ACTA's Must-Reads

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Obama on cutting costs

The Obama administration continues to say the right things about controlling costs in higher education. In a recent conference call with student journalists, the President discussed the need for colleges to be accountable and transparent in how tuition is spent, the need to remind faculty that teaching is their primary job, and the need for college administrators to make hard choices:

Frankly, I think students as consumers, parents as consumers, and state legislators and governors are going to need to put more pressure on universities. And I'll just give one example, which people may not want to hear, but when I go to some colleges and universities, public colleges and universities, and I look at the athletic facilities that exist these days, or the food courts or the other things that have to do with the quality of life at universities, it's sure a lot nicer than it was when I was going to college. Somebody has to pay for that.

And part of what I think we've got to examine is are we designing our universities in a way that focuses on the primary thing, which is education. You're not going to a university to join a spa; you're going there to learn so that you can have a fulfilling career. And if all the amenities of a public university start jacking up the cost of tuition significantly, that's a problem.

We couldn't have said it any better ourselves.

Cutting the cost of college is one of ACTA's primary missions, and we have recently published and distributed "Cutting Costs: A Trustee's Guide to Tough Economic Times," which is full of ideas and case studies for trustees looking to act on the President's goal of making college more affordable for all students.

Posted by Eric Markley on September 30, 2010 at 10:01 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

What ever happened to a focus on learning?

ACTA thinks "education" is what matters at colleges and universities. And that's why we recently released an expanded What Will They Learn? website, which focused on what students are expected to study during their years in college. Regrettably, our findings were pretty shocking -- at most schools, students can graduate with massive gaps in their knowledge. Administrators and faculty have in place what is known as "distribution requirements" which let students pick and choose often from hundreds of courses rather than directing them to what they will need to know. It should come as no surprise that employers complain students are not adequately prepared for the workplace.

If that weren't bad enough, now comes a new report by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics which underscores how "education-free" our colleges have become. According to the Bureau, published in the Huffington Post, college students have it easy: the average student spends 8.4 hours sleeping, 3.5 hours on leisure and sports, and 1.5 hours on traveling, while only 3.6 hours are spent on "educational activities" and 2.9 hours on "work and work-related" activities. That's an average of 13.4 hours on sleep, travel and leisure versus only 6.5 hours on work -- academic and otherwise.

These results are sorry indeed -- and symptomatic of a system of higher education that appears to spend more time, money and effort catering to students through lavish amenities and entertainment, than a rigorous and stimulating educational program. Trustees should be concerned and should take steps to ensure institutional priorities and incentives focus students on learning, rather than partying and playing.

Posted by Tom Bako on September 26, 2010 at 08:55 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Summer school gets revamped

Institutions everywhere can find a great cost-cutting idea at the University of Florida. Provost Joseph Glover proposed offering students the option of taking classes during the spring and summer terms only, bypassing the fall semester. Noting excess capacity after winter graduation, University of Florida intends to pursue this strategy.

Campus officials too often measure their success by the number of new buildings they can fund. Florida's using a different metric: how efficiently can those buildings be used? Better usage of space could bring added benefits throughout the academic year, beyond crucial reduction in capital expenditures. Teaching productivity is of paramount importance: Florida's efficient use of spring and summer is an opportunity to ensure students have access to the classes they need to graduate on time and that those classes are filled. And when popular and required classes are scheduled evenings, Friday afternoons, and Monday mornings, campus culture becomes more serious.

During this time of economic crisis, schools need to look beyond increasing tuition as a solution to rising costs. University of Florida is a great example of initiative and creative cost-cutting ideas. To see more suggestions on what can be done, read ACTA's publication, "Cutting Costs: A Trustee's Guide to Tough Economic Times."

Posted by Jose Herrera on September 23, 2010 at 10:31 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Potty Trained Trustees -- Take Two

The last time that the Association of Governing Boards -- one of the organizations that make up the informal higher ed lobby, frequently referred to as "One Dupont Circle" for the D.C. address many of them share -- put out a survey of "American higher education governing boards," ACTA revealed that not a single trustee had in fact been surveyed. Instead, administrators were asked to speak on behalf of governing boards. As we noted at the time in Inside Higher Ed:

the report says little about what's on the mind of trustees and nothing about how they understand their role, but it does unwittingly reveal a philosophy, espoused by the AGB and shared by many at our colleges and universities, that underscores why there is a governance problem in higher education. According to this view, higher ed administrations are the governance structure. Trustees for the most part should keep to their place and do as they are told by administrators. One might call it the potty-trained trustee, the board member who shows up at football games, cuts a few big checks, and doesn't meddle in university affairs.

We therefore were skeptical of the AGB's latest report on How Boards Oversee Educational Quality, which bills itself as a "survey on boards and the assessment of student learning." It would seem that ACTA's chastisement paid off, as the AGB did actually include a few trustees this time around. However, it is worth noting that trustees comprise less than a third of the respondents to the survey, so the "survey on boards" really doesn't tell us very much about boards.

In fact, the entire methodology of the survey is quite questionable. The AGB mailed out 1,300 surveys. Less than 500 of those contacted took the time to respond (a 38 percent response rate). How many different colleges and universities they represent, we are not told, nor are we told whether those who did respond constitute a representative sample of higher education institutions. The report nonetheless frequently implies AGB's respondents can safely be assumed to reflect all "trustees and chief academic officers."

Moreover, the report glosses over key areas of potential conflict between boards and administrators. Consider for example, the seemingly innocuous statement that "administrators should include an introduction to the oversight of educational quality in board orientation and provide regular education and ongoing reports to the board on findings of assessment." That sounds harmless enough until you really think about what it really implies -- that administrators should be able to dictate by what standards they should be judged.

Or consider the AGB's suggestion that board members should "expect to receive useful, high-level information on student-learning outcomes." What should the board do if such information is not forthcoming? Should the board look for outside help, or proactively ask questions and demand to see numbers? The AGB offers no guidance. The implication seems to be that trustees should assume that whatever information they are given by the administration is indeed "useful, high-level information."

Take away the spin and the underlying premise remains: trustees should keep to their place and mostly defer to administrators.

It's what we STILL call "the potty-trained trustee."

Posted by Eric Markley on September 22, 2010 at 12:14 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Is the glass a third full or two-thirds empty?

Freedom of the intellect is the lifeblood of the academy. Faculty need it, students need it. Without the robust exchange of ideas and the freedom to explore and challenge prevailing dogma and opinion, we are left with indoctrination-hardly the mind opening education of which college catalogs boast. The September 16, 2010 Chronicle headline reads: "Most Students Say It's Safe to Hold Unpopular Views on Their Campuses," based on a new report from the American Association of Colleges and Universities. This is good news or bad news, depending on what "most" means. 35.6% of the respondents "strongly agree" that it is safe to hold unpopular viewpoints on campus, and another 45% "somewhat agree." Thus, 65% just aren't so sure how safe it is: 20% outright disagree, and 45% agree with some hesitation. Perhaps by substituting statistics on the safety of different types of desirable behavior we can get a sense of how alarming the AAC&U finding is. What headline would we see if 20% of the students on a campus disagreed with the statement , "It is safe to oppose racism on my campus," or "It is safe to oppose gender discrimination on my campus"? To its credit AAC&U is disturbed by the additional finding that only 39% of the students agreed that faculty attempt to impress upon students the need to respect differing opinions. American colleges and universities have no grounds for self- congratulation over these sad findings. ACTA's State Report Cards typically find that approximately 1/3 of the students surveyed believe that there are viewpoints that are "off limits" on their campuses. Whether one-third or one-fifth of the students feel silenced, these surveys are wake-up calls that we have a crisis of principle. ACTA calls again on faculty, administrators, and trustees to ensure their campuses honor their academic birthright of intellectual freedom and diversity.

Posted by Michael Poliakoff on September 20, 2010 at 12:18 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

A must-listen-to

Mark Taylor, chair of the Religion Department at Columbia University and author of Crisis on Campus: A Bold Plan for Reforming Our Colleges and Universities goes head to head with AAUP president Carey Nelson on the higher ed bubble. Listen to their exchange on NPR.

Posted by David Azerrad on September 17, 2010 at 10:09 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Misplaced priorities and chutzpah

Northwestern University did not fare well in the WhatWillTheyLearn.com ratings of core curricula. Of the seven core requirements that we looked at, Northwestern managed to get credit in only one. But Northwestern is not addressing its core curriculum at the moment. Rather, it is attending to its U.S. News & World Report status with a special fund drive to increase alumni giving and thereby raise its ranking.

ACTA has a different suggestion: Focus on what matters for your undergraduates and ensure for them a thorough general education. Across the nation, schools with lower budgets and much, much lower tuition than Northwestern have implemented strong core requirements. These include Lamar University in Texas, Tennessee State University, CUNY Brooklyn College, the University of Dallas, and others. The complexion of educational excellence is not always green. It takes faculty and administrators who are willing to answer the question "What does it mean to be college educated?" with meaningful core requirements.

Posted by Michael Poliakoff on September 17, 2010 at 09:35 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The "knowledge economy" and economic knowledge

Harvard professor of economics N. Gregory Mankiw asks in The New York Times a question similar to our own in our What Will They Learn? survey of general education: "What should they be learning?"

Professor Mankiw very eloquently defends the need for economics as part and parcel of a good general education -- and not because of any bias as an economist; he rightly argues that basic economic education is crucial to being productive members and informed citizens of our society. The need could not be more urgent; our own survey found that only 25 out of 714 institutions we evaluated -- 3.5 percent of the total -- require students to take an economics course. With all the fashionable talk these days about a new "knowledge economy," shouldn't it be time for our institutions of higher learning to actually give students some basic knowledge about the economy?

Posted by Tom Bako on September 09, 2010 at 12:04 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Saving higher education from itself

American colleges and universities are the envy of the world. But will this last? A recent analysis in The Economist magazine confirms what ACTA has been arguing for years: if our institutions of higher education fail to face their web of structural problems, they may well go the way of the once seemingly invincible auto industry.

Constant tuition hikes that far surpass the rate of inflation; an overemphasis on research to the detriment of teaching; the abandonment of core subjects; administrative bloat, and a focus on lavish lounges and dorms rather than on a solid education -- these are all part of the larger problem with colleges and universities in America. And this is not a right or left issue -- it is a right or wrong issue, evident from increasing calls for reform from all sides of the political spectrum. Parents, students, trustees, alumni, administrators and other stakeholders must work together to reform higher ed -- we owe as much to future generations.

Posted by Tom Bako on September 08, 2010 at 09:49 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

The Higher Education Bubble

In the last few months, there has been increasing discussion of a "higher education bubble," similar to the housing bubble that burst in 2008. Professor/blogger Glenn Reynolds jumpstarted the conversation a few months ago, and Michael Barone was the latest to weigh in, just yesterday.

ACTA's research for WhatWillTheyLearn.com reveals there is generally an inverse relationship between the cost of tuition and a college or university's commitment to ensuring all students cover foundational subjects. Excluding the (tuition-free) service academies, the average annual tuition and fees for schools whose general education core rated an "A" is about $15,000. By contrast, the 103 schools that earn an "F" charge over $28,000 a year. Only 20 of those 103 schools required a class in writing. Only three -- three out of 103 colleges enrolling over a half-million undergraduates -- required a college-level math class.

And it's not just parent's money being spent this way: 32 states have at least one state-supported institution that receives a "D" or an "F" for their core curriculum. That's taxpayer money going to fund schools that don't think it's important to require Freshman Composition or college-level math.

The job market of the 21st century demands workers who are flexible enough to learn new skills and change career paths as needed. Students, parents and taxpayers are paying a high price to skip the fundamentals now -- and they'll pay an even higher price in the years to come.

Posted by Eric Markley on September 07, 2010 at 01:59 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Giving the emperor some real clothes

The Chronicle of Higher Education's new "Measuring Stick" series has started right on target in addressing a key quality weakness: "All faculty members need to share the responsibility for students' mastery of core skills." When the National Assessment of Adult Literacy shows that after years of expensive higher education most college graduates don't get past the intermediate level of prose, document, and quantitative literacy, higher education has a value eerily similar to that of a tulip bulb before the great collapse in 1637.

And why do we find this weakness in higher education? ACTA's survey of core curricula at 714 colleges and universities (www.whatwilltheylearn.com) revealed that nearly 40% of the institutions did not require a single college level class in mathematics of their students. Even as basic and indispensable a course as English composition was often shortchanged, with nearly 45% of the private institutions failing to require systematic study of grammar, syntax and style. The quality problems that the Chronicle's "Measuring Stick" entry identified find much of their cause right here, in the absence of core requirements. With graduates facing limited employment prospects and the near certainty of many job changes, the absence of a strong collegiate core is a terrible disservice to students and to the nation.

The remedies are not necessarily expensive, but they require a cultural change. Faculty AND administrators will have to cooperate and even make some sacrifices to ensure that students get the rigorous general education they need. Faculty need to view their obligations to general education as highly as their obligations to the department and the major, and the faculty reward system must be aligned with these priorities.

Posted by Michael Schilling on September 03, 2010 at 12:22 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack