The Other 85 Percent

Another call for more transparency in higher education

June 24, 2008 | Filed under: Capella, Capella University, Spellings Commission, The Other 85 Percent, Transparency by Design, college, college degree, continuing education, distance learning, elearning, higher education, learning outcomes, online learning

Richard Vedder, a member of the Spellings Commission, has recently written this commentary in which he calls for colleges to become more transparent. Among the things he calls for are measures of learning outcomes, student engagement, and research with alumni to assess how successful they are. He describes transparency as “vital in evaluating what colleges accomplish” and offering “immense benefits.” He calls for colleges to go beyond rhetoric and to “deliver truly useful information.”

As I have written previously in this blog there are a number of institutions that serve adults at a distance that are working together to develop reports for prospective adult students. The Transparency by Design effort is intent on providing more than rhetoric by delivering the kind of information that adult students need to make the critical decision about what college to attend – and to allow interested readers to assess our effectiveness. We have recently been joined by two additional institutions, American Intercontinental University Online and Colorado Technical University, and have been working diligently to collect the data required to make our initial reports, as planned, in early 2009.

We have partnered with WCET, an office of the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education (WICHE), to be our independent, third-party aggregator and publisher of the institutional reports. Transparency by Design has been referred to as one the three major accountability efforts in the country. This initiative is also one of three major initiatives of the Presidents’ Forum, an alliance of institutions that serve adults, and we expect additional institutions from the Forum to join us once the initial fourteen institutions “prove this concept” with our 2009 reports.

What truly distinguishes this effort from other accountability initiatives is that we will provide reports of learning outcomes both at the core level (writing, critical thinking, etc.) and at the program level. And we are working on common research questions to use in follow-up surveys of our alumni.

It is my sense that we are taking to heart the concerns expressed by Mr. Vedder and others who continue to call for colleges to be more transparent.

What are your thoughts? I welcome any feedback you have.

Mike

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