ACTA's Must-Reads

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For the People

At a press conference this morning at the Illinois State Capitol in Springfield, we released our latest state report card. Published in conjunction with the Illinois Policy Institute, For the People surveys 10 public four-year universities that together educate more than 90 percent of students enrolled at such institutions in the Land of Lincoln. Our conclusion: Illinois' public universities find themselves on an unsustainable course, and now is the time for serious reform.

Tuition and fees have skyrocketed in recent years. With the exception of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, graduation rates remain woefully low. Crucial subjects like economics, American history or government, and college-level math are not required at most universities. And significant numbers of students report an intellectual climate that is not conducive to a robust exchange of ideas.

On the whole, the state gets all around failing grades (the executive summary contains a complete breakdown of the grades):

Cost & Effectiveness: F
Governance and Board Accomplishments: F
General Education: F
Intellectual Diversity: F

Our friends at the IPI published an op-ed in today's edition of the Springfield State Journal-Register calling on legislators to "look closely at what students and taxpayers are getting for their money." Here's to that and to trustees and administrators doing the same.

Posted by David Azerrad on October 29, 2009 at 12:49 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Core considerations

The Sunday edition of the Daytona Beach News-Journal featured an interview with ACTA president Anne D. Neal in which she discusses the importance of rigorous general education requirements to guarantee students acquire "the basic knowledge and skills expected of any educated person." Ms. Neal was interviewed after Stetson University, in nearby DeLand, recently implemented a new core curriculum which earned it an "F" on WhatWillTheyLearn.com.

Posted by David Azerrad on October 27, 2009 at 05:08 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Trouble in the dorms?

With the decline of the in loco parentis role of the university beginning in the 1960s, the practice of telling students what they could and could not do disappeared from most universities. The concomitant bureaucratization of the university witnessed the rise of a new, more subtle mode of administrative control centered on telling students what they could and could not think.

Many will remember the intrusive program at the University of Delaware a couple of year ago that billed itself as a "treatment" to cure students of their purpoted moral failings. While UD's program represents a particularly outrageous example, the outlook and methods that underpinned it are in fact widespread.

ACTA's latest guide therefore calls on trustees to take a close look at their university's res life program to make sure that it doesn't push an ideologically charged agenda on unsuspecting students. Trouble in the Dorms also suggests other more meaningful ways to engage students, like encouraging greater interaction with the faculty outside of the classroom and enriching the educational experience.

Posted by David Azerrad on October 20, 2009 at 12:31 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Quote of the day

Nationally-syndicated columnist Walter E. Williams has this to say on what ails higher ed and who's to blame:

Academic dishonesty, coupled with incompetency, particularly at the undergraduate level, doesn't bode well for the future of our nation. And who's to blame? Most of the blame lies at the feet of the boards of trustees, who bear ultimate responsibility for the management of our colleges and universities.

Posted by David Azerrad on October 14, 2009 at 05:54 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Present?

Dismal graduation rates are one of the dirty little secrets of American higher education. Nationally, less than 60 percent of students graduate from their four-year programs in six years. At the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, that number sinks to 42 percent. Nearly 40 percent of the freshman class fails to return for the second year.

ACTA therefore applauds the news, that UTC officials have implemented a new program to boost their freshman retention rate. The Freshman Academic Success Tracking program keeps track of freshman attendance and reports students after two absences, thereby allowing the university to send a wake-up call to students who seem to be academically disengaged. Though the program is not mandatory (professors are not required to track attendance), it has already boosted the freshman retention rate by seven percent in the year since it has been implemented. The overall graduation rate has moved up three percentage points as well.

Trustees and administrators at other universities with low graduation rates may want to consider what seems to be a simple, low-cost and effective way to push students to go to class.

Posted by David Azerrad on October 12, 2009 at 06:00 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

All clear in Williamsburg

Our friends at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education announced today that the College of William and Mary has repealed its former speech codes, earning a "green light" in FIRE's database of such policies. This is a dramatic turnaround for William and Mary; led by a now-departed president whose contract its Board of Visitors elected not to renew, the college previously made headlines for exactly the opposite reason: trampling the First Amendment via an Orwellian snitching website. As FIRE points out, students have campaigned vigorously for the free exchange of ideas at William and Mary; so, it is worth noting, have a group of concerned alumni called the Society for the College.

Kudos to all involved in this happy development. It is a victory not just for free speech on campus, but also for alumni who are willing to stand up and demand change and for trustees who don't shrink from making tough decisions.

Posted by Charles Mitchell on October 12, 2009 at 05:16 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Duncan on education programs

According to today's Chronicle of Higher Education, Education Secretary Arne Duncan is slated to give a speech at the University of Virginia that will praise the teaching profession, but criticize the schools of education that are responsible for training a great number of our nation's elementary and secondary teachers. Calling teacher training programs the "neglected stepchild" of higher education, Duncan reportedly will criticize them for, among other things, focusing too much on theory and too little on having students master core areas of knowledge. He is also expected to call for greater accountability for student learning and more rigorous standards.

We couldn't agree more. As ACTA has long argued in our guides and reports pertaining on the subject, education programs need to give students strong academic backgrounds in the subjects they plan to teach and they need to adhere to the same level of academic rigor as other departments in the university. Here's hoping Secretary Duncan's speech will inspire them to move in that direction.

Posted by Sandra Diaz on October 09, 2009 at 05:15 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Elusive answers to a simple question

The Cato Institute hosted a panel yesterday entitled "Taking Control of Spiraling College Costs" that featured Cato's Neal McCluskey, Centre College professor emeritus Robert E. Martin, Education Sector's Kevin Carey, and George Leef of the Pope Center. Though the speakers did not agree on the causes of the vertiginous increases in tuition we have witnessed in past decades and they offered differing assessments of how to rein in costs, there was a consensus on the need to make more information available to parents and policymakers on what students are actually learning (the "value added by institution" in highered-speak).

Carey expressed enthusiasm for the Collegiate Learning Assessment and the National Survey of Student Engagement, while emphasizing the higher education establishment's fierce hostility to making results of these tests publicly available. Leef deplored the decline of employer-administered aptitude tests following the ruling in Griggs v. Duke Power. An audience member wondered why universities do not disclose information on the earnings of their graduates. Martin rightly noted that people end up placing such disproportionate importance on reputation because an answer concerning quality is so hard to come by.

How, then, are parents, students and policymakers to assess the quality of the education received at our colleges and universities? One way to approach the question is to focus on general education requirements. On WhatWillTheyLearn.com, we grade universities based on the strength of their curricula -- the core courses required of all students and aimed at providing a strong foundation of knowledge.

After plowing through course catalogues to separate the rigorous curricula from the watered-down varieties filled with loopholes ("Floral Art" counts as a science class at the University of Rhode Island), ACTA has presented its findings on WhatWillTheyLearn.com, thereby allowing all those concerned to identify which universities are making sure students graduate having covered the basics.

Perhaps one day the push for increased accountability in higher education will lead to more sophisticated measures of student learning. In the meantime, ACTA's focus on the core offers the best answer to the elusive question of student learning.

Posted by David Azerrad on October 07, 2009 at 10:45 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Reforming the politically correct university

Debates about political correctness on campus have raged for decades now. Some argue there is no such thing, while others point to case after case demonstrably proving that PC is very real indeed. Too often, the big picture gets lost in these "he said, she said" sorts of arguments. After all, the endpoint is not to show that PC exists -- but to find ways to restore free inquiry, robust debate, and intellectual fairness at our colleges and universities. A new anthology from the American Enterprise Institute entitled The Politically Correct University: Problems, Scope, and Reforms aims to do just that.

The book features sixteen essays, including contributions from National Association of Scholars chairman (and ACTA board member) Stephen H. Balch, the Manhattan Institute's John McWhorter, Hoover Institution scholar Victor Davis Hanson, former U.S. Senator and University of Colorado president Hank Brown, and ACTA's very own Anne D. Neal.

In her chapter, Neal takes up the following question: "Should alumni and trustees remain silent when academic freedom is threatened, educational standards decline, or political agendas drive academic decisions?" Her answer is a resounding "no." She goes on to outline how both groups can become actively involved in ensuring educational quality and free inquiry, while respecting academic freedom.

"Engaged alumni can press administrators and trustees to be accountable in ways no one else can," she notes, citing cases where alums from Dartmouth, Colgate, Hamilton College, CUNY, and the University of Chicago did just that. Likewise, "trustees are legally and financially responsible for the well-being of their institution." While historically faculties and presidents have kept trustees at arm's length, Neal observes, that's beginning to change. She cites encouraging developments at the University of Colorado, SUNY, South Dakota, CUNY, Cal State, and others.

Don't miss this must-read.

Posted by David Azerrad on October 06, 2009 at 11:17 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack