The Other 85 Percent

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 [...]

This article in Inside Higher Ed describes how the Colorado State University Board of Governors considered, ever so briefly, privatizing part of the university system to assure survival. The idea of public institutions doing something like this has been around for decades. The idea usually picks up some steam when we are in a fiscal [...]

Inside Higher Ed reports on a new study from the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching that calls for the bachelor of science in nursing (BSN) to be required for entry into the field of nursing. The authors of the study are correct in stating that the demands on nurses are increasingly complex. [...]

An Inside Higher Ed article reports on the results of the work of Carol Twigg and the National Center for Academic Transformations after ten years of working with schools to both improve learning and reduce costs. The point of the article is that Ms. Twigg had two purposes for her important and widely renowned [...]

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 [...]