Deans' Weblog

Nothing Is Certain Except Death And Taxes

"Our new Constitution is now established, and has an appearance that promises permanency; but in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes."

Thus wrote Benjamin Franklin in a letter dated November 13, 1789 to his friend Jean-Baptiste Leroy, a French physicist who shared Franklin's interest in electrostatics and lightning rods. In the 2010 federal budget, Canada's post-doctoral fellows learned the truth of Franklin's observation. 

In recent years, Canadian "academic" post-docs—at Dalhousie those in their first 3 years post-PhD, and who committed to a program of enrichment coursework beyond their research work—had benefited from their stipends not being taxed by the Canada Revenue Agency. This concession made a modest post-doctoral salary of perhaps $30-40k marginally liveable for trainees who had often relocated from off-shore, perhaps with dependent partners and children, and without an option for supplementary work that was consistent with their visa status.

The 2010 budget, though, made it clear that this concession was over.

"Budget 2010 proposes to clarify that a post-secondary program that consists principally of research will be eligible for the Education Tax Credit, and the scholarship exemption, only if it leads to a college or CEGEP diploma, or a bachelor, masters or doctoral degree (or an equivalent degree). Accordingly, post-doctoral fellowships will be taxable."

The news landed with a thud. Post-docs who had moved to Canada under the reasonable assumption that their income would be what had been offered, and without a tax bite, now found that they were going to be subject to income tax starting this tax year. What was worse, the budget came down in March and taxation would be retroactive to January of 2010. 

Here at Dalhousie, stories of stunned surprise, disappointment, and hardship have come in quickly to the Faculty of Graduate Studies. Many post-docs are feeling badly let down by government and wonder (reasonably) whether Canada values their hard work and the pivotal role that they play in driving forward the national research enterprise. The responses have been poignant and personal. One post-doc put it this way in an email to me:

"For those of us who are PDFs on Temporary Resident Visas, what this re-emphasizes is that we have maximum anxiety and minimum stability. We are faced with choices that simply aren't choices."

For their parts, universities are rallying to do what they can to soften the blow for their post-docs this year as they get their feet under them and as salary offers begin to take the taxation change into consideration. And universities want to make it clear to their post-docs  that they are highly valued members of the university community.

In practice it is difficult to challenge the taxation change in dialogue with politicians. The public has a clear sympathy for students who are paying tuition and involved in education in the way that most people understand it; however, a tax-free salary of even $30,000 is a hard pill to swallow for families who are struggling to get by on similar incomes—and paying taxes on those earnings. Outside the academy, post-docs look like employees, not like students. And that's precisely the viewpoint the taxation change takes (in returning to the status quo of not many years ago). If the training doesn't lead to a degree or diploma, it's a job and the earnings are taxable. 

It was curious that the taxation change was a footnote to the announcement in the budget of a  set of new, high-paying, post-doctoral fellowships to be offered by the Tri-Councils (NSERC, CIHR, and SSHRC). The announcement recognized post-doctoral studies as building experience, but pointedly not as education:

"Post-doctoral research is a valuable way for recent doctoral graduates to gain additional experience prior to embarking on a faculty or applied research career. Building on the significant investments made since 2006, Budget 2010 provides $45 million over five years to the granting councils to establish a new and prestigious post-doctoral fellowships program to attract top-level talent to Canada. 

The proposed new post-doctoral fellowship program will be designed to be internationally competitive. These fellowships will be valued at $70,000 each per year for two years. The first fellowships will be awarded in 2010–11. At maturity, the new program will fund 140 fellowships annually."

These new fellowships are consistent with the current government's interest in attracting and supporting stars who are "internationally competitive", all the while retrenching programs that support and encourage the broader research community across the country. One post-doc told me that the announcement looked to him like Robin Hood backwards: robbing from the poor to give to the rich. While it's hard to look $45M in new post-doc fellowships in the mouth, his point is taken.

In Ben Franklin's day, the American colonists dumped tea into Boston harbour to protest taxation without representation. However, as the humorist Gerald Barzan put it, sometimes "taxation WITH representation ain't so hot either."

                                                                          — Mike 

Graduate Programs at Risk for Cuts or Elimination at the University of Iowa

Faculty members at the University of Iowa now have a report, released on February 12, 2010, from a provost-appointed task force that names 14 graduate programs - half in the humanities - that could be restructured or eliminated as the university seeks to save money.

In a process that began last spring and triggered worries and angst among faculty members, the task force categorized the institution's 111 graduate programs into five groups: Exemplary, High Quality, Good, Additional Evaluation Required, Too New to Assess. The 14 programs in danger of being scaled back are in the category "additional evaluation required" and have "significant problems," with no "viable plans for improvement," the report says.

Program evaluations were based on:

• Information on all programs provided by the Faculty of Graduate Studies which included (1) size of the program, (2) number of fall applicants and enrollment (selectivity and yield), (3) average GRE scores and GPAs, (4) Graduate Studies fellowships awarded, and (5) % completion, time to degree, and placement of doctoral students for specified time periods.

• Strategic assessments provided by each graduate program that included information on: (1) Mission of the program, (2) admission processes and criteria, including recruitment, selectivity, diversity and financial support, (3) program outcomes, including degree completion, time to degree, fellowships, awards, honors, publications, and placements of graduate students, and (4) program characteristics, including program size, comparison with other programs such as national rankings, centrality to the University, and perceived strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats of the program and plans for the program’s future.

• Discussion with Deans from each faculty.

Based on these evaluations, each program was rated and placed into one of the five categories listed above. In rating programs, the Task Force weighted student‐based indicators (outcomes such as % completion, time to degree and placement) more heavily than overall department reputation or productivity. Deans, faculty members, and students are now reviewing the report, and then the provost and other administrators will decide what recommendations to make to the Board of Governors in the fall.

Is this an isolated incident or the tip of an iceberg? Time will tell.

You may have noticed that no blog was posted on Friday. We have co-opted Mike as the third blogger and we forgot to point out that the most important part is to change the save status from “draft” to "publish now". In any event, you may get doubled blogged this week, so stay tuned!

Dieter

Interdisciplinary degrees

One of my favorite concepts is the interdisciplinary degree. Alas, making them work is  harder than coming up with great combinations! Difficulties arise at every stage: inception, approval, management, recruitment, and retention.

Interdisciplinary degrees come into being in any number of states from well thought through to well intentioned. The easiest to imagine and likely to manage is the carefully structured single interdisciplinary degree, Master of X, where X is a recognized interdisciplinary area like electronic commerce or international development. The more difficult programs are those that push the boundaries a bit and are more difficult to imagine as a department with a program, like sustainability or climate change.

I have been involved with a few of these programs at all stages, earning grey hair all the way! Let me share a few things I have learned.

1. If more than one faculty is involved you need an MOU that outlines the rules of engagement. The MOU needs to include management structure and resource allocations and budget for the running of the program.

2. Don't try to report directly to more than one dean at a time for operational decisions. A council of deans is OK if  you report to once a year with an annual report and strategic discussions about the program. A shared program is not likely to be on the radar screen for most deans the rest of the time.

3. Set up an executive committee (3-5 people, at least one from each faculty) that runs the program. The exec committee should meet regularly, like every week, to work with the director to make the program functional. So, that means, setting policy, admitting students, adjusting curriculum, modifying the program, finding the right professors, funding students, working with student difficulties, and dealing with those pesky fires that spring up out of nowhere.

4. Authority to act and use resources must lie at the executive committee and director level.

5. Consolidate recruiting so that it is from the program for the program rather than at the bottom of the areas of interest list for the contributing faculties.

6. Did I mention the program needs its own resources and its own authority to act, administrative and financial!

Other places and other programs likely have their own set of "wish I had known that when I started" practices, but those are mine.

Interdisciplinary programs have been around for a long time, some successful and some not, but we are definitely going to be seeing a lot more.  I think this is a positive evolution but there are dangers and pitfalls. The elephant in the room for students is whether they can get a job with an interdisciplinary degree. The evidence on that is mixed especially in academia. Departments still want new faculty members to have traditional academic background (i.e., known) at the same time as departments talk  about being interdisciplinary. Go figure!

Carolyn

“'The Big Lie': The Debate Continues”

On Monday, February 22, 2010, The Chronicle of Higher Education continued coverage of Thomas H. Benton’s February 8 essay entitled The Big Lie About the 'Life of the Mind'. Thomas H. Benton is the pen name of William Pannapacker, a tenured associate professor of English at Hope College, in Holland, Mich. He also is a columnist for The Chronicle of Higher Education, where he writes about academic culture and graduate studies. In his February 8 essay, he asked “Thinking About Humanities Grad. School?” and categorically answered “Don’t.” As you can imagine, Professor Pannapacker scared graduate students right out of their library carrels with his most recent essay.

In the follow up, The Chronicle asked “Is the academic "life of the mind" a myth? Professor Pannapacker said so, and he sparked quite a debate: Nearly 200 readers have weighed in already.” 

On Friday, February 19, 2010, William Pannapacker appeared on WNYC's Brian Lehrer Show to explain his position. You may download the MP3 of this must-hear interview from the WNYC's website or listen to the conversation by starting the WNYC audio player below. Depending on your network speed and network traffic, you may have to be patient at times.

If you don't have the time to listen to the ~15-minute interview, here is my executive summary including my personal outlook on what was said. Professor Pannapacker argues that the kind of people who go to Graduate School and likely succeed after completion of a PhD program are the ones who go there for intellectual reasons and not to become professors (a typically unlikely outcome these days), who are prepared to be intellectual entrepreneurs and to make their own opportunities, and who aren’t seduced by the fantasy that academe has some kind of monopoly on the life of the mind. Unfortunately due to poor advice or ignorance a significant percentage of students in doctoral programs hit the snooze bottom on the alarm clock of life or, even worse, become socialized into believing that life outside of academe means failure. Also, graduate students are typically not trained to explore other options outside of academe (or even within academe) and usually aren't taught within their program the skills necessary to effectively pursue and take advantage of options, should they present themselves in whatever stream. Therefore, institutional professional development offerings are key in providing the help and guidance to successfully pursue a life after a doctoral degree and/or post-doctoral fellowships.

Another major challenge is that currently there isn’t a lot of transparency about the graduate studies experience and what comes after. Thus, I share Prof. Pannapacker’s hope that graduate programs will soon have to provide more concrete information about outcomes such as % completion (i.e., attrition rate), time to degree completion and successful student placement so that students can make informed decisions about attending programs of interest. Interestingly, in this context, there recently have been provost-appointed committees hard at work in three major US institutions (Iowa, Idaho and Miami) charged with scrutinizing the caliber of the universities’ graduate programs. These reviews began in 2008 as a way for the institutions to take a closer look at how they used their resources on the graduate level and to decide whether ineffective or low-enrollment programs should be scaled back. In rating graduate programs, at least one of the task forces on graduate and professional education (as judged by its final report from February 12, 2010) weighted student-based indicators (outcomes such as % completion, time to degree and placement) more heavily than overall department reputation or productivity. However, this is the topic for another blog.

Over and out.    

Dieter

How long on campus?

Getting a PhD is a peculiar process on many accounts, not the least that it "is not done until it is done." Well actually it is not done until a committee says it is done. Not the clearest of targets.  The tension then exists between our desire for the highest quality and our concern for timely completions and reasonable completion rates. Now add to the mix the long standing tradition of a residency requirement, on average something in the 2 year range spent on campus. But what about new and growing trends in accessibility and distance education?

First, let's look at why residency has evolved as an integral part of so many established PhD programs.The US Council of Graduate Schools* (CGS) puts forward these advantages of the on-campus residency: attention to course work and research, learning new skills and attitudes, gaining new ways of thinking about problems, working closely with profs and students, gaining fluency in the language of the discipline, access to libraries, participation in formal and informal seminars etc, access to visiting scholars, etc.  Auburn University adds the following "must be immersed in the culture of graduate education" and I would add the engagement in and building of a cohort. In short, apprenticeship and networking! Clearly, some of these issues can be addressed off campus but, I suspect, not all.

The reality is that many students cannot spend two consecutive years on a university campus. There are many reasons; family obligations, geography, finances, etc. Professional masters degrees have been successful over the past 10-20 years in providing quality education without on-campus residency requirements. So why not PhD programs or a least part of PhD programs. There is ample evidence that interactive graduate level courses and seminars can be offered, at least for smallish classes, at a distance with appropriate synchronous/asynchronous technology and appropriate instructor training in this pedagogy. A couple of weeks ago Michael Power from Laval University was at Dalhousie to discuss his use of blended online learning for hosting graduate seminars remotely. Very interesting! But what about the rest of the list of benefits of the on-campus experience. What about the learning that takes place in talks, in the coffee line, before seminars, etc.? This "rubbing of shoulders" is very important in many ways. For example, this is a chance to develop the ability to articulate on the spot an idea or a response, to get and give informal feedback, not to mention those serendipitous "ah-ha" moments and, of course, building a network. Peter Medawar's "Advice to a Young Scientist" (a must read) makes much of students getting involved by contributing to and engaging in the conversations at all levels starting early on in their grad experience.

What about a mixed model? That is, can we identify when the maximum benefit from on-campus residency can be gained for a student in the course of his or her program and build this into their PhD development plan. Why should it be the first 1 or 2 years? Perhaps for some students it is leading up to the comps or the proposal; for some students it may be the time in the lab or the thesis writing stage when the intense interaction is most beneficial. Like many universities in Canada we have moved away from dictating the when of residency to the notion of accumulation of residency. Hard to enforce? Absolutely! Worth trying to enforce? Absolutely. For me, the worse case scenario is for a candidate to show up with a completed thesis looking for a degree. I would argue that the thesis, although the ticket to finish the PhD process, is not even close to the whole objective of this degree. So, let's evolve and be more responsive to alternate paths but not dismantle the apprenticeship values that develop out of close encounters as part of the PhD process.

Thanks to Dieter for holding the blog fort for the past few weeks!

Carolyn

*Council of Graduate Schools, 2005, Washington, DC. The Doctor of Philosophy Degree.

“The Big Lie About the 'Life of the Mind'”

Mike is still sick and Carolyn is slowly recovering, while being overwhelmed with work at the same time. Thus, by default, the blog falls back to me. I started scrambling for a topic to blog on over the weekend and at the beginning of the week and hit a total blank on Monday morning, until Sunny came to the rescue. On Monday afternoon, he e-mailed “There is an interesting article in the Chronicle of Higher Education that is worth reading. It's about the problem of encouraging graduate students in non-professional programs when there isn't much to be encouraging about. I think the argument goes double for post-doctoral fellows.” Check it out; it’s truly worth reading; to do so, click on “The Big Lie About the ‘Life of the Mind’.” One sentence from this article really sticks to my mind; it's that kind of a sentence that has the potential to summarize an entire article. "There should be a special place in hell for the professors who - at the end of an advisee's 10-year graduate program with no job in sight - say, "well, academe is not for everyone." I’m putting this article up for debate and I would really appreciate your comments and suggestions from your perspective as Dalhousie's "highly qualified personnel (HQP)."

 

On a at first glance unrelated topic, the Chronicle of Higher Education published an article on February 7, 2010 entitled "For-Profit Colleges Change Higher Education's Landscape - Nimble Companies gain a fast-growing share of enrollment" by Robin Wilson. In essence, this article concludes that “At a time when American public higher education is cutting budgets, laying off people, and turning away students, the rise of for-profit universities has been meteoric. Enrollment in the country's nearly 3,000 career colleges has grown far faster than in the rest of higher education - by an average of 9 percent per year over the past 30 years.”

 

Just look at the photo below and compare it to some of the buildings at public higher education institutions across Canada and the US. What a difference.

 

 

Photo by Noah Berger for The Chronicle of Higher Education

"The University of Phoenix's San Francisco Learning Center, in the financial district, offers information-technology, business, and other degrees. As of this month, the university's total enrollment is 455,600. It is now the second largest higher-education system in the country - behind only the State University of New York."

The real challenge now is to decide whether the trends described in these two articles are linked, i.e., whether the big lie about the life of the mind at least in part contributed to the enrollment gain of for-profit colleges.

Over and out.

Dieter

Munro Day

My blog this week is going to be short and not necessarily to the point. Why? Two reasons. First today is Munro Day at Dalhousie. I am sure, like most of us at Dal, you haven't heard of George Munnro, other than possibly that we have an odd winter one day break with his name. So bear with me while I recap! The story is actually very interesting.

George Munro was born in 1825 in Nova Scotia and educated here, went to New York around 1850, and did quite well for himself in publishing novels. As a parallel tale, Dalhousie started in   1818 and by late 1870's was in financial trouble. Luckily George Munro's brother in law was on the Board! I'll let  Lydia Cushman Schurman tell the punch line.

"Munro's largesse, "gifts without parallel in British North America," rescued the university from extinction. It is little wonder that by 1885, a special holiday had been set aside to commemorate George Munro, and he is still honored on "George Munro Day" each year at the university on the first Friday in February."

Even taking into account that Ms. Schurman was his great-granddaughter, I suspect this is pretty accurate.

It has occurred to me that many Canadian universities must have had equally difficult early years especially those in the 1800's and that many of their histories may also have had a supporter who stood up at just the right time. Maybe not celebrated with a whole day off but in the name of a building or a room or a collection. After a couple of hundred or a hundred or even 50 years we are happy to assume that the university is a given but this has not always been the case! Anyway, check out your place and see if there isn't a hidden story there. I will be happy to post the synopsis.

The second reason for today's brevity? Well I went to Ottawa on Monday with a cough and came back with something a lot more serious. So my Munro Day will not be very exciting.

Carolyn

Reference Letters Revisited – The Never-Ending Story

An effective reference letter could mean the difference between success and failure for a scholarship application to one of the provincial or federal tri-council agencies. A reference letter is used to introduce the applicant and to vouch for the candidate’s integrity, character, and abilities. The members of selection committees need to know as much as possible about an applicant to determine his or her ability to perform adequately. Letters of reference provide information from a teacher or research supervisor who has been personally involved with the candidate. This outside source provides a valuable record of the candidate's previous experience and can testify to his or her skills and abilities. An effective reference letter

• verifies experience,
• confirms competence,
• builds credibility, and
• bolsters confidence in the applicant.

Now, as sort of as a worst practice example, I’m reproducing a reference letter for a candidate in this year’s CIHR Master’s scholarship competition. “A gifted and motivated student. Very hard working and intelligent. Very focused on his/her research project with Dr. X using the Y model. Will eventually be a successful researcher.” No, I didn’t make this up. This actually was a sponsor’s assessment of a candidate for the CIHR master’s award. Ask yourself. Did this appraisal (written on a BlackBerry or iPhone in an airport terminal at the last minute???) meet any of the criteria listed above? Definitely not. The only thing it achieved was to reduce the chances of an otherwise good application of being funded.

Thus, yet again, my tips for students seeking reference letters are:

• Choose who will represent you wisely. No one person can represent you accurately in all areas. Find someone who knows your strengths in the areas you need to satisfy the requirements of a particular funding agency and/or selection board. In this context, it is also important that the person providing the reference letter has a good understanding of your academic history, interests, goals, and direction.
• Schedule a convenient time for you and your sponsor to meet. Review the requirements and expectations of the reference letter. This process helps the person who is writing the letter answer questions, clarify points that may need elaboration, and point out additional information that may be required. Make this process easy by providing all of the information needed so that you can obtain an accurate and positive recommendation.
  
• When you request a reference letter, communicate your needs in a straightforward way. Explain what you are applying for and ask if the person can provide you with a good recommendation. If someone exhibits any uneasiness about providing you with a strong recommendation, be polite, thank him/her for their time and then look elsewhere. Choose only someone who (1) can provide a well-written letter, (2) knows you well enough to be credible, (3) thinks highly of you and your abilities, (4) holds a respected position, and (5) is knowledgeable of and familiar with the selection criteria and their respective weights.
• Keep in mind that the sponsor is doing you a favor and has a busy schedule with other commitments. Make sure you allow enough time so that he or she can provide you with a well-written and effective letter.

Finally, a few words of advice for sponsors providing reference letters:

If you are asked to write a letter of reference, you will need to discuss this subject with the requester. Can you honestly write outstanding things about the person who has requested the letter and do you really have the time to do so? If not, you should bow out gracefully at the very beginning. On the other hand, if you feel you qualify, brainstorm with the requester so you can write what he or she wishes to be said, and be sensitive to his/her deadlines. Letters of recommendation may be written in a classic format that includes an introduction, body, and conclusion. There may also be specific requirements for certain letters that you may need to follow. In most cases, however, any well-organized format will be acceptable. Look at the following sample format.

Introduction:

• Introduce yourself as the sponsor. State your professional position, how you know the applicant, the length of your relationship, and any other pertinent information to build your credibility as a knowledgeable contributor.
• Provide an overview of your general impressions of the applicant.  

Body:

• Cover one exceptional quality of the applicant in each paragraph.
• Use specific examples to show how you observed each quality.
  
• Address qualities in order of importance.
• Keep the body of the letter to two or three strong paragraphs.

Conclusion:

• Confirm that the applicant would be a desirable recipient of an award, adding any other comments you feel appropriate.
• Encourage the reader to contact you for additional information or with any questions.

More specifics on how to request and write an effective reference letter can be found in my blogs from Nov. 21, 2008 and Nov. 7, 2009.

Over and out. Back to Carolyn.  I guess, Mike still needs some time to figure out more than where the paperclips are.

Dieter

  

Graduate Course Evolution

OK here is a situation playing somewhere near you. A unit proposes a graduate course and seeks approval for that course at the graduate studies level. This is pretty standard in most universities. A committee in the faculty or school of graduate studies carefully examines this proposal. Is it approaching the material at a graduate level? Does the unit have the capacity to put the course on? Is the content well described and the course flow reasonable? Is the evaluation method clear? Is the evaluation method reasonable for a graduate course? Does the library have appropriate resources? etc. (Notice I have not mentioned what are the learning objectives or exactly how are they included or evaluated, see Dieter's blog last week!)

After some amount of discussion and frequently some back and forth with the unit the course is approved. Great, a collective sigh of relief. The course description goes into the next edition of the graduate calendar and the approved course "binder."  Roll forward to the term when a professor is actually going to teach this course. Have you ever seen or used the actual approved course description to design the course you are giving after the first time? Why not? or perhaps, Why would you?

I don't think I am wildly different (in this) than my colleagues. I see the calendar entry, talk with who ever taught it last and make up a course outline, evaluation method, assignments, etc, make my web page and hand out the course outline to the students (as I am required to do) within the first week of term. This is now the course that the students are taking and this is now my agreement with them! Now what about two years later or ten years later. Granted I am in a technology area and so the landscape keeps changing but  as every discipline moves forward and teaching norms and expectations shift and so my course evolves.

BUT what about that course that was so carefully approved? Clearly, I would argue that the evolution of courses is an appropriate and good thing but that perhaps our objectives in approving courses should reflect and balance the need for approval to start with this ongoing need for quality assurance. So the question of the week, how do we assure quality of graduate courses over time? 

Don't really know but I am sure we will be having some interesting discussions on this!

Carolyn

Chaos and Complexity

In December 2009, Dr. Alan Shaver, Vice President Academic and Provost of Dalhousie University, invited Deans, Chairs, Heads and Directors to an introduction to eLumen, “a software tool that not only helps faculty to create class and course plans but also helps faculty to create overviews of entire degree programs.” More specifically, he described eLumen as “a tool designed to help faculty articulate and organize learning outcomes, document the learning experiences that support student learning, and demonstrate how faculty assess student achievements” at the level of a single course, an academic program or the institution as a whole. As an individual faculty member, the possibility of creating individual class/course plans with defined learning outcomes caught my interest. As an academic administrator, I became interested in the possibility to assess how an individual course fits into an academic program as a whole as well as in the possibility to create overviews of entire degree programs. Why? Because understanding how learning outcomes of an individual course fit into program or institutional learning outcomes and how individual students and/or cohorts of students perform on a regular basis in an academic program using a set of explicit criteria (aka rubrics) are import components of quality assurance and accountability. [This is currently a hot and sometimes controversial topic of discussion in the Academic Planning and Curriculum Committee of FGS.] Understanding the “big picture is also critical, when documenting program-level curriculum plans for academic review/accreditation purposes. For all of these reasons, I was very much looking forward to the presentations of Dr. David Shupe, one of the founders of eLumen Collaborative, which promised to provide an overview on how the software tool may best be used to represent and assess learning experiences and learning outcomes in individual courses or in an entire academic program.

The presentations took place on Wednesday and Thursday of this week. For me, in both my roles as an individual faculty member and teacher as well as an academic administrator, they were highly educational and beneficial. In addition, I had the privilege to enjoy a few private discussions with David Shupe and my dear colleague Lynn Taylor, the Director of Dalhousie’s Centre for Learning and Teaching, who was hosting the events. It would take far too long to summarize all the fine point of the presentations and our discussions; thus, an executive summary will have to suffice. David’s starting point was that the current embedded process that makes higher education work day in and day out, from one term to the next, from one academic year to the next, systematically fails to capture accountable, evidence-based data on student learning outcomes. From there, he defined a grade or a degree as the academic and/or professional content embodied as a set of outcomes to be achieved. The quality of student work should be strengthened and measured by reinforcing academic and/or professional standards across the curriculum using a set or sets of explicit criteria (aka rubrics). He concluded by suggesting that strengthening current curricula and making them more accountable to students, the institution, external review/accreditation bodies as well as the public would require the implementation of new assessment and tracking practices of students’ (individuals or cohort) academic work during an individual course or an entire academic program by defined student learning outcomes and explicit performance criteria at each instructional level. [Lynn and David. Sorry for the big leaps should you ever be reading this. I hope I still captured the basic message and intent.] 

Now, one should ask the obvious question. Was all of this simply a sales pitch? I don’t think so. Why? Let’s take a look at the December 2006 CHEA Special Report on Accreditation and Accountabiliy. [CHEA stands for Council for Higher Education Accreditation.] If you’re really interested in this area, you may also wish to download from the CHEA website any of the papers, advisories, and commentaries on outcomes, performance and public information that led to this distillation of CHEA’s work, which summarizes key recommendations, ideas and effective practices for accrediting organizations working with institutions and programs. For those of you, who don’t want to go into this level of detail, I’m simply reproducing verbatim some samples of the issues and challenges facing academic programs and institutions from the 2006 CHEA special report below for your information and perusal.

"Key external constituents (government, students, public) want information about student learning outcomes.

Information about student learning outcomes is important to government, students and the public because these constituents increasingly tie judgments about the quality of an institution or program to evidence of student academic achievement.

• Governments want evidence about the quality of student learning outcomes to make judgments about federal and state support of higher education.
• Students and prospective students want evidence of student learning outcomes to make decisions about which institutions or programs to attend and what tuition they are willing to pay.
• The public wants evidence of student learning outcomes to continue its support of higher education as a public good."

"At what level (or for what unit of analysis) should evidence of student learning outcomes be sought?

Different accreditors may choose different levels of aggregation when seeking evidence of student learning outcomes, depending upon their purposes.

Options include:

• individual student;
• specified groups or aggregations of students;
• courses or groups of courses;
• programs or schools within an institution;
• institutions;
• combinations of the above."

"Accrediting organizations need to establish standards and review processes that visibly and clearly expect accredited institutions and programs to:

• Regularly gather and report concrete evidence about what students know and can do as a result of their respective courses of study, framed in terms of established learning outcomes and supplied at an appropriate level of aggregation (e.g., at the institutional or program level).
• Supplement this evidence with information about other dimensions of effective institutional or program performance with respect to student outcomes (e.g., graduation, retention, transfer, job placement or admission to graduate school) that do not constitute direct evidence of student learning.
• Prominently feature relevant evidence of student learning outcomes — along with other dimensions of effective institutional performance, as appropriate — in demonstrating institutional or program effectiveness."

"Institutions and programs need to establish clear statements of student learning outcomes and of their approach to collecting, interpreting and using evidence of student achievement.

Institutions and programs need to:

• Determine and publicly commit to the particular learning outcomes associated with various courses of study.
• Determine and communicate clearly to constituents: (a) what counts as evidence that these outcomes have been achieved and (b) what level of attainment of these outcomes is required to assure the quality of institutional or program offerings.
• Develop recognizable processes for regularly collecting and interpreting evidence of student learning outcomes.
• Use the results of this process to identify strengths and weaknesses or gaps between expected and actual performance and to identify and overcome barriers to learning."
  

Exciting challenges on the not too distant horizon? Stay tuned.

Back to Carolyn (and to Mike, whenever he's ready).    

Dieter