The Other 85 Percent

Hello. It has been a while since I’ve posted, but I wanted to take the time to let you know that I have decided to take a hiatus from posting to this blog for now due to my new role at Capella University. It has been a pleasure to tackle some of the critical issues [...]

Recently there have been several articles about colleges objecting to expectations that they report learning or academic outcomes. For example, this Inside Higher Ed article describes how Division III schools object to a proposed NCAA requirement to report graduation rates for their athletes. The schools say that this will drive costs up.  But, they also [...]

This New York Times blog post discusses a report from Public Agenda about a report underwritten by Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation titled “With Their Whole Lives Ahead of Them.” Some 600 young adults, ages 22 to 30, who had left college before getting a degree were surveyed.
I object to the opening comment that Tamar [...]

This article in the Chronicle of Higher Education reports that between 31 and 45 states are keeping some individual records on college students. I think that is a very good thing. There are others in higher education who consider such record-keeping to be problematic and threatening. So threatening that they pursued and secured legislation [...]

Not that we need more reminders about just how dire the effects of the economic downturn have been for public colleges and universities, but the California State University System has announced that it will reduce enrollment by more than 40,000 students next year. That is happening despite increasing demand.
We all know that 40,000 students is [...]

The answer, according to this report from Inside Higher Ed, may simply be because we have to do it for accreditation. What the National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment report reveals is that many colleges are measuring what undergraduate students learn. The problem is that they are not using the data to make improvements.  For-profit [...]

This Inside Higher Ed article is a reminder to the higher education world that “the clock is ticking” in terms of accountability expectations. I have repeatedly written about the expectations that higher education become more accountable for its actions and its outcomes. David C. Paris correctly predicts that higher education will be challenged [...]

This Inside Higher Ed article describes a white paper by Louis Soares of the Center for American Progress. Soares calls for the creation of an Office of Consumer Protection in Higher Education. The office would encourage colleges to produce better data on how effectively they serve students, and set up a way for disgruntled students [...]

A few years ago when there were calls for increased accountability coming from multiple places, including the U.S. Department of Education, one response was to point to the assessment of student engagement using the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE). The NSSE results were cited as an example of accountability for outcomes. It [...]

Working Learners:  Educating Our Entire Workforce for Success in the 21st Century is a good read with an important message – and it addresses the needs of the other 85 percent.  Louis Soares of the Center for American Progress writes in this paper that working students, those who combine work and postsecondary education, “have little [...]