Comparable Measures Recommended by Spellings’ Commission on the Future of Higher Education are Misleading at Best

CSHE > News > Comparable Measures Recommended by Spellings’ Commission on the Future of Higher Education are Misleading at Best

June 19 2007 - A new study by Berkeley researcher Steve Chatman argues that the Spellings commission call for student engagement benchmarks will mislead college applicants and parents trying to choose the best school. Chatman reports that educational experience varies with academic area of major and that only comparisons made at the level of academic discipline are fair and valid. Campus-level statistics based on random samples, the standard method of current national surveys, may tell us more about the number of students in each major than about the quality of education received.

The Commission on the Future of Higher Education appointed by Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings has called for many changes in accreditation practices but the requirement that universities publicly report statistics of time and effort expended by students so that students, parents and state governments can compare and rank universities may be the most dangerous and, according to this research, the most misleading.

Using survey responses from almost 60,000 undergraduates at eight University of California campuses, this new study challenges the view that sample-based measures of student engagement are fair and useful benchmarks by which universities can be compared. Student engagement varies in predictable ways by academic major, says Chatman. Generally speaking, students in humanities and social sciences tend to be more satisfied with their education experience overall, with the improvement they have made in critical thinking, communication, cultural appreciate and social awareness.

In contrast, engineering, business administration, mathematics and computer science students report more collaborative learning and mathematical skills. Engineering, biological sciences, and physical sciences students clearly spend more time preparing for and attending class and labs. These results illustrate a few of the differences identified by this research.

The paper illustrates how America’s most prestigious universities could be ranked high or low due entirely to mix of academic majors to illustrate that sample survey results are misleading. For example, traditional measures of student engagement and satisfaction would favor liberal arts institutions like Harvard and Yale and penalize schools with large engineering and sciences programs like Cal Tech and MIT.

Because measures of student involvement in learning are affected by academic major, campus level statistics that ignore program mix will be of little value to consumers and of less value to the universities. The bottom line is that general education is not as general as conventional higher education wisdom believes it to be.

The results are made possible by a collaborative survey initiative called the Student Experience in the Research University and administration of its University of California Undergraduate Experiences Survey at every UC campus to every undergraduate student. The database of nearly 60,000 records (38% of all students) has the power to identify previously unknown differences within campuses by academic major, and remarkable similarities in academic major across campuses. The project is located at the Center for Studies in Higher Education on the Berkeley campus.

CONTACT:
Steve Chatman
SERU/UCUES Project Director
Center for Studies in Higher Education - UC Berkeley
steve_chatman@berkeley.edu

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