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Is higher ed raising the bar—or lowering it?
Perhaps you saw that the University of California System has eliminated the term “academic probation.” As one administrator at UC Irvine explains, “When students are labeled with probation, it impacts their mental health and their well-being, it decreases their confidence academically, it drives them away from university resources, it can actually decrease graduation rates.”
Substituting “academic notice” for “academic probation” may seem inconsequential. But how about the decision of a growing number of accreditors and state boards of higher education to approve degree programs with fewer than 120 credit hours?
Or the College Board’s recalibration of AP Test scores, doubling the percentage of students receiving 4s and 5s in some fields in a single year? As Education Next reports, “In AP United States Government and Politics, 24.1 percent of the 329,132 students who took the test in 2023 earned a 4 or a 5, the top two scores on the test, which is graded on a 1 to 5 scale. In 2024, that share soared to 49 percent.”
Or the rapid expansion of low-quality dual degree courses?
Or the significantly shorter SAT and ACT college admissions tests? The College Board cut the length of its marque test in half in May and the newly for-profit ACT will be an hour shorter, with 44 fewer multiple choice questions and abbreviated reading passages.
Many efforts to make higher education more accessible, inclusive, equitable and job market aligned and to raise completion rates do little or nothing to ensure student success in high-demand fields.
College instructors have reduced reading and writing assignments. A study by the National Survey of Student Engagement found that the amount of time students spend reading for their courses has significantly decreased. For instance, in 2000, students reported reading about 12 hours per week, but by 2016, this number had dropped to about eight hours per week. Worse yet, fewer students completed their assigned readings, with many only skimming or not reading at all.
The amount of writing required in college has also decreased. A 2018 study found that nearly a third of college students don’t complete a major writing assignment, at least 10 pages in length, in college. Undergraduates are often assigned shorter papers and fewer lengthy research projects compared to past decades.
A growing number of institutions, including mine, offer asynchronous online courses with little or no substantive interaction with a subject area specialist.
American colleges and universities face a choice: whether to compromise academic standards as more students enter college with complicated lives and uneven high school preparation or to take the difficult steps to help students achieve success in highly demanding fields of study.
Guess which choice too many institutions are making.
In fact, it is possible to balance inclusivity with maintaining rigorous educational practices. But it’s far easier set the bar lower and steer students away from high-demand fields.
One response to the overall decline in standards is to place undergraduates into separate academic tracks, even though the actual term is never articulated. A growing number of institutions have designated an honors program or college for their most talented students. Others only allow students into research programs on a competitive basis.
The most common response is to gate entry into the most popular majors. A surge in the popularity of STEM, business and health-care fields has led many universities to implement stringent entry requirements for these majors. These gated majors often impose high GPA cutoffs and extensive prerequisite coursework, exacerbating inequality, as students from underprepared backgrounds struggle to meet these criteria, limiting their opportunities for upward mobility.
As a result, many students are funneled into less competitive majors, leading to a mismatch between student interests and job market needs.
The trend toward weakening academic standards in higher education undermines the true goal of student success: helping students excel in rigorous academic programs.
Maintaining high academic standards and providing adequate student support are not mutually exclusive goals. The key to addressing the challenges faced by today’s college students is not to lower standards but to rethink the way we teach students in the most challenging areas of academic study.
Only by making far-reaching changes in course design and pedagogy can we best prepare them for future professional and personal success.
Many highly touted student success solutions turn out to be neither successful nor cost-effective. Remedial courses are all too often a bridge to nowhere, with students who take those classes especially unlikely to complete their degrees. Tutoring and other forms of academic support only work if students actually take advantage of these services, which many don’t.
What, then, should be done? Here’s one answer: embrace a modified version of competency-based education.
Back in the early 2010s, competency-based education was all the rage. This is a pedagogical approach where students progress based on their ability to demonstrate mastery of specific skills or competencies rather than on credit hours or time spent in a classroom seat. This method focuses on outcomes and ensures that students acquire the necessary knowledge and skills before moving on to the next level or graduating.
In its original form, competency-based education involved:
- Demonstrated mastery of essential knowledge and skills.
- Students learning at their own pace, advancing only when they have mastered the required material.
- Frequent assessment to diagnose student learning needs and validate mastery.
- Personalized educational pathways tailored to students’ needs, strengths and interests.
- Alignment with industry needs and standards.
Interest in competency-based education has since faded for a variety of good reasons. These include:
- Regulatory and accreditation barriers, which are designed for traditional time-based education.
- Difficulty in transferring credits to other institutions, due in part to skepticism about the quality of competency-based programs.
- Inconsistencies in how competencies are defined and subjectivity in how competencies are assessed at different institutions.
- Faculty resistance, as a competency-based approach requires changes in teaching practices, assessment methods and interactions with students.
Still, a competency-based approach that focuses on mastering essential knowledge and skills makes a great deal of sense. It ensures that students are genuinely prepared for advanced work and ultimately for their professional lives.
Implementing such an approach doesn’t necessarily require personalized education for each student or abandoning a fixed academic calendar. Instead, it involves defining clear learning objectives, frequent diagnostics and targeted interventions to address knowledge gaps.
Faculty need to break down their courses into granular learning objectives that outline specific competencies students must master. This ensures clarity in what students are expected to learn and provides a road map for both teaching and assessment.
Redesign courses into modules or units, each focusing on a specific set of competencies. Students must demonstrate mastery of each module before progressing, ensuring a solid understanding of foundational concepts before moving to more advanced topics.
Scaffold learning, with each module building on the previous one. This approach helps reinforce learning and ensures that students develop a deep understanding of the material.
Use frequent diagnostic assessments to gauge student understanding and identify gaps in knowledge and skills early on. These assessments need not be quizzes. Consider a variety of ways to assess student knowledge, while providing feedback.
- Concept maps: Ask students to create diagrams that depict the relationships between different concepts covered in the course.
- One-minute papers: Have students write brief responses to a prompt.
- Muddiest point: Ask students to write about the part of the lesson or topic that they found most confusing.
- Think-pair-share: Have students think about a question individually, then discuss their thoughts with a partner and share their conclusions with the class.
- Polling: Use technology or polling software to instantly gauge student understanding and adjust instruction accordingly.
- Reflective journals: Require students to maintain a journal where they regularly reflect on what they are learning, how they are learning and their thoughts about the course material.
- Case studies and problem-based learning: Have students, individually or in groups, analyze a case study or solve a complex, real-world problem related to the course content.
- Socratic dialogue: Engage students in class discussions to assess their understanding and thought processes through dialogue and questioning.
- Student presentations: Have students prepare and deliver presentations on specific topics, demonstrating their understanding and ability to communicate complex ideas.
- Peer assessment: Require students to review and provide feedback on each other’s work, such as essays, projects or presentations.
Based on diagnostic results, targeted interventions can be implemented to help students address specific gaps. This might include additional tutoring, supplementary materials or focused review sessions.
Continuous feedback loops between students and instructors are crucial. They ensure that students understand their progress and know precisely where to focus their efforts to improve.
Note: While a competency-based approach emphasizes mastery, it can still operate within a fixed academic calendar. The key is to provide structured opportunities for students to master competencies, with flexibility built into the schedule to accommodate varying learning paces.
Transforming a traditional college course into one with a competency-based focus isn’t easy, but it’s essential if we are to bring more students to success in especially difficult fields. These include defining granular learning objectives, designing a scaffolded curriculum and implementing regular assessments and feedback mechanisms.
First, identify the essential knowledge and skills that students need to master by the end of the course. Divide the course into units, each of which focuses on discrete competencies or learning objectives. Then, design each unit to build on the previous one, ensuring a logical progression of knowledge and skills.
Learning in such a course needs to be incremental. Start with foundational concepts and gradually introduce more complex material as students demonstrate mastery of earlier objectives. Incorporate a variety of learning activities, such as lectures, readings, discussions and hands-on projects, to reinforce each competency.
Use quizzes, short assignments and in-class activities to regularly assess student understanding and mastery of each competency. Provide timely and constructive feedback to help students identify areas for improvement and understand their progress. Design summative assessments at the end of each module to evaluate overall mastery. These could include projects, presentations, portfolios or other activities. Also, foster a growth mindset throughout the course by encouraging students to view challenges as opportunities for growth and learning. Reinforce the idea that effort and persistence lead to mastery.
There are other approaches that make a great deal of sense: Supplemental instruction sections for students at risk of failure. Mandatory study groups. Required attendance at a writing or math or science learning support center. Brief one-on-one meetings between an individual student and the instructor.
We face a choice: Dilute our academic standards and expectations, which serves no one, or redesign our teaching to be rigorous and supportive, bringing more undergraduates to success in especially challenging fields.
Compromising on academic rigor does a disservice to students. The right choice is to enhance our teaching methods. This will challenge everyone involved but will lead to greater student success in the most demanding areas of study.
By redesigning our teaching to be both demanding and supportive, we can help more students thrive. We can lower the bar and achieve nothing or we can elevate our teaching practices, making education demanding yet attainable and bringing more students to success in high-demand fields.
Lowering expectations isn’t the answer. Remember: Reducing standards cheats students out of their potential.
Just as there is no royal road to geometry, there is no shortcut to a genuine college education, which requires time and effort. We must resist the temptation to dilute academic rigor in favor of faster, less costly degree paths that compromise true learning. In our pursuit of efficiency and cost reduction, we must not sacrifice the depth and rigor of a true college education for the illusion of student success and a quicker, cheaper degree. Rushing students through college with diminished standards does a disservice to their education and their future.
