In the fall of 2010 The Chronicle published a series of articles on accountability and assessment in higher education, a theme that is as relevant and urgent today as it was then. The series, called “Measuring Stick,” was accompanied by a blog of the same name, in which the series’ lead reporter, David Glenn, shared bylines with a dozen scholars and policy makers.
In his opening post, he laid out the questions the series was intended to address: “Are we lucky to have so many redundancies built into the American system of higher-education oversight? Will state regulators fix problems that trustees, accreditors, and the marketplace have failed to remedy (and vice versa)? Or does the complexity of our oversight system lead to confusion and buck-passing?”
Following are highlights from the series.
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Measuring StickThe Quality Measure That Graduate Programs Shun
Most departments don’t provide data on where their students end up working. And many prospective Ph.D.'s aren’t even interested. -
Assessment
Disciplines Follow Their Own Paths to Quality
As large-scale tests gain ground, some professors insist that one size does not fit all academic fields. -
Measuring Stick
Why Teaching Is Not Priority No. 1
Efforts to assess learning often fail because there’s little incentive for faculty members to be better teachers.
