ACTA's Must-Reads

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"A Spectre is Haunting Higher Education"

"The spectre of the uneducated or undereducated student." So says Milt Rosenberg, introducing Anne Neal and Michael Poliakoff on WGN's Extension 720 right now. Click over and take a listen; you can listen to the live stream. And then look up What Will They Learn?

Listening right now? Leave a comment and tell us what you think! Or call in!

Posted by Michael Pomeranz on January 31, 2011 at 11:10 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Education's Culture of Grade Inflation

How systemic is the problem of grade inflation in higher education? "The American Freshman: National Norms Fall 2010," a massive survey, reveals that 71.2 percent of the 201,818 first-time, full-time, first-year students polled at 279 colleges and universities rated their academic abilities above average. 66.4 percent expect at least a B average in college.

A reality check shows how far these expectations are from actual academic performance. The recent study Academically Adrift shows that "on average, gains in critical thinking, complex reasoning, and writing skills (i.e. general collegiate skills) are either exceedingly small or empirically non-existent for a large proportion of students." Boards of Trustees need to ask hard questions of higher education leadership and insist on clear data about grading standards, academic rigor, and learning gains.

Posted by Michael Poliakoff on January 27, 2011 at 03:50 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Representative Foxx Challenges the Assumptions

Representative Virginia Foxx, the new chairwoman of the House higher-education subcommittee, made it very clear in her address to CHEA, the Council on Higher Education Accreditation, that she envisions a level playing field for the different sectors of higher education. Her goal is to ensure fair and objective criteria for judging the integrity and merits of our colleges and universities. This is truly a breath of clean air.

ACTA has been engaged in a meaningful dialogue with the Department of Education in an attempt to remove obstacles to the transfer of credit from two-year and for-profit institutions to four-year colleges and universities. ACTA objects to the imposition of "gainful employment" or any other criteria on for-profit institutions alone, while giving a pass to low productivity and evasive quality standards among non-profit colleges and universities. Eduardo Ochoa, assistant secretary at the U.S. Education Department took the Congresswoman's message to heart. Protecting the interests of students and taxpayers is a crucial role. Representative Foxx has signaled that she wants facts and data, not assumptions and prejudices, to inform that process.

Congresswoman Foxx represents a state that has showcased some important initiatives in higher education. In "Cutting Costs: A Trustee's Guide to Hard Economic Times," ACTA praised the University of North Carolina for its visionary creation of an inter-campus consortium to deliver German language programs. While other universities terminate programs, UNC is finding ways cost-effectively to maintain theirs. ACTA also issued recommendations in 2005 for strengthening governance procedures in the UNC system. And the Congresswoman herself has spoken to ACTA, at 2003's ATHENA meeting. We are very happy that this leadership state in higher education has a very worthy representative in Congress.

Posted by Michael Poliakoff on January 26, 2011 at 12:20 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

State of the Union Address: Call to Restore ROTC

Did you catch the State of the Union Address last night? Obama calls "on all of our college campuses to open their doors to our military recruiters and the ROTC." Students deserve this opportunity and higher education needs to demonstrate its support. For years, ACTA has been urging boards to restore ROTC on campuses, but we need your help as well. Tell Trustees at your campus to recognize ROTC Today!

Posted by Jose Herrera on January 26, 2011 at 10:59 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Vision and Courage in Minnesota

When ACTA issued its Minnesota State Report Card, At a Crossroads, it praised the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities System (MNScU) for the fiscal responsibility it demonstrated in closing 345 programs while adding 191 in 2007 and 2008. Now MNScU's Bemidji State University and Northwest Technical College (BSU-NTC) has announced a "recalibration" that includes further, significant reductions of administrative staff, athletic programs, and academic programs, an overall 10% budgetary reduction. Closing academic programs, which are the heart of a university, is never easy, but it is the duty of administrators to make these painful decisions, especially in hard economic times. As former the president of the University of Northern Colorado, Robert Dickeson, argues in Academic Program Prioritization, failure to make choices between programs means that that every program--and the institution as a whole--will suffer. Or, yet worse, as ACTA has consistently emphasized, colleges will pay for their runaway costs on the backs of their students with unconscionable increases in tuition and mandatory fees. BSU-NTC firmly rejected the timorous expedient of "across the board cuts." Bemidji's leadership has been transparent about the economic exigencies and included the entire campus in the development of their recalibration plan. Notably, the BSU-NTC “recalibration” is not just a series of cuts, but it is a strategic vision in which the university will enhance programs that are part of its distinctive mission. Their plan targets increasing enrollment of first-generation and low-income students and American Indian students from the White Earth, Red Lake and Leech Lake bands. While cutting its budget, BSU-NTC has plans to raise the student graduation rates by 20 percent and create three-year baccalaureate programs. It will hold tuition increases to 4% over the next two years. ACTA has urged trustees to consider a variety of measures to cut costs. This Minnesota university has assuredly modeled for other institutions a variety of best practices in these difficult times.

Posted by Michael Poliakoff on January 25, 2011 at 11:32 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

More publicity for Arum-Roksa study

Both the "Academically Adrift" study of Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa, and ACTA President Anne Neal's guest blog post on the Washington Post's higher ed blog, have been picking up steam -- they are cited on Braintrack.com and in this opinion brief in The Week.

Posted by Tom Bako on January 21, 2011 at 09:17 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Here We Have Idaho

Following ACTA's successful state report cards on Georgia, Illinois, Minnesota, and Missouri, ACTA today released Here We Have Idaho: A State Report Card on Public Higher Education. As the Legislature convenes, this report outlines what a successful reform of Idaho's postsecondary public schools would look like. Check it out!

Posted by Michael Pomeranz on January 20, 2011 at 09:26 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Anne Neal in the Washington Post

Check out ACTA President Anne Neal's guest blog post on College, Inc., the Washington Post's education blog. Anne wrote about the Arum-Roksa study (see below), and the importance of revitalizing general education, which is the ultimate goal of our What Will They Learn? project.

Posted by Tom Bako on January 19, 2011 at 11:21 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

New report, old news

A new report under the direction of Robert Arum, sociologist at NYU, looks at the failure of today's colleges and universities to teach students basic analytical, quantitative, written communication, or critical reasoning skills. The report's appalling results, also picked up by Slate and Inside Higher Ed, come as no surprise to ACTA. Policy Director Michael Poliakoff wrote on the blog a few days ago about Arum's findings and how they further underscore the increasing need for resources like WhatWillTheyLearn.com, our free guide to general education programs and core curricula at over 700 of our nation's colleges and universities.

Posted by Tom Bako on January 18, 2011 at 11:38 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Giving Wisely in the New Year

Over at Philanthropy Daily, an exciting an relatively new blog covering "all things charitable," ACTA President Anne D. Neal outlines how donors to colleges can give intelligently. The importance of donor intent is a topic ACTA has stressed over and over again. Check it out!

Posted by Michael Pomeranz on January 13, 2011 at 09:47 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Newly-minted college graduates: "They're getting hammered"

That is the verdict of sociologists Richard Arum from New York University and Josipa Roksa of the University of Virginia in a recent interview with the New York Times. The details are grim. After tracking a cohort of 2,300 students who started college in fall 2005 and graduated in spring 2009, they report that 36% have moved back home with their parents, almost one-tenth carry over $60,000 in debt. It gets worse: two-thirds earn less than $35,000 and 45% earn less than $15,000.

This is not just a story of the recession and its victims: it is also a kind of morality play in which the actors can affect the outcomes. Arum and Roksa used instruments like the Collegiate Learning Assessment to measure growth in critical thinking, complex reasoning, and writing skills. They note, "large numbers [of students] don't seem to be learning very much." And a very interesting coincidence: "Employed graduates tended to have not only higher grade-point averages, but also higher test scores." Arum and Roksa have suggested elsewhere, based on significant amounts of data, that academic programs in mathematics, science, social science, and the humanities contribute far more to students' intellectual growth than such majors as education and communication. ACTA also believes that there is a very high face validity between a solid core curriculum and cognitive growth in the skills students need for career success like mathematics, scientific thought, effective writing, foreign language. That is why we have graded nearly 720 colleges and universities on their core curricula in the WhatWillTheyLearn.com project and urge college bound students and their parents to choose colleges based on curricular quality .

Posted by Michael Poliakoff on January 12, 2011 at 10:47 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Wall Street Journal and What Will They Learn

The Wall Street Journal interviewed ACTA President Anne Neal about the colleges represented in bowl games and what's happening off the field. What do you think? Watch the video, and then write your comment below!

This is not the first time ACTA's talked about what students will learn off the field. Like what you see on this blog? Sign up on the upper right-hand part of your screen for weekly blog updates!

Posted by Michael Pomeranz on January 11, 2011 at 11:36 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

The Return of ROTC

The Chronicle of Higher Education notes that with the repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," elite institutions are exploring how to bring ROTC back to their campuses. For several years, ACTA has been urging boards of trustees to be proactive in restoring ROTC to its rightful place on campus, and we hope that good intentions and official words of welcome will quickly find their way into concrete actions. One point that ACTA stresses is the opportunity for the faculty of America's best universities to help craft powerful new ROTC programs, drawing on expertise in such areas as international relations, anthropology, and psychology. And it is a great opportunity for the neglected fields of diplomatic and military history to come to the fore again. Trustees, administrators, and faculty need to work together to build programs that address a 21st century military. They also need to safeguard an unprejudiced campus climate that supports, respects, actively honors students' decision to prepare for leadership in the U.S. military. Students deserve this opportunity and higher education needs to demonstrate its support for the nation's interests.

Posted by Michael Poliakoff on January 11, 2011 at 11:13 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

In Memoriam Stanley Rothman

ACTA is saddened by the news that Stanley Rothman, Mary Huggins Gamble Professor Emeritus of Government at Smith College, a scholar and teacher who was indefatigable in pursuit of truth and justice, has died. He will be remembered warmly by the many students he guided and will long be noted for his outstanding and wide-ranging scholarship--fourteen books that included Roots of Radicalism (1982), Media Elites (1986) American Elites (1996), Hollywood's America: Social and Political Themes in Motion Pictures (1996), Environmental Cancer: A Political Disease?, The Least Dangerous Branch: The Consequences of Judicial Activism (2002). Colleagues and friends will recall his vigorous presence and participation into his late old age at professional conferences and meetings. He served as chairman of the National Association of Scholars, and his legacy continues in the fine contributions that his son, David, has made to the Association's journal, Academic Questions. ACTA's work in intellectual diversity drew inspiration from Professor Rothman's survey of campus political demography. We mourn his passing but acknowledge with gratitude a long life well lived and contributions to scholarship and society that will endure.

Posted by Michael Poliakoff on January 06, 2011 at 01:20 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Let them eat cake: Shameful executive behavior at the University of California

University of California students have seen their tuition rise 40% in the last two years, but 36 top UC executives just don't feel their pain. Or notice that key academic programs and services are in jeopardy. Or that most UC staff are taking cuts in their retirement and health benefits. Not at all: the worthy 36 executives have threatened a lawsuit if UC fails to commit to paying them pensions based on their full salaries . . . not the (paltry) amount based on only the first $245,000. UC President Mark Yudoff and Board Chair Russell Gould have properly signaled they will fight the suit. But pension law is only part of the issue. Leadership and honor are at the heart of this issue. When scarce public funds go to higher education, the public should expect that this money will serve the needs of students and high priority research. How can UC ask for state funding in the midst of a deep recession, when its high-level, highly-compensated executives are so cynically out for Number One?

Posted by Michael Poliakoff on January 06, 2011 at 09:42 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The New York Times and the Higher Education Bubble

The questioners grow more insistent: is a $50,000 per year college education worth the price? The New York Times isn't sure. The old wisdom is that attending an elite private institution yields a high premium in increased earning capacity. But NYT points to new data that when we compare the earnings of graduates who came to college with similar academic qualifications, the prestige of the institution generally had little impact.

ACTA says it's time to examine some straightforward issues of academic quality. Our What Will They Learn? project noted an inverse relationship between the most expensive colleges and the integrity of their core curricula. For how much longer will parents pay $200,000+ for an education that does not ensure the core skills and knowledge that are the tools of career success and civic responsibility? (Take, for example, Hamilton College, in New York, which costs $41,280 annually and earns an F for its core curriculum.) The good news is that some institutions with modest tuition and fees have had the vision and discipline to maintain outstanding curricular standards. (In the same state as Hamilton, for example, is the $5,051 Brooklyn College, whose students graduate with composition, literature, foreign language, U.S. history/government, mathematics, and science.) If the bubble bursts, it’s not hard to predict who will prevail.

Posted by Michael Poliakoff on January 05, 2011 at 01:31 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

A friend in Buffalo

Michael Poliakoff's piece in the Buffalo News on the importance of learning foreign languages found an eager reader in Richard H. Escobales Jr., who writes: "Although I am not a linguist, I could not agree more with the insightful Dec. 19 Viewpoints article by Michael Poliakoff deploring the dismemberment of foreign language majors and departments by some university administrators."

Escobales continues: "Along with at least a year of foreign language, I think a year of college-level mathematics should be required of all college graduates. Those wanting to avoid such requirements should receive certificates of attendance instead of college diplomas."

We here at ACTA certainly agree. In case you're curious, here are the schools in New York with both a Mathematics and foreign language requirement:

Brooklyn College (CUNY)
Queens College (CUNY)
Fordham
SUNY-Binghampton
SUNY-Cortland

We're glad you liked the piece!

Posted by Michael Pomeranz on January 04, 2011 at 10:32 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Anne Neal in Forbes

Writing in Forbes' blog, Daniel L. Bennett of the Center for College Affordability and Productivity writes, "[o]ne policy concern that both sides of the aisle could and should address, however, is reigning in the rapidly increasing cost of college."

He goes on to suggest changing the tenure process. As we suggested to trustees in our Cost Cutting brochure, tenure is virtually a life-time commitment--costing institutions millions of dollars in salary and benefits. ACTA does not advocate the elimination of tenure; rather, we encourage trustees to consider alternatives. In Where Tenure Does Not Reign: Colleges with Contract Systems (Washington, D.C.: American Association for Higher Education and Accreditation, 1997), Richard Chait and Cathy Trower at Harvard University report that many young faculty are receptive to alternative employment structure. Multi-year contracts can offer institutions greater agility to respond to academic and research demands.

Bennett suggests giving the post-tenure review process teeth, citing ACTA President Anne Neal: the current process is a "ritualistic exercise in rubberstamping," suggesting that while widely implemented, "it carries little value as an effective practice of increasing accountability among faculty." It a good idea and one we hope policymakers--and trustees--will implement in this new year.

Posted by Michael Pomeranz on January 03, 2011 at 11:36 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack