As final exams near, the federal government wants to make sure college administration and faculty are not left out of the examination mix. A Sunday Boston Globe article highlighted the Department of Education's attempts to introduce accountability standards into higher education in order to determine just how well and how effectively students are learning.
Many colleges have resisted this push. This is the correct response. The federal government should not expand its oversight and accountability standards into higher education. Instead, the market and existing mechanisms should determine the effectiveness of college academics.
Federal government encroachment is antithetical to an effective liberal arts education. Adding new tests, minimum standards and bureaucracy will almost certainly harm the very forces that make a college environment unique and worthwhile.
University academic environments are diverse, experimental and innovative precisely because they are not tied down to meeting broad standards. Because professors and faculty can change what material is taught, colleges have tremendous flexibility to adapt to a changing world. This nimble framework also allows students to compete against others and be on the cutting edge of business and culture.
Though the government hopes simply to test how effectively students learn, creating this standard would force colleges to teach to the government's guidelines. Moreover, since each university sets different academic requirements for its students, to compare students across schools is a useless exercise. As students apply to college, they consider these very differences in academic requirements as reasons to choose one school over another.
Additionally, the government is not required to provide a college-level education and cannot demand that a certain standard must be met. The government does provide money for certain programs at universities both private and public, but it does not fund everything at the school. The federal government's regulatory role should match the breadth and purpose of its funding and not exceed it.
The best way to determine a university's effectiveness at educating a student is to let the current system and market forces work their magic. As anyone who ever applied to college knows, college ranking lists of all sorts have a tremendous impact on the higher education industry. And while these lists have their faults, every school wants as good a showing as possible in order to attract the best students and faculty.
These rankings do precisely that - they influence where the best students and professors choose to be. Not only does this system drive colleges and universities to improve, but it also drives everyone on campus to maximize their experience at the school. Because students want the highest quality education for their dollar, and because professors desire to be as accomplished in their professional field as possible, the market forces effectively work to push universities to be the best they can be.
When it comes down to it, no student and family will pay for a sub-par education for long. Eventually students will transfer to a better school or put pressure on the university to improve its quality and maximize each tuition dollar's value. Obviously, colleges want to prevent earning a reputation as a bad institution as well as keeping massive amounts of students from leaving.
Higher education is effectively self-policing. Students, families and institutions will develop their own standards to determine academic quality unique to the needs and desires of a particular university. The Boston Globe notes how Harvard Professor Eric Mazur uses technology to test students' comprehension of concepts in real time. Eventually, universities everywhere will develop their own mechanisms to keep the freewheeling college spirit alive while they improve the quality of the university. A one-size-fits-all approach applied by the federal government is not likely to accomplish this.
Let colleges and universities use their current mechanisms and develop new ones, as needed, to determine academic effectiveness. This close to final exams, the last thing any student wants to hear about is another test. Especially when it's unnecessary.
