Posts by bzemsky bzemsky

December 5, 2007, 07:40 PM ET

Ample Data Exist on Learning Outcomes

By bzemsky bzemsky

A friend who allowed he had read my last posting asked, barely masking a smirk, “Oh yeah, what about learning outcomes?” I looked him in the eye and said, “The same holds true: We have always had a fair amount of data reflecting higher education’s learning outcomes.”

Much of the current hue and cry about learning outcomes began with Pat Callan’s Measuring Up 2000. At my friend Tom Erhlich’s urging, I believe — Tom was a member of Pat’s board — the first report card included “learning” as a measurable category and then gave each of the 50 states an incomplete because “All states lack information on the educational performance of college students that would permit systematic state or national comparisons.”

NSSE began with the same logic. Since it was not possible to measure learning, NSSE was established to measure student engagement instead, arguing that current research had...

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December 3, 2007, 08:25 AM ET

Does Transparency Mean the Emporer Has No Clothes?

By bzemsky bzemsky

Higher education’s current rush to exposure has both startled and dismayed me. That organized higher education’s response to calls for greater transparency are being orchestrated by two canny insiders — NAICU’s David Warren and NASULGC’s Peter McPherson — is, I suppose, reassuring, but somehow I can’t shake the notion that the attack on higher education and hence the response is based on a pair of faulty premises.

The first is that there is a lack of information about higher education. As every first-year graduate student studying higher education quickly learns, we are awash in data about the nation’s colleges and universities. The Web site of the National Center for Education Statistics is a treasure trove of detailed institutional data from IPEDs and a host of longitudinal studies likes NPSAS and NELS. Even the Secretary of Education has learned to ...

November 29, 2007, 08:22 AM ET

There's Always Next Time

By bzemsky bzemsky

What the Spellings Commission did and did not accomplish will provide fodder for a host of case studies on how not to proceed if you seek a genuine transformation of higher education. My own take on this aspect of the enterprise boils down to three basic lessons.

Don’t vilify. Higher education is not going to be changed by outsiders. The only ones who understand, who really know where the bodies are buried, are inside the academy. Broad-scale attacks that are long on “strong language” and short on realistic prescriptions can only isolate those within the academy who seek reform. Isolate enough of us and you make meaningful change impossible.

Don’t play games. One of the tragedies of the Spellings Commission is that its commissioners were used too little and that too much of the real work was in the hands of its chair, his handpicked consultants, and the department’s...

November 25, 2007, 04:50 PM ET

More Than a Confession

By bzemsky bzemsky

I was a willing member of the Spellings Commission but a disappointed signer of its final report. What started out as a grand adventure — a truly extraordinary membership (present company excepted), the support of an enthusiastic Secretary of Education, and the promise of a dialogue that just might lead to a transformed system of higher education — ended in less than a whimper: six recommendations that could have been written without holding a single meeting or listening to a single disgruntled witness.

But the Spellings Commission was not inconsequential. Through its proceedings and the attention it received, the Commission helped delineate the vulnerabilities of American colleges and universities. What the Commission presented to the nation and to every analyst and policy wonk willing to listen was a moveable feast documenting the current condition of the enterprise and...