My primary concern rests with the heavy emphasis on "outcomes based" learning. First, I find it difficult to imagine teaching to outcomes as separate from teaching my content -- I do not consider "content" and "outcomes" as discrete entities; rather, they overlap. This overlap may partly be the reason for the thin and somewhat unconvincing literature on "outcomes based learning." I would therefore like to see in this process a thorough and detailed analysis of the literature on "outcomes" vs content-based learning, followed by thoughtful discussion as to whether the need to focus our energies in a different direction is in fact warranted (and for what reasons). Also, perhaps that same literature can provide guidance on how to create an outcomes driven learning environment while maintaining the spirit of the academic (as opposed to technocratically-oriented) enterprise.

Outcomes are simply more refined ways of talking about fundamental purposes of education (on the need for positing our purposes in educating undergraduates, see Derek Bok, Our Underachieving Colleges, ch. 3). Without stating our educational purposes clearly, we can't know whether we are achieving them. "

I've clicked just about every link on this website. I still have no idea what the empirical basis is for recommending a "learning goals" based approach over other approaches. The references in the GEVC report, which is where I expected to find the relevant studies, were instead all to other reports. So far as I could tell, there were no direct references to peer-reviewed research.

I actually learned something in these classes for 3 main reasons. The first reason was that the class size was small, and my interaction with my classmates and professor/teacher made the material meaningful and educational. Secondly, the essays required for these classes pushed me in my writing skills, and promoted independent research and construction of ideas through writing.

Taking the class with students who were serious and knowledgeable about their field of study made my experience educational. Sitting in a large lecture hall with 200 other students who also are taking the class just to get the requirement is not educationally stimulating.

Spending money on classes that don’t have any impact is especially hard now that tuition has gone through the roof. Requiring less classes of greater quality will help alleviate this problem and help students graduate on time.

In case it hasn’t already become obvious, I am among those who view rankings with some cynicism due to their past misuses and abuses. At the same time, I must concede that they can be a useful tool to help guide institutional improvement.

Indeed, rankings are part of the nature of education. Like it or not, comparisons are unavoidable.

To further complicate the utility of these rankings, it appears that not a single perspective was included from outside the Ivory Towers.

why peer review processes often avoid, rather than facilitate, sound judgment

humans do not differentiate between computers and people in their social interactions.

no matter what "everyone knows," people act as if the computer secretly cares

The Critical Friend is a powerful idea, perhaps because it contains an inherent tension. Friends bring a high degree of unconditional positive regard. Critics are, at first sight at least, conditional, negative and intolerant of failure. Perhaps the critical friend comes closest to what might be regarded as 'true friendship' - a successful marrying of unconditional support and unconditional critique. [

Over the past few decades, the central purpose of undergraduate education in the United States has steadily evolved away from elite studies in the liberal arts and toward course work that prepares students for successful careers in their chosen fields. 

how do employers determine the values of the college degrees held by young job applicants? 

There is essentially no method to determine which of the three graduates have the knowledge and skills that match the advertised position. Grades and academic standards often vary so much by institution, department, and instructor that transcripts are written off as arbitrary and meaningless by those making hiring decisions. Outside fields with licensure exams like accounting and nursing, employers often hire workers based on connections, intuition, and the sometimes-misleading reputations of applicants’ alma maters. 

The comic is a quick over view of what students generally want from any web-based resources (perhaps especially a course resource like Moodle) and what teachers provide more often than not.

Others say those who take the test have little motivation to do well, which makes it tough to draw conclusions from their performance.

"Everything that No Child Left Behind signified during the Bush administration—we operate 180 degrees away from that," says Roger Benjamin, president of the Council for Aid to Education, which developed and promotes the CLA. "We don't want this to be a high-stakes test. We're putting a stake in the ground on classic liberal-arts issues. I'm willing to rest my oar there. These core abilities, these higher-order skills, are very important, and they're even more important in a knowledge economy where everyone needs to deal with a surplus of information." Only an essay test, like the CLA, he says, can really get at those skills.

"The CLA is really an authentic assessment process," says Pedro Reyes, associate vice chancellor for academic planning and assessment at the University of Texas system.

The unusual project aims to create robots that can teach English to schoolchildren here, and it is a huge undertaking. The research is supported by more than $100-million in grants, mostly from the South Korean government, and it involves more than 300 researchers, said Mr. Kim.

Forty robots will go into service for a pilot test in December, teaching at 18 elementary schools for three months to see how well they do.

“There are some problems and some accidents in hiring native speakers at the schools right now,” said the researcher. “For example, the immigration system in Korea is not good enough to examine whether the foreign visitors are clean or not, or they did some crime,” he added. “That’s the reason why the government thinks about such robot systems—they don’t have any such social problems, they don’t do the drugs.”

Our evaluator colleagues who work at GAO, and many others working in agencies and organizations that are responsible for oversight of, and focus on accountability for, government programs, often refer to the Yellow Book Standards. These agencies or organizations emphasize the importance of their independence from program officials and enjoy significant protections for their independence through statutory provisions, organizational location apart from program offices, direct reporting channels to the highest level official in their agency and governing legislative bodies, heightened tenure protections, and traditions emphasizing their independence.

Peter P. Smith, senior vice president for academic strategies and development at Kaplan Higher Education, said that if traditional universities did not adjust, new institutions would evolve to meet student needs. Those new institutions, said Mr. Smith, whose company is a for-profit education provider, would be more student-centric, would deliver instruction with greater flexibility, and would offer educational services at a lower cost.

Speakers at an international conference here delivered a scathing assessment of higher education: Universities, they said, are slow to change, uncomfortable in dealing with real-world problems, and culturally resistant to substantive internationalization.

"If you major in accounting or engineering, you're pretty likely to get a return on your investment," Vedder says. "If you're majoring in anthropology or social work or education, the rate on return is going to be a good deal lower, on average.

The unemployment rate among those with bachelor's degrees is at an all-time high

Recruiters say graduates of top public universities are often among the most prepared and well-rounded academically, and companies have found they fit well into their corporate cultures and over time have the best track record in their firms.

Recruiter salaries, travel expenses, advertising and relocation costs run upwards of $500,000 to recruit 100 college grads, according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers.

The Journal asked companies to rank schools that produce the best-qualified graduates—overall and by major. Recru

George Miller, a California Democrat who is chairman of the House education committee, said defining a credit hour is critical to ensure that students and taxpayers, through federal student aid, are not footing the bill for courses that are not worth the amount of credit being awarded.

Senators also questioned the independence of accreditors, which are supported by dues from member institutions and governed by representatives of the colleges they accredit.

Sen. Michael B. Enzi, the top Republican on the Senate Education Committee, has said he wants Congress to look beyond just problems in the for-profit sector. He said at a hearing last month that he would be "working to lay the groundwork for a broader, thorough, and more fair investigation into higher education" that would ask whether taxpayers are getting an appropriate value for the money they spend on all colleges.

Although different members of the academic hierarchy take on different roles regarding student learning, student learning is everyone’s concern in an academic setting. As I specified in my article comments, universities would do well to use their academic support units, which often have evaluation teams (or a designated evaluator) to assist in providing boards the information they need for decision making. Perhaps boards are not aware of those serving in evaluation roles at the university or how those staff members can assist boards in their endeavors.

Gary Brown • We have been using the Internet to post program assessment plans and reports (the programs that support this initiative at least), our criteria (rubric) for reviewing them, and then inviting external stakeholders to join in the review process.

A new generation comes along, and a new bunch of books critical of academia are starting to appear. Two recently out include Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreifus' Higher Education? and Mark Taylor's Crisis on Campus. We are told colleges have lost their way, have lost sight of what is important, namely shaping young minds and turning immature adolescents into responsible young adults. The last round of muckraking had a decidedly conservative cast to it, while this one is more conventionally left wing or apolitical.

But until there is mass indignation about the behavior of colleges--their obscene costs, their bloated bureaucracies, the scandalously low teaching loads, the tons trivial academic research, the corruption of intercollegiate sports

Reform requires threats of reduced funding from the financiers of higher education.

While oversight of educational quality is a critical responsibility of college boards of trustees, a majority of trustees and chief academic officers say boards do not spend enough time discussing student-learning outcomes, and more than a third say boards do not understand how student learning is assessed, says a report issued on Thursday by the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges.

While boards should not get involved in the details of teaching or ways to improve student-learning outcomes, they must hold the administration accountable for identifying needs in the academic programs and then meeting them, the report says. Boards should also make decisions on where to allocate resources based on what works or what should improve.

The most commonly received information by boards was college-ranking data

Evaluating the credibility of one person's statements is difficult if not impossible, especially without knowing, for example, each person's background, training, affiliations, education, or experience. However, we feel that a guide to a person's theoretical expertise can be helpful, so we have built theoretical expertise ranking charts for each ProCon.org website to help differentiate the theoretical expertise of the various sources on our sites.