, and as a person raised with the dictum that I should have a major that gives me job options to fall back on, and as a person who still has ringing in his ears his father’s statement on hearing that I had switched majors from math to English, “Well, maybe you can get into administration someday,” I have always been bedeviled by that question. What is the practicality of a liberal arts education? What value do we find in a general education? My answer has always been that the best education is a general education—if we can learn in multiple modes, we can learn the nitty-gritty of our job demands.

Hamermesh reinforces that strongly with his economics study of the kinds of education we need. Here is what he says, “We know from substantial evidence from the past 15 years (Berman et al, 1998) that technology and skill are complementary—there is a greater demand for generally skilled workers in those companies and industries where technology is changing more rapidly” (4). Well, how about that. This is kind of like teaching them to fish rather than giving them a trout. He goes on to say, “Which curricula [vocational or general] are more likely to stimulate technological advances is unclear; but it is clear that a concentration solely on vocationally-related education will narrow the channels along which new technology might be developed and in the end retard economic growth” (5). [Emphasis mine.]

It sounds to me that the best education in the long run is a general education. Yes, we need the tools of our trades, but we need to know how to use the tools generally rather than in specialized applications. That changes, and changes rapidly. I have in this paper what I have always wanted, an economics answer to the age-old question, should I pursue job training or general education. As a humanist, I have always favored the latter for its intellectual and aesthetic reward. Now we have an economist demonstrating an economic reward.

Because commissions are established out of the particular pique of the moment, they usually produce a short-term answer. In this case, we can hope that, below the radar screen of media attention, the commission heard Hamermesh’s report. Not only that they heard it, but that they realize the chance they have to address the real needs of higher education.

Back to the Future (of Higher Education)

A little less than a month ago, I wrote a blog on the newly appointed Commission on the Future of Higher Education. The Commission had its first meeting this week (October 17, 2005). It was an interesting moment. Both the Chronicle of Higher Education and Inside Higher Education filed reports. The length and depth of their reports might indicate their respective sense of the value of the Commission.

Education Secretary Margaret Spellings historicized the event by calling up the major federal drivers of higher education, The Morrell Act under Lincoln, the GI Bill under Roosevelt, the National Defense Education Act under Eisenhower, and the Higher Education Act under Johnson. Each of these acts drove higher education forward, and her invoking them suggested that the outcome of the current Commission’s work may result in another landmark action.

She, and other members of the Commission, also pointed to the exigency. United States Higher Education is not the all-out leader it used to be. With other countries development of higher education venues, we are not attracting as large a percentage of foreign graduate students as we used to. Major companies (some represented on the Commission) are going to other countries for their engineers, chemists, and other scientists. And we know that technical support is already outsourced to other countries.

Four areas were emphasized for the Commission’s study; accessibility, affordability, accountability, and quality. Several members of the Commission praised those choices. So, let’s historicize them. The Morrell Act, the GI Bill, and the Higher Education Act all addressed the issues of accessibility and affordability. The first by creating the system of land-grant institutions and the second and third by giving aid to students. The NDEA impacted quality by developing the research and development infrastructure. None of the previous major federal acts has addressed accountability.

Charles Miller, the chair of the Commission, said in his initial appointment that his middle name is “accountability.” Are we seeing a pattern here? If so, we need to question accountable for what and to whom. That will be decided by the Commissioners. Microsoft, IBM, and Boeing are at the table. Non-traditional higher education in the form of Kaplan and Western Governor’s University are present. Traditional institutional types are represented, often through emeritus presidents, with one current president of a community college. Disciplinary backgrounds in engineering, economics, and humanities are here. Voices promoting access for all students are part of the Commission. Ex-officio members come from Department of Energy, Department of Labor, Department of Defense, Department of Commerce, and Department of Education.

Who isn’t here? Arts, social sciences, NEH or NEA, literacy, faculty—particularly in light of the shift from full-time tenured to large numbers of contingent faculty.

Accountable for what and to whom? Is this addressing a short-term high tech and aerospace need? Or is it going to address the major shifts occurring in higher education. What, after all, is the purpose of higher education for this country.

A message I got from this first meeting is that this is the moment in time when we must revitalize United States Higher Education. I repeat, for what end and to whose benefit? Follow the Commission’s work on their Web site

The Future of Higher Education

That was the headline for the lead story in Inside Education yesterday. Many of us have been nervously waiting for the intensity of attention focused on K-12 to turn to higher ed. The other shoe has fallen. The story, carried in both the Chronicle of Higher Education and Inside Education is about the new commission that Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings has just announced.

Ms. Spellings made the announcement at a speech at the University of North Carolina in Charlotte on Monday. Calling the commission “A National Dialogue: The Secretary of Education’s Commission on the Future of Higher Education,” the purpose is to ”develop a comprehensive national strategy for postsecondary education.” The commission will specifically focus on rising enrollments, declining affordability, and colleges’ role in America’s global competitiveness.

The Commission will hold its first meeting in Washington, DC in October followed by four others around the country.

So, is this good news or bad news? It is good news in that we will get some information about the relationship between rising costs and rising enrollments. We might also find out something more about our global competitiveness. But a question that niggles at me is whether or not we will get substantive information about the shifting infrastructure of higher education. Will we really tackle such issues as the changing financial structure, the shifting roles for faculty, the revitalization of undergraduate learning—all issues that we have talked about as serious problems for higher education? Or will the commission only superficially look at higher education? Dodge the bullet, so to speak. And, perhaps more important, which is better?