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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: 2) by bzipitidoo on Friday March 02 2018, @09:20PM (1 child)
From what I hear, many positions in school administration have been turned into fat sinecures. Administrators pull down $200K+ and there are more administrative positions, with vaguer duties, at a time when education is being squeezed mercilessly. To afford that administrative burden in this climate of educational cutbacks, schools have responded by cutting teacher pay, and raising tuition and telling students to take out more of those now infamous student loans.
Construction projects could have gone either way-- cut back so the money for them could be redirected to administrators, or expanded to line the pockets of construction businesses. Seems it's the latter direction. What's particularly obnoxious is the replacement of old dormitories with luxury apartment style boarding. Living like that doesn't come cheap. And it could certainly help give students the wrong impression. Why should they take their education seriously, and among other things learn to live with limited resources, when the school seems more bent on showing them a good time (is alcohol prohibition in the dorms long gone?), and emptying their pockets in the process, but with loans that aren't due until after graduation, not anything that tactually makes them feel the pinch while in school? They might think the loans are all just bull anyway, and who knows, they may end up being right about that. So what does it matter that the racket on textbooks is alive and stronger than ever. And that more predatory businesses are more eager than ever for their crack at those naive freshmen. Pay hundreds of dollars for the season pass to the football games, and party on!
(Score: 2) by melikamp on Sunday March 04 2018, @03:36AM