Feb. 13, 2006

Crisis of Confidence

When college leaders talk to the public about issues facing higher education, they are so ineffective that “they might as well be talking backwards, in Russian.

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That remark Sunday, by Brian Foster, provost of the University of Missouri at Columbia, reflects the degree of concern evident at the annual meeting of the American Council on Education. Rest assured that plenty of those speaking at the meeting, which started this weekend in Los Angeles, spoke about the many wonderful things colleges do — and the tragedy that higher education isn’t sufficiently appreciated.

But there is also some fear in the air here — concerns that the national commission studying higher education may well propose new policies, and in particular some form of testing requirement for colleges, that don’t reflect the realities of the way higher education operates. And at a standing-room-only session on “recapturing public confidence in higher education,” several speakers from academe had tough love to offer their colleagues. Academics were told that they need to use language people can understand, stop infighting, get tough with David Horowitz, learn to speak eloquently about why testing might not be such a good idea — and get comfortable with substantially more accountability than may currently be in place.

One audience member summed up the presentations as “gloom and doom” and the presenters didn’t balk.

Foster said that communication between higher education and the public is so bad that academics need to “quit relying on rational arguments to make our points.” What colleges think of as rational just doesn’t strike anyone else that way, he said.

Part of the reason for that, he said, is a fundamental change in higher education over the last few generations — a change colleges have embraced without realizing the full political implications, he said. That change is the shift away from viewing college as something for “a privileged few” and instead viewing it as something that everyone needs.

In many respects, Foster said, that’s a wonderful evolution for higher education. But what colleges seem not to realize is that the minute society declares a higher education to be a necessity, it becomes natural for lawmakers to start looking into things like college access, what students actually learn, and how much college costs. All of those issues are “great for sound bite politics” in ways that don’t help colleges.

Similarly, he said, colleges have embraced with gusto the idea that they are engines of economic development, But they have pretended that everything fits neatly together between colleges’ traditional roles and their new ones related to the economy. Colleges need to abandon their “romantic fantasies” about how “you can get a $1 billion business out of a freshman learning community.”

While colleges play real roles in economic development, Foster said, they need to be honest about what they do — and the fact that much of what they do isn’t directly about economic development.

Tomás D. Morales, provost of California State Polytechnic University at Pomona, also spoke to his fellow administrators about accountability. He said he understood the concern of many that “testing has been the central conversation” of the Education Department’s commission. But he said that — like it or not — higher education needs to move toward a “culture of evidence” about what students actually learn in college.

Morales, who is active in the Western Association of Schools and Colleges, an accrediting agency, said that educators have some serious filling in to do with regard to measuring their value. “What do we mean when we say educational effectiveness?” he said.

A bad sign about the state of higher education, Morales said, was the reaction to proposals by some lawmakers to require colleges to have all programs put online in a public place data that show the objectives and results of their programs. “The word on the street,” Morales said, was that many college leaders didn’t like this idea and viewed it as intrusive.

Such an attitude, he said, would end up fueling the fire of the accountability movement and lead to the results many colleges oppose. “That’s going to lead to testing,” he said.

And Morales added that the push for such accountability is “not just coming from the right,” but from people of a variety of political views.

Alan Jones, vice president and dean of the faculty at Pitzer College, agreed that demands have grown dramatically over the past five years — both from accreditors and the government — for “objective and demonstrable learning outcomes.”

Jones said that colleges need to respond to those demands, but that they need to do so in ways that preserve their values — something he said that may not always be easy. For instance, with regard to measuring what student learning goes on in college, he cited Heisenberg’s view that the very act of observing and recording can change what is being observed and recorded.

“We need to not inadvertently compromise ourselves,” he said.

One reason to be wary of all of the scrutiny, he said, is the motives behind much of it. Jones said that while colleges face genuine questions, they also face “deliberately fostered questions” from the “well orchestrated PR campaign” of David Horowitz and others who are pushing the Academic Bill of Rights.

Jones said that Horowitz has managed to sell the idea that the Academic Bill of Rights is a grassroots movement and not a campaign funded by several conservative groups. While Jones is no fan of Horowitz, he applauded his ability to “stay on message” and said that helps him attract attention and supporters.

Colleges have been too slow to take Horowitz seriously, Jones said, because they disagree with him and assume others will as well. As with the accountability demands from others, Jones said, colleges are out of the loop. “We need to take all of this much more seriously than we have in the past.”

— Scott Jaschik

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Comments

Laughing out loud

“Foster said that communication between higher education and the public is so bad that academics need to “quit relying on rational arguments to make our points.” What colleges think of as rational just doesn’t strike anyone else that way, he said.”

Do these people really not know how they sound? And wonder why the public might want a bit of accountability from them? HA! Thanks for a good laugh on a snowy Monday morning.

Bad English, at 7:15 am EST on February 13, 2006

Worst of times?

First, it is noted that higher ed is “something that everyone needs” — and which others would call mere “creditialism”.

Yet, last week, it was noted that 33% of those starting at Morrill Act colleges do NOT finish within six years — putting young people in “student loan jail” WITHOUT their academic meal tickets.

http://insidehighered.com/news/2006/02/10/loans

Well, despite wailings about “the higher purposes of learning and education,” the inmates aren’t assuaged by that bleating. This is where calls for accountability start.

Separately, there are patches of frankness and honesty — as with “colleges have embraced with gusto the idea that they are engines of economic development (ED).”

If that’s the case – why don’t those promoting ED projects invest their retirement funds in their projects?

Answer: because ED projects are VERY RISKY. Only fools (or a naive taxpaying public) would invest their own money in such risky projects.

The easy ride’s over. Take tax dollars and public support – expect detailed, follow-up reviews. Can’t take the heat – get out of the kitchen.

Art D., at 8:40 am EST on February 13, 2006

Pandering to the Almighty Dollar

I’ve supported higher education all my life and you’d never confuse me with a conservative, but at this point, I’m all for more accountability in decision-making.

Specifically, Oklahoma State University is about to make a really stupid decision. T. Boone Pickens gave OSU $165 million in cash for an athletics village, but apparently the village must be built in a place requires taking 100 acres of homes. Instead of finding a different location for the athletics village and taking the time to come up with a really excellent plan for the campus facilities, the OSU administration will bring out the bulldozers, all because Pickens has threatened, er, promised, to give OSU more money “someday.”

How is the OSU administration selling this decision? Through economic development benefits, of course, and the sports patriotism of “Orange Power.” Never mind the truly rational arguments on the other side. Never mind that the library stores its archives in an old grocery store. The administration preaches that OSU football players NEED five practice fields, apparently because UT Austin has only three. Huh?

People opposed to the expansion, including OSU faculty, staff, and students and the City of Stillwater, have been indignant, rational, and vocal — and completely ignored. The Regents, who are appointed by the Governor, who is elected, aren’t any more inclined to listen to their constituents. They’ve been drinking from the well of big bucks and aren’t in any condition to drive.

Higher education isn’t the only arena in which leaders don’t care about their constituents, are incapable of forming coherent arguments to support their decisions, and aren’t accountable for the claims they make. But we expect better performance from the people running the institutions that train the nation’s future business owners, politicians, and educators. And we should.

Marion Agnew, at 8:45 am EST on February 13, 2006

A Culture of Elegance vs. A Culture of Evidence

Simply playing Edward Elgar’s “Pomp and Circumstance” during commencement does not give your program viability. We need to take Horowitz seriously because elements of his accusations are true and we know it. The opening of the halls of academe to all classes of humans means that we should not belittle the views of those whom we view as hailing from the provincial hinterlands. They are not present so that we can shape them into little liberals, but to learn to think for themselves, wherever that may take them. Give up forever the idea of teaching students what to think. Instead, give them guidance in how to think, and you need not fear the legislative branch, which does indeed have a vested interest in the well-being of our students and their success in life.

Oh, I know we prefer the guiding hand of government rather than the hands off approach of the libertarians, but only, it seems, when the guiding hands are guiding someone else.

I agree that the whole scene is a laughing matter. Roll up your sleeves and get to work building a viable assessment system, such as ePortfolio, which will provide the data proving that learning is taking place on your campus. The days when constituents will simply take your word for it are far in the past.

Have a happy day!

Cal, at 8:55 am EST on February 13, 2006

crisis of confidence

These debates over the changing role of higher education and the institutions and constitents seem often to range far and wide. I believe this inability to stay within the framework of the claim may be due to an inability to find the center. Students are treated as consumers; IHE build programs and create degrees that may or may not be economically viable; everyone may go to college forever; football rules; who pays; what is the value; who are these student/consumers? Who’s on first?What really is the purpose of a degree in public relations? Education? Criminal justice? What is difference in a business degree from a liberal arts degree? Private v. public? Class of student, as in socio-economic?

dunya mccammon, adjunct faculty, at 9:35 am EST on February 13, 2006

How We Got Here

To those convinced that we taxpayers are the innocent victims of greedy universities, let me recommend “America by Design,” which describes the creation of what we now know of as the system of university research. A crucial component of the system was industry encouraging the development of federally-funded research programs while at the same time ensuring that the federal government never set up adequate mechanisms to maintain accountability and measure effectiveness.

Adrian Seath, at 9:45 am EST on February 13, 2006

Crisis of confidence

“What colleges think of as rational just doesn’t strike anyone else that way…” Regrettably, many taxpayers and consumers of American educational product agree.

As Hamilton College found out, the matters of Ward Churchill and Susan Rosenberg and other episodes were not examples of spontaneous combustion, but rather the cumulative results of failures of governance, combined with a lack of effective oversight, and a consequent subordination of scholarly standards to radical fashion. Many hope their search for a new Dean of Faculty is part of an ongoing process of restoration.

While Alan Jones questions the dark motives behind “deliberately fostered questions” the American public is left with a broad road map of the demonstrable idiocies produced by what is perceived as an insulated, unaccountable illiquid bureaucracy.

Here are some ideas to further add to Mr. Jones’s anxiety:

*Eliminate tenure. No industry in the world has a guarantee of lifetime employment. Replace tenure with term employment contracts renewable at the pleasure of the Board. The conversion to term contracts could be negotiated as voluntary buy-out agreements. Once we have a market price on the value of lifetime employment, we could then let the taxpayers, the contributing alumni, and the parents of matriculating students determine whether they receive good value for the market price. Just a thought…

*Tighter enforcement of the due care provisions for boards of directors of educational institutions would help. A void of standards has led to a void of active performance at the board level. There is currently no mechanic to replace passive or irresponsible boards or to induce better quality governance. We are often left with an unaccountable, dis-associated governance model, often funded with permanently endowed monies, presiding over a tenured faculty.

It’s a bad model if you looking for accountability. hb

hb, at 10:30 am EST on February 13, 2006

Have opinions changed so much, so fast?

A 2002 study by the respected polling organization, Public Agenda, found that “the majority of the public believes that higher education is delivering a valuable service... At least for the moment, the public is satisfied with the nation’s higher education....Most Americans do not know a great deal about the details... and have not yet taken a position on some of the questions.”

Alison P. Martinez, at 11:00 am EST on February 13, 2006

Needs versus Awareness

The higher education system seems to be spending too much energy trying to convince people why they are important and not enough making themselves useful. This article and some of the comments that follow illustrate the idea that much of America is populated by those who need to be convinced, rather than the thought that much of America has given you free advice which you are still ignoring by and large.

Kevin, Undergraduate, at 11:00 am EST on February 13, 2006

The Truth Is Stranger Than “The Truth”

I know you won’t believe this, but the following is the tail-end of a conversation I overheard at our church supper last week while sitting across the table from John Q. Public and Algernon T. Academic.

John Q. Public: Them dumb eggheads, they’s takin’ all are bucks an we ain’t gittin’ nothin in return.

Algernon the Academic: Mr. Public, I’m chagrinned that you interpret the academy in that manner.

JQP: Yea, I bet you do. You guys jest take are hard-erned tax dollars an teach are kids them radical views.

ATA: Oh dear fellow, state support for higher education is but a miniscule proportion of what is required to sustain even state universities. Granted there is much federal support, but I’m confident you’re cognizant of the fact that much of it is directly targeted for student support.

I’m quite certain you should celebrate the fact that your son is encouraged to challenge ideas and institutions. Doing so only strengthens his intellect and focuses his beliefs.

JQP: Oh right. An I heared you been goin’ all over the world, givin’ them talks and spendin’ my tax dollars.

ATA: I am only promulgating my knowledge of nanotechnology, a topic to which I have dedicated the last twenty years of my life.

JQP: Wal, I been hearin’ that Horwitz stuff on Fox, an I kin hardly wait ‘til he gits the govment on yer case an straightens this stuff out. I kin tell you, both Rush an O’Reilly think he’ll sic his dogs on you. An when he does, look out! The Congress’ll be all over yer ass.

ATA: Perhaps, Mr. Public, you can tell me what role you expect the academy to play in the life of your son and in the larger community our university serves.

JQP: Hell, all I care is my kid gits a good job. An I expects the U’s football team ta be top-ten. An I don’t expect it ta cost me a arm an a leg. Hell, GM jest took away my hospital benefit an my retirement, the feds is talkin’ about cuttin’ my social security, and Hell, I cain’t even afford ta go ta the doctor ta git my hernia fixed up. I’m jest sick an tired a them communist, left-wing liberals runnin’ the damned country an the university. See my point?

ATA: Ah ... Ah ... Well ... Ah ... I’ve got an early class tomorrow morning. I must depart.

RWH, at 12:05 pm EST on February 13, 2006

Parasitic sports programs

It’s a shame that so much attention is being given to “culture wars” topics because of a handful of cranks like Ward Churchill. The poster above has put a finger on the real corruption in higher ed: financial corruption, largely coming out of parasitic athletic programs. Public universities have become little more than civic thugs, and trusteeships are political patronage appointments. Trustees contribute to the governor and the legislature, and are given a fiefdom complete with a population of serfs (students) to tax at will to support their fox-hunting grounds (read, football stadium, etc.).

Here’s a tip for Inside Higher Ed: if you want a good scandal to investigate, check to see what universities awarded honorary degrees to members of the US Olympic Committee, and then check to see which campuses were used to host Olympic trials of various kinds, events that the Good Ol’ Boys on the board of trustees can brag about in the clubhouse. It’s a big graft system that deserves to be exposed.

Seen it up close, at 1:50 pm EST on February 13, 2006

Case in point

The reason that the accountability movement has so taken hold is the post above: The unchecked arrogance manifest in the way “John Q. Public” is treated proves absolute contempt for society and its reasonable expectation that students be trained meaningfully and well. Even the “spellin’” is dripping with condescension. As for its contents, what actually was said and how is anyone’s guess.

If people spent some time outside their classrooms once in a while, perhaps they would be less apt to fall prey to fatal, groundless hubris.

Bad English, at 2:25 pm EST on February 13, 2006

One might examine Oregon State University where the education building has been wrapped in steel mesh for years. No money, you know. But a few hundred yards to the south millions of dollars were found to erect giant sports facilities. Donors are generous, but some univerities manage to channel donors into supporting academics while others do less well. I won’t comment on OSU’s problems with internal efforts at academic censorship since these issues have been well covered in the recent news. Higher education has far to go to merit public trust.

Marvin McConoughey, at 4:55 pm EST on February 13, 2006

The World is Changing

In the present Age of Communication, academia will receive scrutiny like never before just like other institutions in our society. This new transparancy will steam roll past traditions as new expectations rapidly emerge. Academia should take note that if they do not raise the bar on quality themselves, the public, the press and eventually the politicians will. World competition and education in a buyer’s market are trends that have only just begun.

Education is at the core of success for our society. It is a desirable comodity for professional development of our cultural and business leadership. If the public begins to view academic tenure as a weakness in the system in the increasingly transparent environment it will be come a focus of criticism. In today’s world this may result in a loss of confidence by the public and they may seek to obtain their “quality” education in another format. Tenure like other guarantees does not promote nimblness for change nor is it good at self policing for quality.

I suggest that academia wake up, modify tenure to keep the good aspects but institute transparent methods of ensuring quality education. If you circle the wagons, you will begin to look like a target.

craig, at 1:55 pm EST on February 24, 2006

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