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"It's not grade inflation if a faculty member sets a standard and a lot of students earn A's and B's."

The student newspaper of the University of California, Irvine conducted an investigation into grade distributions at their institution and found that more than three quarters of all grades assigned during the last semester were either A's or B's. D's are a dying breed (four percent of all grades). In the Dance department, only 27 percent of all students did not obtain an A -- and only three percent scored lower than a B.

And things are getting progressively worse over the years: across all departments, the proportion of A's and B's dished out has risen by seven percent since 2000.

While such data should lead one to conclude that grade inflation is running amok on campus, the Dean of Undergraduate Education reassures us that it is not. "It's not grade inflation if a faculty member sets a standard and a lot of students earn A's and B's," she explains to the newspaper. The dean would have people believe that UIC students are so exceptionally bright that the vast majority are either "exceeding requirements" (UCI's definition of a "B") or "excelling" (UCI's definition of an "A").

Notwithstanding the dean's reassurances, the proliferation of A's is in all likelihood due to what Murray Sperber has so aptly called the "Faculty-Student Nonaggression Pact": Professors don't ask much of their students and students don't ask much of their professors.

And even if the dean's explanation proved to be true, standards should be raised to offer the each new supposedly brilliant class a challenging and stimulating education. When at least three quarters are exceeding requirements -- rather than simply meeting them -- it's probably time to raise the bar a little higher.

In our trustee guide to tackling the problem of grade inflation, we recommend that trustees first begin by obtaining data on grades at their institution. The student newspaper at UCI has already done so. It would now be more than appropriate for the board to look into the numbers and address the situation.

Posted by David Azerrad on November 30, 2009 at 04:02 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Whose university indeed

Earlier this week, we looked at a newspaper article in which a Florida State faculty member was quoted as saying his colleagues' continued employment is "what a university is about." Now, there's a brief piece in The Chronicle of Higher Education that notes a similarly problematic claim by students at the University of California, during a protest of a proposed 32 percent tuition increase:

Fourteen protesters were arrested at UCLA when they disrupted the meeting and refused to leave. Protesters then stopped the meeting several times, shouting "Whose university? Our university!" and chanting "We Shall Overcome."

It's certainly understandable that students would be upset about such a large tuition increase. But it just isn't so that UC is the students' university. Just look at the its stated mission (emphasis added):

The distinctive mission of the University is to serve society as a center of higher learning, providing long-term societal benefits through transmitting advanced knowledge, discovering new knowledge, and functioning as an active working repository of organized knowledge. That obligation, more specifically, includes undergraduate education, graduate and professional education, research, and other kinds of public service, which are shaped and bounded by the central pervasive mission of discovering and advancing knowledge.

The importance of students to a university cannot be understated. But the students who happen to be at UC today are not its owners, nor are they the reason it exists or that it receives generous subsidies from California taxpayers. Rather, UC exists (and receives substantial public support) in order to serve the public. In fact, one student told CNN essentially that, offering a much more effective critique of the tuition hike:

"It's going to prevent a lot of students from low-income families to be able to afford to come to this university," said Leah Johnson, a UCLA undergraduate student. "If there's a public university, it's suppose[d] to represent the public."

Certainly, the students quoted by The Chronicle don't represent all their compatriots, just as the FSU professor we discussed before is only one man. But still, it's amazing how many times internal constituencies -- professors, as we saw earlier; students, as we see here; and others -- can forget their institutions' public purpose. Every time they do so, it is to the detriment of the university they say they are protecting.

Posted by Charles Mitchell on November 19, 2009 at 09:15 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Raising standards

Earlier this month, Connecticut State University system trustee Gail H. Williams spoke at ACTA's ATHENA Roundtable on the CSU System's recent move to raise admissions standards. Today, she has an op-ed on the same subject in the New Haven Register. As she points out, the trustees responded to very real problems: too many freshmen needing remedial courses, and retention and graduation rates that, as she puts it "need improvement." And they did so in a way that should ensure that the changes don't wreak havoc in the K-12 schools. Do take a look.

Gail is, by the way, a member of the Advisory Board of ACTA's Institute for Effective Governance, our service arm for trustees.

Posted by Charles Mitchell on November 18, 2009 at 04:31 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Accountability at AEI

This morning, The Chronicle of Higher Education and Inside Higher Ed have stories about a conference on accountability at the American Enterprise Institute yesterday at which ACTA president Anne D. Neal spoke. Both are worth a read.

Posted by Charles Mitchell on November 18, 2009 at 09:13 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

What a university is about

Yesterday's Tallahassee Democrat features a story on layoffs at Florida State University. It points out the following:

Facing an $82 million reduction in state revenue since the 2007-08 school year, FSU administrators have eliminated some programs and sent layoff notices to more than 50 professors and staff, including 21 tenured faculty members.

While the recession has required difficult decisions at all 11 schools in the State University System, more tenured FSU faculty are scheduled to be laid off than at the other 10 universities combined, according to data supplied by United Faculty of Florida, the statewide union representing college professors.

The piece later reports that the union is fighting the layoffs. That isn't surprising, nor is the fact that the university is taking steps to cut costs amid the current economic situation. What should be surprising, though, is how the article ends:

Jack Fiorito, UFF chapter president at FSU and a professor in the business school, said the union will continue to press to retain faculty positions.

"We're going to keep fighting this," Fiorito said. "This is fundamental. This is what a university is about."

Come again?

Professors are, needless to say, indispensable to any university. Especially in light of that, it is only right that decisions like the ones FSU has made be vigorously discussed and even challenged. But it is an entirely different matter to say -- as one professor apparently did -- that his colleagues' right to continued employment is "what a university is about."

The fact is, universities are about educating students -- or, as FSU's own website puts it, "the development of new generations of citizen leaders." Many state universities have similar mission statements, as Professor KC Johnson pointed out last week in his Philip Merrill Award acceptance speech. That is why they receive broad autonomy and generous support from the American people, including (in the case of FSU and other public institutions) taxpayers. They must never confuse that public purpose with the private interests of their various stakeholders.

Posted by Charles Mitchell on November 17, 2009 at 12:40 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Reset

When it comes to Chicago State University's 16 percent six-year graduation rate, journalists, bloggers and even trustees have had a field day trying to outdo each other in describing just how bad it is. "It's one of the most awful things I've ever seen," says a new trustee. A Chronicle of Higher Education columnist calls it "abysmal." And it's either "horrifically low" or "ridiculously low," depending on which blog you read (and whether you have more of a tragic or a comic temperament). Chicago State also has a weak core curriculum -- one that does not ensure its graduates will have covered key subjects like college-level math, economics and American government or history -- according to our new report card on Illinois' public universities.

There is hope, however. The university has a new president and Governor Pat Quinn has just appointed four new trustees, who will form a majority of the board. They should take note that it is possible, under the leadership of a dedicated board and a strong president, to turn around a failing urban public university. We wish them the best in their commendable endeavor to revive Chicago State.

Posted by David Azerrad on November 16, 2009 at 05:44 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Protecting the free exchange of ideas -- or not

Earlier this year, ACTA published a report showing how boards of trustees can protect the free exchange of ideas on campus -- and documenting that some high-profile boards are actually doing so. Today, regrettably, we see reports that a member of the University of Miami board is doing just the opposite. According to the New York-based Human Rights Foundation, one trustee has tried to squelch a screening slated for tonight of a documentary that criticizes the practices of his company. If true, this is sad news and precisely the wrong way for a trustee to conduct himself. Rather than seek to silence opinions they dislike, trustees should be working to ensure their institutions play host to a wide variety of views.

Posted by Charles Mitchell on November 13, 2009 at 12:02 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Taming the upward spiral

In the midst of the current recession, the 2.1 percent drop in consumer prices between July 2008 and July 2009 and the massive reorganization of various companies are hardly news. But there is one sector that does not seem to have gotten the message--higher education. As this remarkable editorial from the Washington Post demonstrates, the six percent increase in tuition over the past year stands out in a big way--and urgently underscores the need for higher ed to restructure as an alternative to endless tuition hikes.

ACTA is doing its part to shine the light on what universities--and public universities in particular--are doing to cut costs and increase effectiveness. And the results are not particularly inspiring, as we have shown in For the People, our new report card on higher education in Illinois. May more higher education officials heed the Post's words.

Posted by Sandra Diaz on November 05, 2009 at 10:06 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

"Duties correlative with rights"

At Minding the Campus, ACTA research fellows Erin O'Connor and Maurice Black offer some observations on the meaning of academic freedom, in response to a speech by University of Chicago President Robert J. Zimmer. Whereas Zimmer defines academic freedom solely in terms of the professoriate's freedom from political pressure, O'Connor and Black note that it "is, in fact, a form of professionalism grounded in what the AAUP calls 'duties correlative with rights.'"

Peter Sacks, FIRE's Adam Kissel, John K. Wilson and Candace de Russy also weigh in.

Posted by David Azerrad on November 04, 2009 at 02:06 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Harvard and the military

This Veterans Day, at 11 a.m. on 11/11, a plaque commemorating Harvard's ten Medal of Honor recipients will be unveiled at the university's Memorial Church. Harvard holds the distinction of having more Medal of Honor recipients than any other university, with the exception of the Military Academy at West Point and the Naval Academy at Annapolis. Since the medal's establishment during the Civil War, ten Harvard men have received it for "gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of life above and beyond the call of duty."

Harvard, being Harvard, is of course not paying for the plaque which is being offered by the members of the Harvard Veterans Alumni Organization. In fact, it seems that Harvard did not even know that it held the distinction. Harvard alumnus Paul Mawn, Chairman of the Harvard Advocates for ROTC, unearthed the names on his own (and has since discovered two more whose names will eventually be added to the plaque).

As readers of our blog know, Harvard, like several other elite universities, is not friendly to the military. Not only does it still ban R.O.T.C. on campus, but it does next to nothing to facilitate student participation in the program at nearby universities, as a fine article in The New York Times vividly illustrates. Last fall when ACTA wrote to the Harvard Corporation, and the boards of six other elite schools, urging them to reconsider their exclusion of ROTC, the trustees did not even bother replying.

Harvard President Drew Faust maintains that the R.O.T.C. ban is justified in light of the military's policies excluding those who are openly gay from serving. This posture is misguided, however, since it punishes students who wish to pursue ROTC (whatever their views regarding "don't ask, don't tell" may be) and does nothing to change the legislative policy that Faust finds mistaken.

As we noted in our letter to Harvard, "continued refusal to permit students to perform military service on campus -- service that helps preserve the cherished freedoms that all members of the campus community enjoy -- seems neither fair nor wise."

Posted by David Azerrad on November 04, 2009 at 11:32 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Paying the president

What do Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Suffolk University, and Franklin & Marshall College all have in common? Each pays its president more than any other similar institution in the country -- private research universities, master's institutions, and baccalaureate institutions respectively. These presidents all received more than $1,000,000 in salary and benefits during the 2007-08 fiscal year.

The Chronicle of Higher Education released today its annual report on presidential compensation packages at private colleges and universities. George Washington University led the nation in presidential pay for the 2007-08 fiscal year with $3.7 million. The median pay is $358,746, a 6.5 percent increase from the previous year.

In a time of rising unemployment, financial instability, and spiraling tuition rates, what do students and parents think when they hear these types of figures?

Trustees need to demonstrate to the public that they are striving to use the funds entrusted to them wisely and that presidential pay is not exempt from close scrutiny. They need to be transparent about how presidential compensation is determined and how raises are tied to specific performance measures. In short, trustees need to show that they have carefully considered how to spend tuition dollars in order to provide students with the greatest value -- especially as it relates to their president.

The dollar amounts and, more importantly, the higher-than-inflation increases in median presidential compensation ought to give all trustees pause.

Posted by Heather Lakemacher on November 02, 2009 at 06:08 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack