Public colleges must take the lead in developing better ways of measuring how much their undergraduates learn, according to a position paper being released today by the American Association of State Colleges and Universities.

“The evolving national conversation regarding higher education’s academic outcomes, buttressed by data showing significant proficiency gaps for college graduates, make clear that the call for better measurement of learning outcomes cannot be evaded,” the paper says.

It argues that the public is losing faith in colleges as arbiters of their own academic quality, and that the institutions need to work together with state governments and regional accreditors to find a new, widely accepted model for measuring the “value added” by undergraduate programs.

Otherwise, colleges run the risk of being placed under the oversight of some new national entity with a “one-size-fits-all” approach to measuring accountability. The paper says that the new model for measuring student learning should focus mainly on general intellectual skills—such as communication, reasoning, and literacy—to make it easier to compare institutions in terms of their students’ progress.

Along with measuring what students have learned, the new model should try to assess the extent to which colleges engage in good educational practices, and how students feel about their educational experiences after they have graduated.

The report echoes some of the recommendations in a report issued last week by the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges (The Chronicle, April 7).