The Misguided Drive to Measure ‘Learning Outcomes’
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/23/opinion/sunday/colleges-measure-learning-outcomes.html
Molly Worthen notes:
"... more and more university administrators want campuswide, quantifiable data that reveal what skills students are learning. Their desire has fed a bureaucratic behemoth known as learning outcomes assessment. This elaborate, expensive, supposedly data-driven analysis seeks to translate the subtleties of the classroom into PowerPoint slides packed with statistics — in the hope of deflecting the charge that students pay too much for degrees that mean too little.
It’s true that old-fashioned course grades, skewed by grade inflation and inconsistency among schools and disciplines, can’t tell us everything about what students have learned. But the ballooning assessment industry — including the tech companies and consulting firms that profit from assessment — is a symptom of higher education’s crisis, not a solution to it...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/23/opinion/sunday/colleges-measure-learning-outcomes.html
Molly Worthen notes:
"... more and more university administrators want campuswide, quantifiable data that reveal what skills students are learning. Their desire has fed a bureaucratic behemoth known as learning outcomes assessment. This elaborate, expensive, supposedly data-driven analysis seeks to translate the subtleties of the classroom into PowerPoint slides packed with statistics — in the hope of deflecting the charge that students pay too much for degrees that mean too little.
It’s true that old-fashioned course grades, skewed by grade inflation and inconsistency among schools and disciplines, can’t tell us everything about what students have learned. But the ballooning assessment industry — including the tech companies and consulting firms that profit from assessment — is a symptom of higher education’s crisis, not a solution to it...
Learning assessment has not spurred discussion of the deep structural problems that send so many students to college unprepared to succeed. Instead, it lets politicians and accreditors ignore these problems as long as bureaucratic mechanisms appear to be holding someone — usually a professor — accountable for student performance".
Other pieces from Molly Worthen:
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/18/opinion/sunday/lecture-me-really.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/02/opinion/college-oral-exam.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/04/opinion/sunday/empathy-school-college.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/03/opinion/sunday/can-i-go-to-great-books-camp.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/20/opinion/tenure-college-university.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/18/opinion/sunday/lecture-me-really.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/02/opinion/college-oral-exam.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/04/opinion/sunday/empathy-school-college.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/03/opinion/sunday/can-i-go-to-great-books-camp.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/20/opinion/tenure-college-university.html
Related:
Fire Them All; God Will Know His Own
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2022/11/29/anderson-bureaucratic-bloat-harvard/
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2022/11/29/anderson-bureaucratic-bloat-harvard/