No College Student Left Behind

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In 2006, the Secretary’s Commission on the Future of Higher Education, popularly known as the Spellings Commission, issued a report highly critical of the performance of America’s colleges and universities. The report used dispiriting results from the National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL) to support its calls for greater accountability in the form of standardized assessments of learning outcomes.

In a new CSHE Paper, “No College Left Behind,” Steven Brint discusses the increased call for “learning outcomes,” and new systems of “accountability” for American higher education. Brint argues that the learning-outcomes movement, although well-intentioned and appealing in some ways, could easily be injurious to the ideals of higher education. Taking steps to professionalize college teaching can, by contrast, improve the quality of the teaching corps, while leaving intact three essential features of higher level teaching and learning:

(1) The centrality of discipline-based knowledge systems;

(2) The plurality of approaches that contribute to the formation of well-educated adults; and,

(3) The transformative potential of the college teacher as model of reason joined to creative engagement with course materials.

“If educators take the initiative to enforce standards of professionalism,” state Brint, “the faculty itself, rather than external regulators, will be in charge of accountability in higher education. It will not be easy to bring greater professionalism to college teaching, because graduate education has, understandably, focused on research rather than teaching. But the future of higher education may ride on the willingness of educators to make the effort.”

Brint’s paper includes suggestions about how to professionalize college teaching through classes on pedagogy, teaching demonstrations during job interviews, and peer evaluation.

Steven Brint is Professor of Sociology at the University of California Riverside and a Faculty Affiliate at the Center for Studies in Higher Education at UC Berkeley.

For access to the study, see: http://cshe.berkeley.edu/publications/publications.php?s=1

CONTACT:
Dr. Steven Brint
steven.brint@ucr.edu

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