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According to Molly Worthen's article in The New York Times, The Misguided Drive to Measure 'Learning Outcomes':
"[...] In 2018, 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. [...]"
But apparently, there is little to show for tons of money and effort expended to gather data on what students are really learning or adapting curricula to their actual needs.
Mr. Erik Gilbert, a professor of history at Arkansas State University, who has criticized the methods, said to the author: 'Maybe all your students have full-time jobs, but that's something you can't fix, even though that's really the core problem. Instead, you're expected to find some small problem, like students don't understand historical chronology, so you might add a reading to address that. You're supposed to make something up every semester, then write up a narrative.'
As Frank Furedi, an emeritus professor of sociology at the University of Kent, told the author about the situation in Britain: 'It's a bit like the old Soviet Union. You speak two languages. You do a performance for the sake of the auditors, but in reality, you carry on.'
As the author puts it: 'If we describe college courses as mainly delivery mechanisms for skills to please a future employer [...] We end up using the language of the capitalist marketplace and speak to our students as customers rather than fellow thinkers. They deserve better. [...] Producing thoughtful, talented graduates is not a matter of focusing on market-ready skills. It's about giving students an opportunity that most of them will never have again in their lives: the chance for serious exploration of complicated intellectual problems, the gift of time in an institution where curiosity and discovery are the source of meaning.'
A lengthy read, but worthwhile. Are we preparing current students better than in the past or are we simply siphoning money out of them? Yesteryear, a degree was a sure bet to a better life, nowadays, it doesn't mean as much. Are the education methods lacking or is the surplus of graduates to blame for useless degrees?
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 02 2018, @02:48AM
> In my country we also have the problem of private education providers bringing students in from overseas (mostly Asia) supposedly to do a "business management" course, but in reality they come here to work, as their student visa lets them work 20 hours per week.
Where I'm at they were mostly from Africa. There were a hell of a lot of names on the roster who I never saw in the classroom. I sometimes checked with students purportedly from the same country. The rumor from their fellow students was that they simply used the student visa to gain entrance to the country and then headed immediately to the capitol to seek black-market work. Those that remained, slogged through their business "degree" and then headed immediately to the capitol to futilely hunt for work or else hire from the abundant, cheap, black-market labour pool and live 12 to 14 per apartment meant for 1 to 3 to beat the prices.
The head of the universities seemed in on the scam since they and their administrators put very heavy pressure on educators to give passing grades even to students that never physically visited any of the buildings even once. At the time they were getting paid per student per successful "degree"
But that was a few years back. Things have been tweaked but not by much.
About educational assessement, that just wasn't happening. If a student got their name on the list, they graduated on time with a barely passing grade but a passing grade none the less even if a handful of educators had the cheek to fail them. Same for those that showed up in the classroom but didn't do or understand the material by the end of each course.
In several countries the union representatives now just serve to enforce the goals, methods, and agendas of the management. So they are not only of no help but can actually be harmful. They report any stray sheep directly to the managment.