WASHINGTON — Colleges and universities should embrace assessments of student learning in order to prove their worth as college costs rise and the job market remains tough.
That was the proposition proffered during a panel discussion Monday at the New America Foundation, a nonprofit think tank.
It came by way of Fredrik deBoer, a Limited Term Lecturer at Purdue University—where he recently obtained his Ph.D. in rhetoric and composition—and a writer who deals with higher education policy.
“There’s no enterprise in the world where we pay hundreds of millions of dollars and no one asks to see how well we’re doing, except the defense industry,” deBoer said.
His message was directed largely at faculty, particularly those who may be resistant to assessments in the world of higher education.
“Faculty can take an active role in assessment and we can get out ahead of these problems and we can become a major force in shaping how assessment happens,” deBoer said. If not, he said, “it’s going to happen anyway, and it’s going to happen in a way that does not reflect faculty interests.”
deBoer’s remarks come at a time when there is continued concern on how much college students actually learn—an issue brought to the fore with the 2011 book “Academically Adrift” that claimed colleges were not making much of a difference in terms of what students know.
