CTLT and Friends

To say that this publication - Technology Source, and then Innovate - and the work of editor James Morrison was an important influence on my work and my career would be an understatement. I benefited at all levels from my involvement with it, from help with my writing, to exposure to innovative ideas, to the creation of an audience for my work, to Jim's encouragement and support, which was unwavering. My thanks to Jim and to everyone else involved.

The reality is that higher education is expensive, and students and their families will be asked to pay an ever-larger share of the costs. Although annual increases in tuition have diminished recently, tuition is still rising faster than inflation.

Gathering valid data about student performance levels and performance improvement requires making comparisons relative to fixed benchmarks and that can only be done when the assessments are standardized. Consequently, we urge the higher education community to embrace authentic, standardized performance-assessment approaches so as to gather valid data that can be used to improve teaching and learning as well as meet its obligations to external audiences to account for its actions and outcomes regarding student learning.

The economy has suffered changes so deep and fundamental that institutions cannot just hunker down to weather the storm. The time has come for creative reconstruction. We must summon the courage and will to re-engineer education in ways founded on shared responsibility, demanding hard work and a willingness on the part of everyone involved to let go of "the way it's always been."

We need to break down expectations based on entitlement and focus on educational productivity and outcomes. Institutions should review redundancies, rethink staffing models, and streamline business practices. Productivity measures should be applied in all areas. In the same way that secondary schools are being challenged to consider longer school days and an extended academic year, we in higher education need to revisit basic assumptions about how we deliver higher education to students. We should not be tied to any one model or structure.

For example, we should re-evaluate the notion that large classes are inherently pedagogically unsound. What both students and faculty members tend to prefer—small classes—is not the only educationally effective approach. Although no one would advocate for large classes in every discipline or instance, we should review what we do in light of new financial contingencies, while keeping an eye on what students learn.

The institutional establishment has too much control over higher education. There is a profound disconnect, in my view, between those who benefit and need access to opportunity in higher education and those who run the show

Is a tenured professor or subject matter expert with credentials—as defined by some distant institutions or organization—really the very best person to teach? Perhaps but only if they have the soul of a teacher!

As a general rule the institutions of higher education hold firm, despite our rhetoric, to rigid models of teaching and learning. Radical, disruptive debate about systems change is great in theory, tough in reality when you have to live and die by the marketplace of ideas.

My thesis is this. We live in a world where much is changing, quickly. Economic crises, technology, ideological division, and a host of other factors have all had a profound influence on who we are and what we do in higher education. But when all is said and done, it is imperative that we not lose sight of what matters most. To paraphrase the oft-used maxim of the famous political consultant James Carville, it's the learning, stupid.

We believe that, to significantly increase higher education attainment rates, three intermediate outcomes must first occur: Higher education must use proven strategies to move students to completion. Quality data must be used to improve student performance and inform policy and decision-making at all levels. The outcomes of student learning must be defined, measured, and aligned with workforce needs. To achieve these outcomes (and thus improve success rates), Lumina has decided to pursue several specific strategies. I'll cite just a few of these many different strategies: We will advocate for the redesign, rebranding and improvement of developmental education. We will explore the development of alternative pathways to degrees and credentials. We will push for smoother systems of transferring credit so students can move more easily between institutions, including from community colleges to bachelor's degree programs.

"Lumina defines high-quality credentials as degrees and certificates that have well-defined and transparent learning outcomes which provide clear pathways to further education and employment."

To improve how student learning is measured, Lumina will seek to support and advance tools, tactics, and systems that effectively define and measure both generalizable skills, like abstract reasoning and critical thinking, and subject-specific skills that students learn. The nation should also learn from measurement tools now in use, like the Collegiate Learning Assessment and the Voluntary System of Accountability, Mr. Merisotis says.

At this point in the openness conversation, the example you hear over and over is a little-known university in Utah that took the old model, and, in the words of its president, "blew that up." That is Western Governors University—a nonprofit, accredited online institution that typically charges $2,890 per six-month term—where students advance by showing what they've learned, not how much time they've spent in class. It's called competency-based education. It means you can fast-forward your degree by testing out of stuff you've already mastered. Some see a marriage of open content and competency-based learning as a model for the small-pieces-loosely-joined chain of cheaper, fragmented education. "We view the role of the university of the future as measuring and credentialing learning, not the source of all learning," says Robert W. Mendenhall, the president.

Writing as vehicle of change For these students, "Good writing changes something. It doesn't just sit on the page. It gets up, walks off the page and changes something," whether it's a website or a poster for a walkathon. More than earlier generations, said Lunsford, "Young people today are aware of the precarious nature of our lives. They understand the dangers that await us." Hence, "Writing is a way to get a sense of power."

Emerging research shows that despite all the hand-wringing about survey nonresponse, the actual effect of response rate on survey accuracy is generally small and inconsistent, and in any case it is less consequential than many other serious but often ignored sources of bias. Ironically, by drawing time and attention away from the prevention and correction of those other forms of bias, efforts to minimize nonresponse bias may actually decrease the accuracy of higher-education surveys