News
May 17
With rising college tuition prices and a shaky economy, some students are concerned about the bang they're getting for the bucks they're spending on college ecucations. Whether students graduate from a state university, a local community college or a small liberal arts school, some are questioning whether they are receiving a quality education in the field that they study.
Assessing the knowledge and skills acquired through studying individual degrees is difficult, especially in addition to evaluating a degree at one university in comparison to that at another school.
"[There is] strong public opinion that people want more accountability in universities … There's been a lot of concern with increasing tuition, and [people] want to make sure that the cost of a university education is justified," Professor Bruce Hitchner, chair of the classics department, said. "It's a challenge that's not always a well-defined argument. Universities aren't like businesses; they're a whole different institution altogether."
To remedy this dilemma, three states — Minnesota, Utah and Indiana — have recently started pilot projects supported by the Lumina Foundation for Education to establish learning standards for degrees ranging from graphic design to history to physics.
The projects intend to make degrees more standardized across the wide range of universities in each state, which would make it easier for students to transfer universities and apply credits toward more advanced degrees. Additionally, it would make certain that students from different universities studying the same subjects would all graduate with a similar knowledge base and skill set.
For example, in Indiana, this would ensure that a physics degree at Anderson University, a small Christian college, is comparable to one from Purdue or Indiana University.
According to Program Director Kevin Corcoran, the Lumina project intends to accomplish these goals by collaborating with faculty and students to define degrees by student learning goals, rather than by specific courses taken or credits earned.
"But [these skills] have to be assessable," Corcoran added. "It's up to the faculty how to get at that, how to assess standards, and [determine] what these degrees mean."
For a history degree, these standards might include the ability to conduct research and synthesize information.
Additionally, the Lumina project aims to map the career paths of the student.
"We want to see where history majors get hired and why … Instead of just looking in a course catalog and seeing what classes you'll need, we want [to create] booklets that tell you what you'll know, what you'll be able to do and the employers that will hire people with your degree," Corcoran said. "Generally, this isn't being done in American higher education."
The Lumina project standards are based on the Bologna Process, a European set of academic quality assurance standards for higher education.
Closer to home, the New England Association of Schools and Colleges (NEASC) is the regional organization that evaluates universities in New England, including Tufts, on a quarterly basis to assess a variety of measures.
While the Lumina projects evaluate specific degree programs, NEASC and other accreditation boards look at all university standards.
"Every university and college is required to renew its accreditation … [which] is based on an institution's compliance with a set of educational, academic, administrative and financial standards. These standards change and evolve, much like academic disciplines," said Hitchner, who is also a commissioner of NEASC.
The NEASC standards are broadly set, and each university writes a report to say how it will accomplish them. The organization next sends out a team to assess whether or not universities are achieving each accreditation standard and recommend future ways to improve. Every school evaluated is required to post its NEASC rating.
Both NEASC and Lumina project standards are external evaluations that compare standards across different universities; however, universities are also concerned with internal evaluations, which assess whether or not learning goals are achieved within individual departments.
But internal standards can be difficult to define and evaluate, especially for humanities degrees, and students are often unaware of the learning outcomes they are supposed to achieve.
"For classics, for example, if we say we're offering the degree with certain classes, what are we expecting students to know in terms of learning outcomes or competencies?" Hitchner asked. "And how do we know if we're achieving that?"
Still, Hitchner warned that standards for specific degrees become outdated quickly as disciplines change and grow, which can be especially problematic for standards developed for the Lumina projects. Additionally, they can be easily politicized, he said, citing evolution as a potential biology requirement.
"I would oppose states getting too far into it — it's not the best mechanism for what they're seeking," Hitchner said. "If we were in serious crisis, there could be warrant … but there's no evidence that American higher education is not delivering quality education."
Additionally, other professors are concerned that the Lumina standards will impose upon their academic freedom.
Corcoran argued instead that the project will strengthen liberal arts degrees by making sure that their skills are applicable in the real world and protect professors from real standardization.
"People are confusing standards with standardization. With standardization, there's no room for autonomy or academic freedom — like No Child Left Behind and [its] testing," he said. "Learning outcomes instead ask what degrees represent. It's not dictating classes or curriculums."
He explained that the Lumina project is based on bottom-up accountability, where professors are asked to define the degrees without standardizing specific details. He added that while the project has not run into political issues yet, if evolution were a touchy biology standard, it could be a subject that biology faculty agree to keep off the table.
Currently at Tufts, it is up to each department to set their own standards and outline learning goals of their degrees. But Hitchner pointed out that even individual course syllabi do not always explicitly state what students are supposed to get out of the class.
"[It is] easier in some fields rather than others, like engineering, where you are required to have certain knowledge," Hitchner said. "But in humanities, it's hard and creates resistance by professors who say you can't measure these things."
The Lumina project's results could potentially change this trend, but as of now, there are no plans to instate such a program in Massachusetts.
