Putting Higher Ed Out Of Reach
Howard Karger
February 20, 2007

Howard Karger is professor of social work at the University of Houston and author of Shortchanged: Life and Debt in the Fringe Economy .

Margaret Spellings , Bush’s secretary of education, is a tough-talking Texan. Like the motto on her notepad—“Put on your big girl panties and deal with it!”—Spellings won’t take crap from anyone, especially Buster the animated bunny. Her first act as secretary was to ask PBS to cut an episode of “Postcards from Buster” which showed two lesbian couples. She also wanted PBS to refund the money spent on that filthy episode.

Apart from her concern about the pernicious influence of lesbians on young children, Spelling has her eye on higher education. Similar to conservatives like David Horowitz (founder of the McCarthyist Students for Academic Freedom), she is concerned with protecting the tender minds of college students from liberal professors, especially those who are tenured with academic freedom.

Since Spellings never worked in a school system, and has no formal training in education (her B.A. is in political science), she is free to make educational policy on purely ideological grounds, unencumbered by the real problems facing America’s teachers.

In 2005 Spellings created the Commission on the Future of Higher Education and empanelled 19 members who represent a cross-section of big business, foundations, think-tanks, former politicians and academics. Included was Jonathan Grayer, CEO of Kaplan, one of the world’s largest educational corporations. In 2004 Kaplan had $1.1 billion in revenues, 900,000 students, 20,000 employees and 3,000 classroom locations. For-profit corporations like Kaplan and Educational Testing Services stand to reap huge rewards from educational reform, especially if it involves standardized testing.

Margaret Spellings is right. American higher education is in a pickle. From 1995 to 2005, average tuition and fees at public four-year colleges rose 51 percent (tuition in private schools increased by 36 percent). Total U.S. per-student college expenditures were $22,000 in 2001, almost double other industrialized nations. The debt of graduates from four-year colleges rose to $15,500 for public schools and $19,400 for private ones. At the same time, state funding growth for higher education is the lowest in two decades. The U.S. college attainment rate is now 12th among major industrialized nations.

The commission’s solution was based on a free market approach that stressed more competition among colleges through the collection and reporting of student learning outcomes. Parents and students can evaluate where to best spend their money. How to measure these outcomes? Standardized testing of all graduating seniors.

Although the commission didn’t recommend standardized testing per se , they clearly set the stage for it. According to Spellings, “No current ranking system of colleges and universities directly measures the most critical point—student performance and learning ... and that’s unacceptable. Information will ... hold schools accountable for quality.” Terms like performance, accountability and quality are code words for standardized testing.

Mandatory testing of college seniors will have a profound effect on higher education. Colleges with low scores on standardized tests—often heavily minority—could be punished by reduced state funding. Federal research dollars might also be linked to student test scores. Outcomes might determine whether some colleges are even denied federal student loan funds.

If the Spellings Commission report led the horse to water, Republican governors like Texas’ Rick Perry are ready to make that pony drink. Texas is the home of standardized testing—out of a 180-day school year about 120 days are devoted to testing or preparation. So it’s predictable that Perry’s new plan for educational reform includes standardized testing for college seniors. While students initially won’t have to pass the test to graduate, high scores will mean extra money for colleges, and extra money is something that cash-starved Texas universities can’t resist. The Texas Faculty Association’s Charles Zucker says, “It’s so ironic because, just at the point where we’re beginning to develop a widespread consensus that teaching to the test has been a miserable failure in K-12, now the governor wants to do it for higher education.” The danger, of course, is that other state governors will follow suit. (By the way, standardized testing for college seniors won’t be cheap. Education Week ’s annual report found that school districts pay many millions for these tests.)

Since money will be attached to scores, college administrators will push for more basic courses geared to the test material. Math and science will increasingly replace the soft subjects like anthropology, sociology, history and philosophy. Say goodbye to diverse and interesting college courses. There’s no room for nuance or variety in an outcome-driven learning model.

College professors who reject standardized testing will either be disinvited from the academy or leave out of disgust. Most casualties will be progressive instructors interested in teaching critical content. Their replacements will be educational technicians or hungry adjuncts willing to teach for peanuts. Textbooks—like those in high school—will be standardized and used across public universities, a move that will make textbook publishers happier and richer. Since cost-cutting is a concern for the Spellings Commission, cheaper teaching models like distance education and online courses will increasingly replace traditional and more expensive classroom settings. While some private schools will still offer a rounded education, it will be only for those who can afford the $30,000 to $40,000 a year in tuition and board.

I see this happening every day.

I think of the "outcome-driven learning model" as "assessive compulsive disorder." We are asked to spend a disproportionate amount of time and energy formulating and assessing outcomes. It's is mind-numbing psuedoscience.

This is just so awful. Truly. In a generation we have gone from having the world's largest and "best" university system to what ?! I have seen the results of "accountability" with my son. He attended the same schools that my husband and I did (with the exception of a strong private, academic school, pre-K thru 3rd grade). The public schools, definitely teach to the test and the kids graduate with a comparatively narrow and shallow education. (Not the fault of the teachers, imho, who are on the whole exceptional.) Then they proceed to college, and everything is "dumbed down" to accommodate the "tested generation." It is just so discouraging- maddening- infuriating. I cannot fathom what havoc standardized testing would reap on the college level.

And cost- unreal. My son's girlfriend is on full academic scholarship to a public university. This scholarship covers all tuition, fees, and a small cash stipend to cover books. However, she is already deeply in debt because there is no on-campus housing and no food allowance. This young woman graduated high school with a 4.3 GPA after completing the International Baccalaureate Program. She is making straight "A"s in college but will graduate with a BA in nursing with a huge debt which will take years to pay off.

My son tells me that last semester he did not use any of his books. Hello !? Seems the profs lecture to the department-generated tests, post notes online, and test by multiple choice (scanned and graded by computer). This semester he bought one book for one class - the other four classes nada. One of his profs told him that they get a kickback for all textbooks sold for their classes. He has not entered his major yet, so I am hoping for tougher expectations in his major- but not standardization ! Please, no standardization ! My husband is so discouraged, he is already advocating a private university for grad school. What was quite good at a public university 30+ years ago, is no longer.

"While some private schools will still offer a rounded education, it will be only for those who can afford the $30,000 to $40,000 a year in tuition and board."
And I think this is a low estimate... think more along the lines of $50-60,000 per year. Unreal.


(Please excuse my little diatribe here- not well written while the NCAA semifinals blast in my ear)

Noonan- thanks for posting this important piece. It speaks to the future of our nation and for our greatest treasure: our children.

The profession of teaching has yet to establish a meaningful method of performance appraisal. In other words, we don't have good measures to let us know how well we are teaching.

Performance appraisal of teaching has devolved into finding something quantifiable, but disconnected from the role that teachers actually play in the learning process. We are like drunks looking under a street light when our lost car keys were probably dropped in a dark alley. We don't get useful feedback from established methods of performance appraisal.

In secondary education performance is often appraised according to how well teachers keep order in their classrooms and keep up with the paperwork and policy arbitrarily assigned by administrators. Standardized achievenent test scores like the Iowa Test of Basic Skills might indicate something about the effectiveness of programs in the building but these scores give scant indication about the performance of one teacher.

Since college professors don't teach to captive audiences, classroom management is not so much a priority. Performance appraisal for college teaching was traditionally based upon the number and quality of scholarly publications, but the "publish or perish" doctrine has become secondary in undergraduate programs to demonstrated teaching effectiveness. Student evaluations of their professors, peer evaluations of lectures, and development of new courses and innovative teaching methods have been used as measures of teaching effectiveness. These measures of teaching effectiveness provide only crude feedback for refining teaching skills, but if used in combination, these measures can, at least, identify gross incompetence. Usually, a spate of student complaints to an administrator is the first indication that a college professor is struggling in the classroom.

The recent fad is "acadenic assessment." We are now "held accountable" for giving academic assessment high priority. We must identify student learning outcomes for each of our courses, devise ways to measure student achievement of these outcomes, and then make refinements in the design of our courses based upon this assessment. All this sounds very scientific, but closer examination of the methodology reveals such serious flaws in research design that the costs far outweigh the benefits. We are required to include verbiage about our outcomes in every course syllabus and to submit 3 or 4 assessment reports each year to an "assessment director," who is clueless as to how to combine and analyze all these data in any meaningful way.

All this micromanagement is breaking down our resistence to standardized testing and teaching to the test. At least, we wouldn't have to contend with the paperwork that takes so much time away from course preparation and giving good feedback to students.

It is not often that I reach into a Republican bag of tricks, but here's Reagan's proposal to close
down the Sec. of Ed. cabinet post and the US Office of Education and transfer those funds directly
to the States for improving education. It wouldn't have been a good idea then but it would
now. It is the only way I see for getting rid of Grants' Management at the federal level which
is where most of the corruption and incompetence will be found. As things stand now, higher
education is not only being put out of reach, it is being put out to pasture. It will provide even less leadership to the K-12 system than it currently does.

Could you give more specific information about corruption in Grants' management?

I'm skeptical about turning over all governmental regulation of higher education to states. The Iowa Dept. of Ed. has a national reputation for being autocratic and rigid in its regulation of elementary and secondary education. International traditions of academic freedom and competition for highly qualified faculty have so far kept the heavy hand of the Iowa Dept. of Ed out of college classrooms, except for teacher education programs. It's really sad to see the many arbitrary obstacles that the IA DOE puts in front of students seeking a career in teaching. More reasonable federal standards are needed as a counterveiling force.

Anyway, the more prominent regulatory agents in higher ed are non-governmental accreditors like the North Central Higher Learning Commission.

Istood4u, I would have agreed with this appraisal at the time Reagan made the proposal but
I think the general level of sophistication and competence at the state and federal level. Yes,
it is the teacher preparation programs in higher education and accrediting agencies that influence
quality--not the administration of education at either the national or state level. Educational
services and all human services are delivered at the community level. Our funding and our oversight must take this into account.

I've talked about the evils of the, "Grants' Management Model" of goverment on several threads. I'll pull something together or start a new thread on it.

You may have a good point that there is now corruption at the federal level that did not exist in Reagan's term, but I need for you to explicate this problem of "Grant's management", before I comment further on this aspect.

Actually, I doubt whether there has been any real change in the sophistication and competence of teaching since Reagan's time.

Now, there are even larger disparities in the funding that communities can bring to education. Federal funding and oversight could do much better than NCLB to assure more equitable educational funding for students from communities impacted by poverty.

The people who make accreditation visits are administrators rather than teaching faculty. Accreditation agencies in higher education are crony networks of administrators. These agencies are hardly change agents that promote innovation or greater fiscal responsibility. It's always easier for a campus to sustain accreditation if it well bankrolled by endowments or public revenues. Accreditation visitors rarely scrutinize the fiscal responsibilities of other administrators. Administrators look out for their own.

Teacher preparation programs are much less accessible in both rural and urban communities impacted by poverty. Federal programs could do much more to prepare students who originate in those communities to stay and teach in those communities. Federal programs could also offer more incentives for students from more affluent communities to start their teaching careers in poverty impacted communities.

Teacher preparation programs are in desparate need of streamlining. These programs are like "double majors" that typically take more than four years to complete. Students select a traditional liberal arts major to get "endorsements," and they also are required to take an equal compliment teacher education courses for licensure. The teacher education courses are prescribed by the State and these courses entail much more busy work than real teaching expertise and innovative ideas.

The teaching profession is becoming hamstrung by micromanagement, but I don't see federal deregulation and privatization as remedies.