Richard Hersh, in his November 2005 Atlantic Monthly article "What
Does College Teach?" [Hersh (2005)] has argued that "It's time to put
an end to 'faith-based' acceptance of higher education's quality."
Hersh is a former president of Hobart & William Smith Colleges and
Trinity College, co-director of the "Collegiate Learning Assessment"
<http://www.cae.org/content/pro_collegiate.htm>], and co-editor of
"Declining by Degrees: Higher Education at Risk" [Hersh & Merrow
(2005)].
Hersh (2005) wrote in part [bracketed by lines "HHHHHHHHH. . ."; my CAPS]:
HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
". . . robust measurements. . . [of differences in student learning
from one campus to another]. . . . don't exist in part because
colleges don't want them - because developing and testing them would
be expensive; because faculty members would disagree on what to
measure; and because they're wary of anything that calls into
question the long-running perception of American higher education as
"world class."
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
VALUE-ADDED ASSESSMENT OFFERS AN EXCELLENT PLACE TO START, AND A
CHANCE FOR HIGHER EDUCATION TO DEMONSTRATE THAT "FAITH-BASED" ANSWERS
ABOUT QUALITY ARE NO LONGER ACCEPTABLE. This country has always
looked to higher education to take the lead in innovation, and to
define, seek, and demand excellence from its students. TODAY'S
ACADEMY SHOULD BE SATISFIED WITH NOTHING LESS.
HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
Because:
(a) university faculty and administrators may be interested in
Hersh's provocative essay, and
(b) Hersh's reservations regarding *indirect* assessments of student
learning and his advocacy of *direct* value-added assessment are
consistent with my own generally ignored views [Hake (2005)],
I have taken the liberty of inserting hot-linked academic references
and copying Hersh's article into the archives of AERA-L
<http://lists.asu.edu/archives/aera-l.html> where it will be
available to educators.
Hirsh, R.H. 2005. "What Does College Teach? It's time to put an end
to 'faith-based' acceptance of higher education's quality," Atlantic
Monthly 296(4): 140-143, November; freely online to (a) subscribers
of the Atlantic Monthly at
<http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200511/measuring-college-quality>,
and (b) (with hot-linked academic references) to educators at
<http://tinyurl.com/9nqon> (scroll to the APPENDIX).
Hersh R.H. ed. & J. Merrow, ed. (forward by T. Wolfe). 2005.
"Declining by Degrees: Higher Education at Risk." Palgrave Macmillan.
Amazon.com information at <http://tinyurl.com/bvcf4>.
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