“You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink.
You can send your son to college, but you can’t make him think.”
This little ditty ran through my mind as I was trying to understand the accountability movement of colleges and universities. Under pressure from the federal government, higher education institutions are scrambling to find ways to measure and report “learning outcomes” – that is, to show that students learn something after four years at their institution. This week, at a Washington, D.C., meeting of a Department of Education accreditation advisory group, that pressure will increase.
Fifty years ago, the student was accountable for learning, not the college.
Back then, colleges and universities weren’t very controversial. Parents assumed that four years in school would inform students about the knowledge and traditions of the past, provide scientific or technical expertise, and introduce a useful social network. Whether a student received a good education was largely up to the student.
Today, the landscape has changed entirely. There is a new focus on holding the schools accountable for what they teach and the standards they set. No one knows what students are learning — but there is evidence that it frequently isn’t very good. There is no overall measurement and no core content. At the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, for example, students have 2000 electives to choose from. Students can major in areas as diverse as communication studies and exercise and sport science and take courses such as “Politics of Sexuality.”
The shapelessness and opaqueness of education might have gone unnoticed if tuition costs hadn’t risen much faster than inflation. Parents and students are beginning to wonder what they’re getting for their dollars, especially as students start their careers with thousands of dollars in debt. (Many who carry debt don’t even finish college, making their investment of time and effort a tragic waste.)
Doubts about the quality of education have not escaped the attention of the federal government. Like the knights in shining armor that they fancy themselves to be, politicians are racing to the rescue.
Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings has made the measurement of learning outcomes the centerpiece of her administration. Because of the current structure of higher education, she is pressuring the agencies that accredit colleges and universities to require schools to report on the learning success of their students.
Eager to avert a postsecondary “No Child Left Behind Act,” colleges and universities are responding with Web sites that allow students to compare one school with another. They have announced plans to include actual learning outcomes, à la Spellings, although with rare exceptions these learning measurements are not yet online.
These efforts to be more transparent and accountable will probably do some good. But I’m wary, for the simple reason that these institutions are responding to the federal government, not to students or their parents. They are reacting to threats, not competitive pressures.
To illustrate: If these learning outcomes are to be useful, they should differentiate one school from another, but the outcome measurements I have seen so far make schools look roughly alike. For example, a number of schools are posting the results of the National Survey of Student Engagement or NSSE. Although this survey is not exactly a learning outcome, it comes close to one because it reports what students have experienced on campus during their college years.
On the NSSE/USA Today Web site, which has findings for different schools , a student or parent can see how a school scores on one of five benchmarks such as “student-faculty interaction” and “enriching educational experiences.” The score (100 would be a perfect score) is compared to the average score for the school’s peer institutions. So a student can learn that Appalachian State scored 56.8 on the “level of academic challenge” as viewed by seniors. Peer institutions had a score of 55.5 percent.
What does this tell me about Appalachian State? That it’s about average, I guess. Yet this very broad, blunt comparison appears to be the approach taken for other learning student outcomes under consideration. (See, for example.) I’m worried that the learning outcomes may simply make everyone in the “pack” look similar.
We might expect parents and students to be savvier consumers and demand better information. Some parents, of course, are doing so. But, by and large, parents and students don’t have strong incentives to worry much about actual learning. The degree itself is the object.
Parents have heard that a college degree – any college degree – raises annual incomes for graduates, on average, by 50 per cent or more. Such a figure is misleading, because it mixes the success of highly motivated, academically strong students with those who just “get by.” But a degree is required to get an interview for almost all well-paid positions.
As the Pope Center and the Center for College Affordability and Productivity will show in an upcoming paper, a college degree has become the employer’s alternative to job testing. It doesn’t ensure a job, but it is the essential first step. That fact motivates parents to swallow hard and pay up, so that their children can get that degree.
Over time, however, this complacency is likely to change. Already there are signs that the degree itself may not be enough for success. According to Bureau of Labor Statistics economist Daniel Hecker, the number of college graduates employed in what he called “high school jobs” doubled between the late 1960s and the 1980s, and that upward trend has continued.
If the credential turns out not to be worth all that much, but the price keeps increasing, students and their parents will begin to look for other options. Some young people are doing that already, enrolling in specialized certification programs by Microsoft and Cisco Systems, for example. Such programs provide true accountability without any federal threat.
It’s about time for students to be accountable once again. When the message filters back that it’s education, not the degree, that matters, students will change their choices.
Unlike the past, however, accountability won’t mean merely working hard and listening to the professor. It will mean selecting a school that provides genuine education. When that happens, “learning outcomes” will be worth paying attention to, and schools will provide ones that are more meaningful.
Jane S. Shaw is the executive vice president of the John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy.