Grad Rates

I agree with Ms. Shaw that the accreditation system is flawed and in need of reform. However, I don’t think reporting standards and student success to the Department of Education is so far out there—but then, grad rates won’t accomplish that mission, since institutions vary so much and so many students choose to take classes one or two at a time.

I go back to my “class by class” evaluative suggestion. This time, we should look at class drops and withdrawals (including those that default to an “F") because this is where students begin to fail in the educational system. Assessing these numbers in drops and withdrawals for classes can tell us more about 1.How many students leave a class but still owe for that class; 2. What classes have higher drop rates and why. Some schools probably keep this kind of information already, so it may be that more has to be done with it.

Knowing these numbers can help generate intervention at the University and National levels. For example, why might high numbers of students drop out of Statistics? Are the classes too large? Are the students ill-prepared? Is the schedule awkward? Do state schools need more funding? Do the instructors need further professional development? The Department of Education and the accreditors deserve to know this information and deserve to know how the University plans to fix it.

As to the development of new online schools being “slowed to a crawl,” I don’t see it in my line of work (I teach online). Do a simple search for “online education.” The results will stagger you. Some of the schools are part of campus-based schools, many are strictly online, and others hold partnerships with campus-based colleges. There is no shortage in online choices for students, and NCA/HLC accredits a goodly number of them. If anything, for the purposes of maintaining standards, we need to slow this growth down!

Frankly, I have little trust in any one organization or agency to accomplish the mission of the Secretary and the Commission. Each has far too many high stakes, political motives, and egotistical incentives. Unless the agencies work together, including seemingly disparate accreditation agencies, we won’t see a truly a balanced and fair system dedicated to student success.

kgotthardt, at 7:30 am EDT on August 15, 2007

Too many errors here

Shaw’s opinion piece is strewn with factual errors, foremost among that the “incorporation” of “student learning outcome focus” shows Spellings“wants to mold accreditation to the current fashions of higher education criticism.”

This focus is not something new, but originates with the federal statute: Sec 496(a) of the 1992 HEA required the establishment of quantitative standards for completion rates, job placement rates, and pass rates on state licensing examinations (see 20 USC 1099b (a) 5 (A) ) – requirements that are currently in place as accrediting standards for the national accreditors. So, it’s the regional accrediting boards that are having trouble measuring up. This says a whole-lot about the current situation.

Thus, these criteria are found in the HEA statutes and regulations, not “embedding these concepts into regulations” (whatever that many mean).Furthermore, the assertion that because of this, “today’s imprecise measurements of learning will become a series of inappropriate tests enshrined into law” rests on a number of assumptions. But assume that it does come to pass, and ask “Why would this happen?”

David Labaree’s argument in *The Trouble with Ed Schools* gives us a clue: if the successful diffusion of standardized testing is attributable to the dominance of the bureaucratic and administrative apparatus, and the subordination of teaching staff and their subsequent failure to successfully diffuse assessment alternatives, then HE administrators have only themselves to blame for any enshrinement, and any stagnation. The price educational bureaucrats paid for autonomy and their own budgets was standardization is a heavy one, and now the solution is coming home to roost.

But the problem with Shaw’s argument is that all this doesn’t seem to bother the national accreditors one bit. They don’t hide behind cute phrases like “today’s imprecise measurements of learning” because, apparently, they are out there doing it.

Shaw likewise distorts the origins of “standards and testing organizations” such as UL, which “were mainly extensions of trade associations and professional societies seeking to promulgate common metrics to assist business organizations. In 1894, an association of insurance underwriters (UL) received a charter to certify wires and light fixtures as fire resistant in order to build insurable real estate.” (Rao, ASJ 103(4): 922)

Public service rhetoric has long been a key feature in the legitimation process of quasi-monopolies, and state-sponsored public monopolies – look at the mileage the American Medical Association has gotten out of it – but has no place in this debate. More appropriate, in my view, is the guild history of the AMA, and comparison with other similar trade and professional organizations when describing the context of the regional accrediting bodies. This is the proper context for their appraisal.

Glen S. McGhee, Dir., at Florida Higher Education Accountability Project, at 9:25 am EDT on August 15, 2007

Before the G.I. Bill

Shaw’s assertion that “beginning with the G.I. Bill, … the federal government began to provide aid to colleges by supporting students through grants and then low-interest loans” is a convenient fiction, but one that needs to be speedily exposed if we are to better understand the mess that we are in.

As any good higher education history of the Great Depression will tell you, when universities could not rely upon their respective state legislatures to provide sufficient resources for the maintenance and expansion of their institutions, they could at least turn to a newly important source of funding, the New Deal agencies of the federal government.

Colleges and universities, indiscriminant in the partners they chose, have a long history of being in bed with the federal government, but the story doesn’t start with the G.I. Bill (which, by the way, received key support from the Veterans associations).

In fact, it needs to be pointed out that this whole discussion regarding federal aid has been badly framed: financial aid is but one of the many ties and exchanges linking HE with the federal government. The “hands off” cry becomes an irrelevant echo when the universe of structural continuities is considered.

Take for example any of the trade associations whose public service rhetoric can give them political influence.

The AMA, for example, pressed for the Food and Drug Act of 1906, and was active in the early FDA agency itself, reaping benefits from both sides of the deal. Mandatory licensing schemes (such as the federal government requiring a college degree for employment), and certification requirements that are state-sponsored must also be taken into account when considering HE/gov embeddedness.

In higher education, the 1868 Office, then Bureau of Education, maintained reporting, data and analysis of immense benefit to the institutions themselves. Their officers circulated in a revolving-door, moving naturally from one to the other. No one questioned this.

In fact, it makes little sense to construct the relation between the federal government and higher education the way that Shaw suggests.

Currently, the highest percentage of college and university graduates become government and municipal workers, making the government the largest consumer of their products. Growing public sponsorship of these risky practices only leads to soaring tuition and loans, and of course, credential inflation.

What needs to be described and understood is that there is a vast cultural co-dependency between higher learning and the government. And the question needs to be asked, how long can this co-dependency last?

Glen McGhee, FHEAP, at 10:20 am EDT on August 15, 2007

Glen, you are right that nationally accredited schools are already reporting these stats. I don’t think it’s a bad thing, and I don’t know why regionals can’t do something similar. Of course, again, we need to look at the numbers and what they REALLY mean. I’d like to see how many students have dropped/repeated/failed classes in these schools as well. I bet you would find a high number.

kgotthardt, at 12:35 pm EDT on August 15, 2007

Drops and F’s

Drops and F’s are a rather simplistic measure. We can certainly reduce the number of students who receive low grades by simply making our courses “mickies". We can also reduce the number of drops by fiddling with the rules.

Certainly graduation rates and possibly even drop and F rates are useful measures but we also need to take into account the differences between institutions. I would anticipate a considerably higher rate for Statistics at a non-selective institution than I would for MIT or Caltech!

Observer, at 4:00 pm EDT on August 15, 2007

Observer, sometimes simpler is better. I would think drops and F’s in certain disciplines would be less important to the DOE than the NUMBERS across the school’s board. Remember, students owe even when they drop. The discipline specific information would be more for institutional use and intervention.

Mickie courses? Manipulating the data? We see that already, don’t we? Better accreditation oversight would reduce this kind of behavior.

Kysa...LOL....yes there does seem to be a bit of contradictory action going on with the attitudes towards oversight. People want schools and accreditors to be accountable, but they don’t want to have to report it to anyone. Huh?And for better or for worse, Title IV funding and accreditation ARE tied. You can’t (legally) get one without the other.

kgotthardt, at 7:45 am EDT on August 16, 2007

Reply to Kysa and Anon

You are quite right to argue that when federal money is taken, the conditions of its acceptance must be met. Not sure what that has to do with AALE, though, as accrediting agencies, including AALE, are not funded by the federal government. As I understand it, AALE has NOT been telling the Dept for years that it has been collecting and benchmarking quantitative data. What it has said is that it collects and reviews both qualitative and quantitative information, much of which differs from school to school (graduation rates, testing scores, grad school admission, and so on). But it does not use these simple quantitative data to deny accreditation. As the only undergrad accreditor with specific academic standards, it has focused on qualitative analyses, with an emphasis on peer review. Remember, we are talking about liberal arts colleges, not comprehensive universities. The real issue has been whether the current regs require the agency to set quantitative measures of success – benchmarks — for non-vocational colleges and universities. They do not. Quantitative outcomes and benchmarks have never been required of the Swarthmores, Williams and St Johns of the country, and for good reasons. The fact is, quantitative assessment was only added to the regs because a number of vocational colleges (truck driving and so on) were gaming the system, and this reg. was intended to apply only to them. When dealing with normal colleges and universities, AALE, like other agencies, makes extensive use of peer review, which is far more suitable to assessing academic quality than are the sort of simple benchmarks used in elementary and secondary schools. AALE’s problems began when the Dept started applying the quantitative provision of the “student achievement” reg to the accreditors of ALL colleges and universities, claiming that it was merely enforcing a regulation that had been on the books for years. It had not, (which is why the Department’s political appointees had to overturn the recent staff finding that AALE fully met the requirement on student achievement — without having any quantitative measures or benchmarks.) Claiming to be inforcing only existing regulations, the Secretary is nevertheless very much aware that requiring quantitative benchmarks or “bright lines” of success and failure from ALL of American higher education is altogether unprecedented. Indeed, knowing full well that existing regulations do not require this, the Secretary has held several (unsuccesful) negotiated rulemaking sessions intended to establish such a requirement. This strikes me as rather strange behavior if, as she says, the requirement already exists. As might have been expected, the Secretary’s attempts to make an end run around Congressional intention has not met with applause on the Hill. In fact, the Senate version of the new HEA explicitly directs the Secretary not to issue new rules on this or anything else. And, just to pound one more nail in the argument that the existing regs require accreditors to apply quantiative measures of success to non-vocational institutions, the new Senate language abolishes the committee (NACIQI) that had been designated to take the lead in this matter.There is much to be said for the Secretary’s initiatives on many fronts. But even if this particular initiative were a good idea — which it is not — the need to abide by the law as it is currently written would still stand.

wgg, at 3:25 pm EDT on August 17, 2007