when our students attend three or four schools, the subject of these sentences is considerably weakened in terms of what happens to those students.

Who or what is one accountable to?

For what?

Why that particular “what” -- and not another “what”?

To what extent is the relationship reciprocal? Are there rewards and/or sanctions inherent in the relationship? How continuous is the relationship?

In the Socratic moral universe, one is simultaneously witness and judge. The Greek syneidesis (“conscience” and “consciousness”) means to know something with, so to know oneself with oneself becomes an obligation of institutions and systems -- to themselves.

Obligation becomes self-reflexive.

There are no external authorities here. We offer, we accept, we provide evidence, we judge. There is nothing wrong with this: it is indispensable, reflective self-knowledge. And provided we judge without excuses, we hold to this Socratic moral framework. As Peter Ewell has noted, the information produced under this rubric, particularly in the matter of student learning, is “part of our accountability to ourselves.”

But is this “accountability” as the rhetoric of higher education uses the white noise -- or something else?

in response to shrill calls for “accountability,” U.S. higher education has placed all its eggs in the Socratic basket, but in a way that leaves the basket half-empty. It functions as the witness, providing enormous amounts of information, but does not judge that information.

Every single “best practice” cited by Aldeman and Carey is subject to measurement: labor market histories of graduates, ratios of resource commitment to various student outcomes, proportion of students in learning communities or taking capstone courses, publicly-posted NSSE results, undergraduate research participation, space utilization rates, licensing income, faculty patents, volume of non-institutional visitors to art exhibits, etc. etc. There’s nothing wrong with any of these, but they all wind up as measurements, each at a different concentric circle of putatively engaged acceptees of a unilateral contract to provide evidence. By the time one plows through Aldeman and Carey’s banquet, one is measuring everything that moves -- and even some things that don’t.

Sorry, but basic capacity facts mean that consumers cannot vote with their feet in higher education.

If we glossed the Socratic notion on provision-of-information, the purpose is self-improvement, not comparison. The market approach to accountability implicitly seeks to beat Socrates by holding that I cannot serve as both witness and judge of my own actions unless the behavior of others is also on the table. The self shrinks: others define the reference points. “Accountability” is about comparison and competition, and an institution’s obligations are only to collect and make public those metrics that allow comparison and competition. As for who judges the competition, we have a range of amorphous publics and imagined authorities.

There are no formal agreements here: this is not a contract, it is not a warranty, it is not a regulatory relationship. It isn’t even an issue of becoming a Socratic self-witness and judge. It is, instead, a case in which one set of parties, concentrated in places of power, asks another set of parties, diffuse and diverse, “to disclose more and more about academic results,” with the second set of parties responding in their own terms and formulations. The environment itself determines behavior.

Ewell is right about the rules of the information game in this environment: when the provider is the institution, it will shape information “to look as good as possible, regardless of the underlying performance.”

U.S. News & World Report’s rankings

The messengers become self-appointed arbiters of performance, establishing themselves as the second party to which institutions and aggregates of institutions become “accountable.” Can we honestly say that the implicit obligation of feeding these arbiters constitutes “accountability”?

But if the issue is student learning, there is nothing wrong with -- and a good deal to be said for -- posting public examples of comprehensive examinations, summative projects, capstone course papers, etc. within the information environment, and doing so irrespective of anyone requesting such evidence of the distribution of knowledge and skills. Yes, institutions will pick what makes them look good, but if the public products resemble AAC&U’s “Our Students’ Best Work” project, they set off peer pressure for self-improvement and very concrete disclosure. The other prominent media messengers simply don’t engage in constructive communication of this type.

Ironically, a “market” in the loudest voices, the flashiest media productions, and the weightiest panels of glitterati has emerged to declare judgment on institutional performance in an age when student behavior has diluted the very notion of an “institution” of higher education. The best we can say is that this environment casts nothing but fog over the specific relationships, responsibilities, and obligations that should be inherent in something we call “accountability.” Perhaps it is about time that we defined these components and their interactions with persuasive clarity. I hope that this essay will invite readers to do so.

Clifford Adelman is senior associate at the Institute for Higher Education Policy. The analysis and opinions expressed in this essay are those of the author, and do not necessarily represent the positions or opinions of the institute, nor should any such representation be inferred.

Senate Democrats focused most of their ire on accreditors, grilling the head of one national agency about the standards it uses to judge institutions.

"Do you think maybe your rigorous standards aren't rigorous enough?" asked Senator Franken, of Minnesota.

it was "apparent to me that we need a hearing on accreditation."

"But your on-site evaluations didn't detect it," Senator Harkin said. "It seems like you accept the schools' word on what they're doing."

Mr. Harkin said he planned to "look into" the financing structure of the accrediting system, saying it "seems to be a situation that is rife with conflict."

That should please committee Republicans, who called for a broader investigation into higher education. Sen. Michael B. Enzi of Wyoming, the top Republican on the education panel, said he would ask the GAO to expand its investigation to nonprofit colleges as well.

Lead, follow, or get out of the way.

Higher education has so far navigated its way through the environment of increased regulatory interest without substantial changes to our system of quality assurance or federally mandated outcomes assessment. But that has only bought us time. As we look ahead, we must keep three facts in mind: Interest in accountability is bipartisan, and the pendulum has swung toward more regulation in virtually all sectors. The economic crisis is likely to spur increased calls from policy makers to control college prices and demonstrate that students are getting value for the dollar. The size of the federal budget deficit will force everyone who receives federal support to produce more and better evidence that an investment of federal funds will pay dividends for individuals and society.

If we do not seize the opportunity to strengthen voluntary peer accreditation as a rigorous test of institutional quality, grounded in appropriate measures of student learning, we place at risk a precious bulwark against excessive government intervention, a bulwark that has allowed American higher education to flourish. When it comes to safeguarding the quality, diversity, and independence of American higher education, accreditors hold the keys to the kingdom.

all accreditors now require colleges and universities to put more emphasis on measuring student-learning outcomes. They should be equally vigilant about ensuring that those data are used to achieve improvements in outcomes

share plain-language results of accreditation reviews with the public.

It takes very little close reading to see through the self-serving statements here: namely that higher education institutions must do a better PR job pretending they are interested in meaningful reform so as to head off any real reform that migh come from the federal authorities.

THEREFORE, let me voice a wakeup call for those who are really interested in reform--not that there are many.1.There will never be any meaningful reform unless we have a centralized and nationalized higher educational system. Leaving higher education in the hands of individual institutions is no longer effective and is in fact what has led to the present state we find ourselves in. Year after countless year we have been promised changes in higher education and year after year nothing changes. IF CHANGE IS TO COME IT MUST BE FORCED ONTO HIGHER EDUCATION FROM THE OUTSIDE.

Higher education in America can no longer afford to be organized around the useless market capitalism that forces too many financially marginalized institutions to compete for less and less.

Keeping Quiet by Pablo NerudaIf we were not so singled-mindedabout keeping our lives moving,and for once could do nothing,perhaps a huge silencemight interrupt this sadnessof never understanding ourselvesand of threatening ourselves with death.

If a student finishes and can't do what's advertised, they'll say, 'I've been shortchanged.'

Kathryn MacKay, an associate professor of history at Weber State University, drew on recent work from the American Historical Association to define learning goals in historical knowledge, thinking, and skills.

In the immediate future, as the higher-education market continues to globalize and the allure of prestige continues to grow, the value of university brands is likely to rise. But at some point, the countervailing forces of empiricism will begin to take hold. The openness inherent to tuning and other, similar processes will make plain that college courses do not vary in quality in anything like the way that archaic, prestige- and money-driven brands imply. Once you've defined the goals, you can prove what everyone knows but few want to admit: From an educational standpoint, institutional brands are largely an illusion for which students routinely overpay.

But the biggest barrier to improvement is the pervasive perception that academic institutions — and the prevailing rewards structure of science — value research far more than teaching

despite their beliefs that teaching was at least as important as research, many respondents said that they would choose to appoint a researcher rather than a teacher to an open tenured position.

To correct this misalignment of values, two things are required. The first is to establish a standardized system of teaching evaluation. This would give universities and professors alike the feedback they need to improve.

The second requirement is to improve the support and rewards for university-level teaching.

systematic training in how to teach well

But by showering so many rewards on research instead of on teaching, universities and funding agencies risk undermining the educational quality that is required for research to flourish in the long term.

Besides the CLA, which is sponsored by the Council for Aid to Education, other tests that participants in the voluntary system may use are the Collegiate Assessment of Academic Proficiency, from ACT Inc., and the Measure of Academic Proficiency and Progress, offered by the Educational Testing Service.

The test has sometimes been criticized for relying on a cross-sectional system rather than a longitudinal model, in which the same students would be tested in their first and fourth years of college.

there have long been concerns about just how motivated students are to perform well on the CLA.

Mr. Hosch suggested that small groups of similar colleges should create consortia for measuring student learning. For example, five liberal-arts colleges might create a common pool of faculty members that would evaluate senior theses from all five colleges. "That wouldn't be a national measure," Mr. Hosch said, "but it would be much more authentic."

Mr. Shavelson said. "The challenge confronting higher education is for institutions to address the recruitment and motivation issues if they are to get useful data. From my perspective, we need to integrate assessment into teaching and learning as part of students' programs of study, thereby raising the stakes a bit while enhancing motivation of both students and faculty

"I do agree with his central point that it would not be prudent to move to an accountability system based on cross-sectional assessments of freshmen and seniors at an institution," said Mr. Arum, who is an author, with Josipa Roksa, of Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses, forthcoming from the University of Chicago Press

include them in their tenure-and promotion portfolios.

As Ernest Boyer said, faculty reward systems will need to be revised in order for faculty members to truly be rewarded on the basis of their scholarship of teaching."

The danger, however, is that we're teaching our kids a very narrow and stultifying model of cognition, in which conscientiousness is privileged above all.

In recent years, however, it's become clear that daydreaming is actually an important element of the creative process, allowing the brain to remix ideas, explore counterfactuals and turn the spotlight of attention inwards.

The solution, I suppose, is rather banal: we really do need arts education in our schools,

But the research aspirations of many large universities are in conflict with their founding principles, Ms. Wellman says, especially as undergraduate admissions has become more selective

another result of the chase for research dollars is that measures for faculty assessment and promotion rely too heavily on the research output and publication and too little on the quality of classroom teaching.

"I'm not pushing for banning research," he says, but there should be more flexibility and balance in the criteria."

Data does not just happen; it is created in specific and deliberate ways. It is generated by sensors, not babies; and those sensors are designed to measure specific parameters for specific reasons, at certain rates, with certain resolutions. Or more correctly: it is gathered by people, for specific reasons, with a certain view of the world in mind, a certain concept of what the problem or the subject is. The people use the sensors, to gather the data, to measure a certain chosen aspect of the world.

If we come to accept that data just is, it's too easy to forget that it reflects a specific set of contexts, contingencies and choices, and that crucially, these could be (and maybe should be) different. Accepting data shaped by someone else's choices is a tacit acceptance of their view of the world, their notion of what is interesting or important or valid. Data is not inherent or intrinsic in anything: it is constructed, and if we are going to work intelligently with data we must remember that it can always be constructed some other way.

We need real, broad-based, practical and critical data skills and literacies, an understanding of how to make data and do things with it.