University Business - November/December 2011 - (Page 65)

INDEPENDENT OUTLOOK The Sequence of Assessment Priorities Making choices about how to assess what students have learned By Richard Ekman VERYONE IN HIGHER EDU cation at last understands that important components of “the public”—state and federal oﬃcials, nongovernmental accrediting bodies, and prospective students and their parents— expect a college to cite compelling evidence that students learn a great deal at that institution. Oﬃcials who are most eager to make evidence available believe students will enroll only in colleges demonstrating that their graduates experience impressive intellectual growth over four years. Colleges that concur often expect the government and accreditors to force low-performing institutions to improve or shut down and to reward colleges that do exceptionally well. However, as any dean of admissions will attest, faith in a rational market goes only so far. Prospective students are not rational consumers, and political considerations often prevent regulators from both barring shoddy practices and rewarding excellent institutional performance. Calls for greater accountability are not new. ey ﬁrst emerged nearly 30 years ago and have grown in volume through Democratic and Republican administrations and through periods of both growth and decline in the number of high school graduates. One cannot easily blame today’s critiques of higher education on circumstances that are sudden or emerging from ideological or economic factors that are easily shrugged oﬀ as cyclical or beyond colleges’ control. Still, most colleges and universities have responded in good faith. To increase enrollments to meet the nauniversitybusiness.com E Political considerations often prevent regulators from barring shoddy practices. tional priority for more college graduates with high-quality degrees, colleges have strengthened support services and increased ﬁnancial aid for students from historically underserved segments of the population. At most private colleges and universities, the result has been a major commitment to ﬁrst-generation and lowincome students. Fully one-third of CIC’s members can take pride in enrollments that include 30 percent or more ﬁrst-generation students. e rates of enrollment and graduation of low-income students are higher, on average, at small and midsized private colleges and universities than at large public research universities. DAMPENED ENTHUSIASM e emphasis on accountability in measuring students’ “learning outcomes” has been natural for private colleges to embrace because the widely used measures of graduation rates and cognitive growth indicate that these colleges do better than public four-year colleges—and that is true when comparing all students with similar records of achievement at the time of high school graduation. Enthusiasm for greater accountability has been dampened, however, by the lack of follow-through by state and federal agencies. If private colleges do a better job and have the evidence to support those claims, why haven’t state and federal policies been reshaped to acknowledge the cost-eﬀective role of our sector in helping state governments provide educational opportunities for state residents and in helping the federal government fulﬁll national priorities? e answer to these questions has many parts. Students do, for better or worse, look at factors other than statistics on intellectual growth when selecting a college. Also, states regard public universities as providers of additional beneﬁts to the state beyond educational opportunities, including employment. Less recognized as part of the answer is a third factor—the recent emergence of “assessment fatigue.” Even the colleges that are most eager to engage the many worthy initiatives in assessment feel increasingly overwhelmed by too much of a good thing. No college can participate in all the initiatives underway—including regional accreditors, foundationRichard Ekman is president of the Council of Independent Colleges, www.cic.edu. November/December 2011 | 65 http://www.cic.edu http://www.universitybusiness.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of University Business - November/December 2011

University Business - November/December 2011
Contents
Editor's Note
College Index
Ad Index
Behind the News
Financial Aid
Viewpoint
Education Gateways
Models of Efficiency
Business Intelligence Gets Smarter
Internet Technology
Independent Outlook
End Note

University Business - November/December 2011