A National Dialogue: The Secretary of Education's Commission on the Future of Higher Education

By:  David G. Martin, Ph.D.
Dean, College of Business Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania

The recent report of "The Secretary of Education's Commission on the Future of Higher Education" included recommendations regarding assessment activities for Universities and Colleges.  First, the Commission recommended Colleges demonstrate that their programs are producing intended results.  The second recommendation was that performance measures produced by the Colleges be transparent and comparable.  The third recommendation was that these performance measures be publicly reported.  And, fourth, those measures of value-added assessment such as the College Learning Assessment or the Measure of Academic Proficiency and Progress MAPP^TM are used to demonstrate efficacy of general education programs especially for skills testing.  In addition, the Commission also called on accreditors to publicly report on institution’s performances.
            While some of these recommendations are easily accomplished, the value of the recommendations must be studied to ascertain which will achieve desired results.  For example, most Colleges are already moving on assessing learning goals for students many of which are skill rather than knowledge based.  However, these assessments have been institutionally directed and generated and thus, are not comparable across institutions in any meaningful manner.  To create a common set of comparable measures to capture institutional performance will be a Herculean task and may well be impossible.  
            For example, if we measure "critical thinking" using MAPP^TM  and achieve poor results initially we must ask, how can we change those results?  One method would simply be to improve the quality of the raw material (better students) to improve the results.  Does this mean that the institution is better simply because it can demonstrate better results?   This leads to a fundamental question:  how do we capture the efficacy of institutional changes? 
            The same problems exist for any value-added examinations.  While there may be a legitimate internal function for such tests, the validity of them to measure institutional effectiveness is dubious since the test itself does not control for many important variables such as the quality of incoming students, campus culture, and accountability (i.e. where is critical thinking really taught in the curriculum and who has responsibility for it?).
            Regardless of concerns for the ability of institutions to implement the recommendations of the Commission, there can be no disagreement that the report will drive a robust public discussion on how best to achieve the result of improving student learning and it is clear that Colleges must be prepared to answer critics who believe that we are not teaching students.

Link to, the Commission on the Future of Higher Education final report: