Accountability Takes Center Stage in Recent News Coverage

As the Higher Education Act moves toward renewal, a small flurry of college accountability coverage has hit the news pages. At issue is how schools measure student learning outcomes, and how those results ultimately are used. Will they be used by the universities internally to improve or change teaching practices, or will they also be a means of institutional comparability? In addition, Forbes ranks colleges and universities based on outputs, and Sen. Chuck Grassley writes about college costs. Here is an overview of recent stories.

•   The Chronicle of Higher Education's Paul Basken writes that a recent report from the Council for Higher Education Accreditation urges member agencies to require proof of student achievement to receive accreditation. CHEA, according to Basken, calls for institutions to "adapt more to future conditions, including nontraditional academic settings, such as for-profit colleges and online courses, and the increasing number of students who attend multiple institutions." The report responds to concerns raised by the 2006 report from Commission on the Future of Higher Education.

• Chronicle reporter David Glenn writes on the comments of Judith S. Eaton, president of the Council for Higher Education Accreditation, at the recent meeting of the Association of Institutional Researchers. She warns her audience that the government may soon require institutions to report data on 300 or more topics, ranging from tuition increases to meningitis outbreaks. Her advice: "I would have a Web site, for example, that tells anybody who goes there immediately some very salient things about the performance of my institution vis-à-vis its students. With all due respect to all of the wonderful college Web sites out there, that kind of information isn't easy to find on many of them."

• Another article by Glenn reports that major accrediting organizations are urging colleges to start analyzing their available student achievement data now and to put it to good use if they want to avoid further government regulation. Glenn quotes Linda A. Suskie, vice president of the Middle States Commission on Higher Education: "We're operating on borrowed time. If we don't properly assess student learning and share our results with the public in ways that they understand, then someone else is going to tell us what and how to assess, and we're not going to like it."

• Richard Vedder, head of the Center for College Affordability and Productivity, argues in Forbes magazine that the current system used by U.S. News and World Report to rank institutions is not enough for consumers. He writes that U.S. News largely measures external factors and ignores more relevant areas such as the opinions of the students and how successful they are after graduation. Vedder offers the CCAP rankings as an alternative, relying on a host of outcomes measures such as the percent of students who are Rhodes scholars, Fulbright grant recipients, and Who's Who in America listings.

• Sara Lipka writes in the Chronicle that the reliability of the National Survey of Student Engagement is coming under new scrutiny. Researchers at Cornell University argue that results may be skewed by declining response rates and the overrepresentation of women, students with high GPAs, and students who were more involved in school activities in response pools.

• Juniata College President Thomas R. Kepple argues against the federal government getting involved in the college ranking business in an opinion piece that appeared in the Philadelphia Daily News, Pittsburg Post-Gazette, and Harrisburg Patriot-News. Kepple mentions web sites such as studentsreview.com, collegeproweler.com, and NAICU's own U-CAN as options for students to find and review schools on their own. He writes, "The last thing anyone needs is an intrusive national accreditation agency to oversee a college system that has survived and prospered for centuries without this kind of ‘help' from the federal government."

• St. Louis Dispatch reporter Kevin Crowe writes on a different kind of accountability: universities reporting on campus crime. He notes that efforts by Washington University in St. Louis to encourage its students to report crimes may be sending people the wrong message about the institution's safety. Crowe writes that according to Security on Campus Inc., "the higher rate at Washington University may signal only that the school is upfront about crime on its campus." He reports other criticisms of the federal reporting mandate, including concerns that it has too many loopholes and is easy to manipulate.

• Sen. Chuck Grassley (R.-IA), ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee writes in the Chronicle of his concern over rising tuition costs. He notes that several colleges with robust endowments have taken the initiative to replace loans with grants and fund more low-income students, but wonders if even more could be done by those schools and others. Sen. Grassley addresses several arguments often used by higher education institutions to defend their endowment and cost management practices.

With the rising cost of food, fuel and just about everything else, parents of college-aged students always have the cost of tuition-and what the payoff of a college degree will be-on their minds. Colleges and universities can utilize efforts such as U-CAN to provide consumers with the most up-to-date information on all aspects of higher education. In this new age of accountability, it is more important than ever for institutions to provide transparency to students, families, policymakers and other stakeholders. NAICU strives to ensure that students and families remain fully aware of the value of a private higher education.

-- by Tara Lane (Lane, a senior at Brigham Young University, is an intern in NAICU's public affairs office)