Friday, April 27, 2012

Bursting Bubble or Tsunami? Part 1

Last week I ranted about universities failure to measure and disclose whether they actually contribute to their abilities to think critically, reason analytically, solve problems and communicate clearly and cogently.  Here is a graphic presentation from Education News about another troubling aspect of higher ed.  Please note that this excerpt is reproduced in accordance with the terms of Creative Commons License CC By-NC-ND granted by Education News.Education News

Saturday, April 21, 2012

Hard Times for Higher Ed

American education has been a favorite whipping boy for politicians, journalists and pundits at least since the 1983 publication of A Nation at Risk: The Imperative For Educational Reform. Recently times have been especially tough as the economic crisis has reduced institutional revenues forcing faculty layoffs and concomitant shrinkage in course offerings. At the same time many people who cannot find work have decided to go back to school, placing greater demands on the stressed colleges and universities. In the last year or so and particularly in the last six months two threads of criticism of higher education have echoed concerns that drove me for the fifteen years when I headed first the Exxon Education Foundation and then the ExxonMobil Foundation.

Assessment and Accountability: the lack of data about whether students learned anything in college or which types of institutions (if any) are more effective at producing learning gains. Sure everyone knew that the graduates of Yale and Stanford were smarter that those of North South State University (NSSU) in Nowhere, Oklahamshire. But of course, those students were much smarter and better prepared when they entered Yale and Stanford. Perhaps they would have done as well at NSSU. In fact, insiders knew quite a bit. They knew that certain small and relatively unknown schools such as Hope College in Holland, Michigan and St. Edward's University in Austin, Texas consistently outperformed much more renowned and better endowed and larger schools, but the data was mostly anecdotal and insufficient to sway either policy makers or high school counselors. Furthermore, universities consistently blocked research that might disclose unpleasant findings about how much their students learned. I recall a massive study of student learning of science and math funded by both the National Science Foundation and the Exxon Education Foundation and conducted by Prof. Alexander Astin at Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA. Before the colleges and universities agreed to take part they demanded that the data would be disguised so that no one other than the researchers could see the results of any specific school. The study produced some powerful conclusions that were included in Astin's important book What Matters in College? Four Critical Years Revisited (1993). However, many other potentially game-changing findings were submerged due to the stonewalling of the participants.

This intentional lack of transparency is still a huge problem but things are beginning, very slowly, to change for the better. As the cost of higher education has continued to grow faster than inflation parents, taxpayers and state legislators are demanding that the curtain be lifted. In 2000 the Council for Aid to Education (CAE) launched the Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA) which presents realistic problems that require students to analyze complex materials and determine the relevance to the task and credibility. Students' written responses to the tasks are evaluated to assess their abilities to think critically, reason analytically, solve problems and communicate clearly and cogently. Scores are aggregated to the institutional level to inform the institution about how their students as a whole are performing. By 2010, over 200,000 U.S. students had tested with the CLA in over 450 institutions. In January 2010 the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) asked the CAE to create an international version of the CLA for the Assessment of Higher Education Learning Outcomes project covering its 31 member countries.

January 2011 saw the publication of Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses by Richard Arum and Josipa Roska. The study using data from the CLA showed that a large fraction of undergraduates register hardly any gains in critical thinking, analytical reasoning, problem solving or communication skills in their first two years of college. Educational journals and blogs immediately filled with articles trying to refute Arum and Roska's findings. While some of the criticism is warranted, most is simply an attempt to deflect attention and has been unsuccessful.

Although Arum and Roska's work is ground breaking, the data is still disguised. Universities that administer the CLA still do not release data that would allow a prospective student to compare School A with School X.

Additional research research is underway and will certainly be helpful, but I say it's time to stop studying the problem and start solving it. Billions of dollars are being spent each year on largely worthless coursework. Students and their families take on crushing debt, often for no gain. These stakeholders have a right to know which institutions measure up and which are failing.

Yesterday New York Times columnist David Brooks took the issue to a wider audience in his article "Testing the Teachers."

Oh, I almost forgot that there were two threads of criticism of higher education that have caught my interest. The other is the lack of innovation in educational delivery systems and how that is about to change.

In the interests of full disclosure:
  1. I was on the Board of Trustees of the Council for Aid to Education in the late 1990s and early 2000s when the CLA was being launched.
  2. The ExxonMobil Foundation made the first grant to support the planning for the CLA.
  3. Richard H. Hersh is a former president of Hobart and William Smith Colleges and Trinity College is one of the founders of the CLA. He has a new book on related topics, We're Losing our Minds: Rethinking American Higher Education. For a humorous introduction to the book watch Hersh on The Colbert Report.

Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Some Colorful Facts about the US Federal Tax Situation

I highly recommend this colorful set of charts about the Federal tax system. The collection was compiled by Derek Thompson, a senior editor at The Atlantic.

Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans make any sense when it comes to tax reform, which in my view is absolutely essential.  Just letting the Bush tax cuts expire would help a lot with the deficit but we would still have a nightmare of a tax code.  Some thoughtful ideas about how to untangle the mess are set out in Simon Johnson and James Kwak's new book White House Burning: The Founding Fathers, Our National Debt, and Why It Matters to You.

I have to sign off now and get to the post office with my love letter to the IRS.

Sunday, April 8, 2012

Visit to Xiamen and Yun Shui Yao, Fujian, China

March 30 through April 3 we traveled to Xiamen,  an island city in Fujian Province and to Yun Shui Yao, a rural village also in Fujian.

Click here for photo album.