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Nice to see someone at a state institution picking up this theme. Its so old that some of us are tempted to give up and move on to other strategies for change.

Here is a more concrete starting place:

http://www.intered.com/higheredbriefing/2010/8/27/are-public-universities-responsible-for-the-success-of-for-p.html

I am alarmed to see that Alutto equates accountability with net revenue generation. This would seem to say that each unit of the institution must be generating its own income. Shall humanities departments (few chances for grants) be up for funding against science departments (chances for grants), or philosophy or math departments with smaller numbers of majors against psychology or English departments with larger numbers of majors? I don't see Alutto recommendting the concomitant requirement, that colleges abandon the notion of educating the whole student and offering a broad range of courses and majors irrelevant of how many people are taking them. Yet that would be the only way to accomplish this goal of transparency in "net revenue."

@11191210 - QUOTE: "I am alarmed to see that Alutto equates accountability with net revenue generation. This would seem to say that each unit of the institution must be generating its own income. Shall humanities departments (few chances for grants) be up for funding against science departments (chances for grants), or philosophy or math departments with smaller numbers of majors against psychology or English departments with larger numbers of majors?"

Take a look at http://www.intered.com/higheredbriefing/2010/8/27/are-public-universities-responsible-for-the-success-of-for-p.html and you will see how.

No one is suggesting that all programs should achieve equal or even necessarily positive margins. A reasonable margin for one program might be +30%. For another, doing well might be -30%. All stakeholders (including the public) have a right to participate in setting levels of public subsidy, etc. Once set each year (or five years), all programs should manage to their margin targets. This is remedial organizational rationality 050. Only in higher education, where so many of the personnel fail to understand the basics of how money flows, could be having this discussion. This low level of awareness hampers the positive actions that college presidents can take in the same way that a classroom full of dim students hampers the ability of the instructor to cover the material.

And just why is an "assessment process," whether valid and/or reliable, really necessary? And no, I'm not kidding...) --E.A.C.

@eacowan - I don't think any serious question is a bad one but I may be missing your point.

At the risk of talking past it: one way of framing the basic elements of this equation (there are others equally valid) are Inputs (student capabilities, incoming knowledge and proficiencies, etc.), Processes (teaching and collateral activities, resources {costs, time, expendables}, and Outputs (credits, degrees student knowledge and proficiencies, impact, etc.). Your basic process model, in other words.

As Mr. Alutto points out, current enterprise intelligence and decision-support systems (accounting, process metrics, etc.) are too primitive to give us much more than cost per credit hour. Cost per unit of learning outcome, proficiency or impact, weighed by time, is more useful. Value added (outputs over inputs) per time/unit dollar, is even more useful.

Yet, as useful as these refined metrics are, there is no way to make any of these determinations with outcomes as a missing variable. Moreover, since most of us would agree that credits is a useful but crude measure, we need to subtract baseline student attributes, going in, from what we find on the outgoing side before we can determine these more useful measures.

Finally, when we are measuring cognitive and affective change, learner impact, and other outcomes of education, validity is always an issue. We need to be certain that the change we think we see: (a) is real change and (b) is due to the education intervention and not some other factor (time, maturation, workplace education, etc.) In the behavioral measurement sciences, the measurement of change is a very messy area. People no less authoritative than Cronbach have wondered if it can be done, although partially tongue in cheek.

Was this your question?

betterschools - Your response is very interesting, but perhaps I am looking at all this from an "old-fashioned" perspective. The notion of "outcomes" is very foreign to me. I have never thought that the teaching of a professor bore a one-to-one relationship to the learning of the student. We want the students to learn, but, if they turn out to be "dim" (underprepared, overchallenged, et al.), then how can a professor be made "accountable" for the fact that such students do not learn? My view is the following: The professor presents and discusses the material that the student is to learn. That is called "teaching". Then the student, by whatever means are to hand, learns that material -- or not. This latter accomplishment occurs through personal study of the material presented by the professor. If the student, in the end, does not learn this material, why is the professor to be found "accountable" for such an "outcome"? (I detest terms like "input," "output," and especially "outcome". The professor has no control over the process by which the student learns the material.)

My own experience as a graduate student (Ph.D., German, the Univ. of Pennsylvania, 1982), was formative here. It was my business to read the works of Thomas Mann, Goethe, Gryphius, Schiller, and others, and to come to know the works that I had read. The ultimate learning experience for me lay in my research for my dissertation, taken together with my presentation of this material and my elaboration of it in that dissertation. The professor supervising my dissertation could offer suggestions or requirements, but it was my obligation to learn this material and present my own knowledge and analysis of it convincingly in the completed dissertation. This was ultimately my doing, not that of my professor. And I hold that Ph.D., not because of the "teaching effectiveness" of my professors, estimable though they were, but because of my own "learning effectiveness". So why do we seem never to hear anything about "learning effectiveness," but only about a (fictitious) "teaching effectiveness"? --E.A.C.

I understand your perspective. We share a traditional academic experience. It worked well for me. Looking back, I was privileged and am now grateful. That said, we must accommodate ad few important changed in our culture. First, you and I are no longer at the center or what there is to mean by HE. We are exceptions or at best a small niche. At one time HE was a loose aggregation of providers developed to serve the smart and the rich. Today, participation in HE is roughly equivalent to that of participation in the 7th grade in 1906. With this great expansion in participation -- whatever you might think about it -- has come a a much greater range in abilities, topical interests, motivations, etc. Second, the list of "academic" disciplines literally exploded in the second half of the 20th century. The new sciences and technologies contributed to this in large measure, as did the expansion of specialties in various professional areas, especially those related to health care. More than 80% of the associate and bachelors level degrees that exist today, did not exist in 1906. Many of these degrees have materially different foci than the kinds of disciplines of which you speak. Our presuppositions about pedagogy may not apply. In my lifetime, for example, the minimum requirements for an audiologist changed from requiring a high school diploma and a state license, based largely on knowledge of relevant health practices, to requiring a doctorate. Real changes in knowledge and generalized degree creep account for these changes in debatable proportions. In this and many other cases, the only academic requirements that you and I might view as traditional, end with a few undergraduate Gen Ed courses. Some programs are even dropping these.

Taking this background information to your key points. Yes, in the old days, the role of the professor was to profess and it was entirely the student's responsibility to find a way to learn while in proximity to the "professing," no matter how bad the professor happened to be at conveying knowledge. I can recall professors who took pride in being inscrutable and forcing you to pry the knowledge from their minds. It is a special kind of arrogance. The very smart can and do compensate for bad teaching. They have that ability. However, with the changes in participation rate (and the now much wider range of students and professors abilities, etc.) have come changes in the value we assign to a professor when employed by a college. Given that many of the current students (say, 80%) are, to a varying degree, capable of learning the material well, if taught well, but are not capable of learning well or at all if taught poorly, we are gradually (although too slowly) coming to define teaching skills as a necessary component of employment for most members of the professoriate (the exceptions being those among the professoriate who are creating value through their research products or other means; while the job title is the same, this is really a different job). Mr. Alutto is forward looking in that regard (I don't know him personally; I'm merely an interested third-party here). Going forward, therefore, teaching effectiveness will be a necessary component of the job. This does not mean that anyone will be held responsible for specific failures to learn. Some students will fail with good teaching. However, as a scientist who studies this stuff, I can tell you that the differences in teaching skills are abundantly evident and great in magnitude. Some professors are so bad at teaching that the college derives little or no value for having them there. Ask yourself, why would (or should) a college retain a professor whose students do not learn anything when the same students learn at normal rates in the courses of other professors? They should not. Practically speaking, the professor should be given the opportunity to learn how to teach and provided appropriate mentoring support. Eventually, if they cannot learn how to convey knowledge to their students with a modicum of efficiency, they need to seek other employment. (Their role was never to stand there, radiating competence.)

Two other points: It is illogical for you to despise terms like "inputs," etc. It suggests that you do not understand the value chain in your paycheck. (I presume you accept and cash it.) Second, I agree with you that there is a discontinuity in our professional system. We earn Ph.D.'s based on our acquisition of somewhat advanced knowledge but often the only job we can find is one where the assignment is to teach others. No one taught us how to teach. Most of us no proficiency in modern learning and evaluation sciences (where you would learn a great deal about "learning effectiveness"). There is a massive body of scientific literature and many sound generalizations deriving from it.) Like our students, we are ignorant of things that we need to know to do our job well. What do we do? We teach under the same grossly inefficient 1906 model that we were taught under. Over time, we learn it on the job. Like the students we sometimes decry, some of us are inferior learners and we never get the hang of teaching well, even to 1906 standards. It is a professional travesty an unethical. Would we accept this kind of proud ignorance in our physicians or accountants? The student body isn't the only group to have become diluted to lower standards by the expansion of higher education.

Sorry for the typos. I was about to read what my bad hands typed and accidentally hit the "Submit" key.