The Washington Monthly education issue

Politics and religion
1

You’ve got the 2007 college guide, where they use their own ranking system to create a list of the best colleges.

We use three criteria that we believe best measure the impact schools have on the country. The first is social mobility: does the school do a good job recruiting and graduating poorer students? The second is research: is the school supporting the scientific and humanistic study that is key to our national strength, by producing PhDs and winning research grants? And the third is service: how effectively does the school foster an ethic of giving back to the country, either through military or civilian service? (For further details, see “A Note on Methodology”)

The sleazy higher education lobby.

In 2003, Ted Kennedy tried to nudge America’s colleges and universities toward changing two of the least defensible practices in the modern admissions process. The first is legacy preferences, in which schools heavily favor applications from the children of alumni, often ahead of students with stronger academic resumes but less-well-connected parents. The second practice, early decision, where schools make it easier for prospective students to get admitted if they’ll commit to attending at the time they apply, has a similar effect, since wealthier candidates don’t need to compare financial aid packages and can therefore more easily commit to a school early. Taken together, the two practices fly in the face of the ideal of American meritocracy, and reduce the opportunities for young people of more modest backgrounds to go to selective colleges.

Under Kennedy’s proposal, schools that used both tools and also graduated students of color at a disproportionately low rate—at the time, that meant eighty-seven schools, including five Ivies—would be required to try to boost that rate, and would receive federal money to do so. If they failed, the schools would be required to give up legacy preferences or early decision, or else forgo other forms of federal aid.

…

But before Kennedy’s proposal could even be formally introduced, One Dupont Circle weighed in. That’s the address of the marble-and-glass office building that serves as the de facto headquarters for the array of groups representing the organized interests of America’s colleges and universities. Prominently located in a fashionable D.C. neighborhood that’s home to many of the better-funded nonprofits, One Dupont (or the “National Center for Higher Education,” as its awning appropriately proclaims) is owned by the largest and most powerful of the higher ed associations, the American Council on Education. In order to facilitate coordination of policy and strategy, ACE leases the rest of the space, at below-market rates, exclusively to other higher ed groups (from the National Association of College and University Attorneys to the American College Personnel Association). That sense of cohesion tends to come through in the lobby’s work: one higher ed expert I spoke to called One Dupont “a building that speaks, like the White House.”

When the denizens of One Dupont learned of the Kennedy proposal, they pulled out all the stops to fight it. Legacy preferences are a key way for many colleges to maintain favor with deep-pocketed alumni, and early decision allows them to manage the admissions process with more predictability, and to lock in certain coveted applicants—often wealthy athletic recruits, who play sports like squash and lacrosse and whose parents can be expected to pay full price.
Higher ed lobbyists quickly mobilized their member colleges, encouraging them to go directly to senators on the key committee. Publicly, the lobby stressed the effect the measure would have on small religious institutions and historically black colleges, some of which, they claimed, depend for their existence on using the admissions process to maintain alumni loyalty. But in reality, say Hill staffers who worked on the issue, it was the elite New England private colleges and universities, appealing directly to their home-state senators Kennedy and Chris Dodd of Connecticut, who applied particularly effective behind-the-scenes pressure. When Dodd began to waver, Kennedy was forced to back off, and the two instead proposed a largely toothless alternative that merely required colleges to report on the number, socioeconomic status, and race of students who were relatives of alumni or were admitted through early decision. It involved no penalties of any kind. Yet ultimately, under pressure from One Dupont, even this measure was never brought up for a vote.

Finally, a fascinating bit about how community colleges are often better than four years.

Conventional wisdom assumes that if you hold schools with low-income students to high standards, graduation rates will plummet. In fact, our list indicates that the opposite may be the case. CCSSE research has found that the level of academic challenge is positively linked with graduation rates. Indeed, the average graduation rate of colleges on our list is almost 50 percent higher than the national average for community colleges. Undergraduates who are taught well are more likely to succeed and ultimately complete their degree, meaning that the more colleges ask from their students, the more they get back. This suggests that many students aren’t dropping out because colleges are keeping their standards appropriately high—they’re dropping out because the standards are inappropriately low.

…

What, then, are the conclusions to be drawn from our list? For community colleges, the main one is this: No more excuses. It’s just not very credible to blame subpar performance on funding levels or student demographics when schools like Hazard and Atlanta Technical are performing so well. For four-year universities, the conclusion is even tougher: They ought to be ashamed of themselves. Despite all their advantages—lavish campuses, brilliant scholars, social networks that no community college can match—the quality of the teaching at four-year institutions is less rigorous and less helpful than that found at the community colleges on our list. This is a stunning indictment of the extent to which teaching at many of America’s “best” universities has been neglected.

2

They go into depth on Cascadia Community College.

That a two-year college could be more academically rigorous than a four-year university—one that’s a “first tier” national university, according to U.S. News & World Report—would seem unlikely. It’s long been an article of faith in higher education that any four-year university is better than any two-year college. Yet Hayley’s experience of the comparative advantage of Cascadia (which is located next to the University of Washington) is borne out by hard data. Although its enrollees typically have less promising academic backgrounds than UW freshman, Cascadia graduates who then continue at UW earn better grades than their peers. It’s hard to imagine a clearer indication that the education students receive at Cascadia is superior.

Indeed, other measures of teaching quality suggest that Cascadia is the best community college in America. Using data from a well-respected survey of educational best practices, the Community College Survey of Student Engagement, the Washington Monthly has created the first-ever list of the nation’s top two-year colleges. (See “America’s Best Community Colleges”) Cascadia places number two overall, and in those measures most closely correlated with high grades and graduation rates—the extent to which teaching is “active and collaborative”—Cascadia tops the list.

Cascadia’s success is extraordinary. But the difference doesn’t depend on funding: the money spent per pupil at Cascadia is typical among community colleges, and about half that spent at the University of Washington. Nor is the college’s achievement the result of some secret formula not known to other educators. Not explaining things and making students work in teams to discover answers turn out to be precisely the kinds of teaching practices that decades of research say help students learn most. Yet the vast majority of four-year colleges and universities don’t teach their undergraduates this way. Instead, they rely far too often on the same old teaching methods nobody thinks are any good.

Most four-year schools teach poorly for a simple reason: they were designed with another purpose in mind. America’s dominant model for higher education was developed in the late nineteenth century, when the nation’s student population was very different than today. Institutions like Germany’s renowned Humboldt University were the inspiration: academies where highly trained scholars focused primarily on original research. Students, it was assumed, would benefit from close contact with learned masters who would impart the information they discovered in the form of lectures. The spirit of the age was summed up in the single word dominating the seal of Harvard: Veritas. Truth—the extension of knowledge through high-level research—was the order of the day. As a way of expanding the frontiers of human understanding, this proved a massive success. America’s research universities became the envy of the world, gestating world-class minds and fueling economic growth.

But the twentieth century also brought a sea change: mass undergraduate education. High school became universal, preparing more students for college. The returning veterans who flooded college campuses on the GI Bill after World War II were followed by the baby boomers, along with minorities and women emancipated by civil rights and social change. As the economy evolved and high-paying blue- collar jobs disappeared, still more students sought college diplomas. To meet the tidal wave of new demand, states expanded their flagship universities to mammoth proportions—30,000, 40,000, 50,000 students or more—and built hundreds more public universities in a similar mold. The logic seemed impeccable: the lecture model of education was cheap and easy to bring to scale, and the universities could house the researchers needed to drive economic expansion and fight the cold war.

Unfortunately, there was a problem: the old model turned out to be a terrible way to teach most undergraduates. The standard lecture did little to engage students or push them to do the hard, hands-on work necessary to truly grasp college-level material. The doctoral programs that produced the nation’s college professors offered little or no instruction on the theory or practice of teaching. Instead, they trained and tenured PhDs in narrow areas of scholarship, who were then hired and promoted based wholly on their research, not their aptitude in the classroom.

The sharpest observers realized the mistake in expanding a system ill-suited for its primary mission, educating undergraduates. In 1963, Clark Kerr, the legendary architect of the California higher education system, delivered a historic lecture series at Harvard where he warned of the “cruel paradox” that “a superior faculty results in an inferior concern for undergraduate teaching.” As he later explained, the emphasis on research and the emphasis on teaching “were not as compatible as we first assumed … the German Humboldt model assumed that teaching is always and in all ways improved by engagement with research. It is not.” The upshot, as Kerr foresaw and others later came to realize, was that “educational policy for undergraduates was neglected.”

About the same time that the great expansion of higher education leveled off in the 1970s, a new wave of researchers studied and defined teaching methods superior to what most undergraduates actually received. Among the most famous was a seminal 1987 paper by researchers Arthur Chickering and Zelda Gamson, “Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education.” Synthesizing years of cognitive science and educational research, Chickering and Gamson mapped out the fundamental principles of effective teaching: The more students actively engage with subject matter, the better they master material and develop critical skills. Undergraduates learn most when they’re asked to solve problems, perform original research, work collaboratively—and receive regular feedback from the professor and their peers. The passive, impersonal lecture turned out to be the worst of all possible worlds.

(By the way, is this format readable? Alternate suggestions?)

3

Conventional wisdom assumes that if you hold schools with low-income students to high standards, graduation rates will plummet. In fact, our list indicates that the opposite may be the case. CCSSE research has found that the level of academic challenge is positively linked with graduation rates. Indeed, the average graduation rate of colleges on our list is almost 50 percent higher than the national average for community colleges… This suggests that many students aren’t dropping out because colleges are keeping their standards appropriately high—they’re dropping out because the standards are inappropriately low.

Question: what would happen to graduation rates at crappy colleges if the standards were raised?

Evidence: (1) graduation rates at excellent colleges are higher than at crappy colleges and (2) excellent colleges have higher standards than crappy colleges.

Assumption: Correlation implies causation.

Conclusion: Because graduation rates are positively correlated with standards, crappy colleges’ graduation rates would increase if they raised standards.

I have an problem in mind for undergrads in Stats 101 classes to work collaboratively on.

4

Although its enrollees typically have less promising academic backgrounds than UW freshman, Cascadia graduates who then continue at UW earn better grades than their peers. It’s hard to imagine a clearer indication that the education students receive at Cascadia is superior.

Of course, the students who go on from Cascadia to the UW are somewhat self-selected - they are the most motivated students, so implying that somehow a Cascadia education is superior to a UW education based on comparing the best students from Cascadia with the most average students from the UW is fallacious.

The more students actively engage with subject matter, the better they master material and develop critical skills. Undergraduates learn most when they’re asked to solve problems, perform original research, work collaboratively—and receive regular feedback from the professor and their peers. The passive, impersonal lecture turned out to be the worst of all possible worlds.

You’d think the author never actually attended a university, with its attendant study groups, TAs, office hours, discussion sessions, labs, etc. It’s not like you show up, listen to a lecture by some egghead, then get in your car and drive home without any interpersonal interaction with your fellow students.

You can make the argument that TAs are doing most of the actual teaching (which is undoubtedly true), but what else is new. Having attended both a good, well-funded community college and a prestigious 4-year college (Berkeley) I can tell you that there is absolutely no comparison to the level of education between the two.

5

They aren’t exactly talking about Berkeley as their comparision point in there.

6

It’s not very surprising that different institutions would better serve different populations of students.

Community colleges are excellent choices for motivated students whose preparation is spotty.

Way too many people go to four year universities.

Elite four year institutions aren’t designed to serve the same population as community colleges, or even that served by mainstream four-year institutions.

7

Yeah, they sort of dodge the most obvious explanation for the “positive link” between academic challenge and graduation rates: colleges that offer a higher academic challenge usually also have stricter admissions standards.

8

I can’t quite tell on that one. They rank colleges by a combined score, part of which gives more points for taking in a lower-scoring student body (to counterattack taking nothing but high scorers); they also partly score by graduation rate.

9

I have no dog in this fight, except this:

If everyone here donated to Berea College in Kentucky, it would be money you could be proud of spending on your deathbed.

H.

edit: And I’m a hard-line atheist, too.

Double-edit: At least buy some stuff, we’re talking top-quality handcrafts at good prices:
http://bereacc.stores.yahoo.net/

10

And be sure to come down to Berea for their annual Spoonbread Festival, Sep. 14-16. They’ll be spoonbread making contests, spoonbread eating contests, spoonbread wearing contests, the crowning of Miss Spoonbread 2007, opening of the Spoonbread Time Capsule of 1907, and lots more spoonbread-themed wackiness and hijinks!

11

aaand an interesting study.

It is ironic that, during this same period, economists who study the design of jobs and the structure of incentives within private firms began to take more seriously the task of explaining why firms rarely attach performance pay to objective measures of output. Most incentive pay takes the form of raises, promotions, or bonuses related to subjective evaluations of a broad range of qualitative and quantitative information, and Holmstrom and Milgrom (1991) argue that, in many instances, firms find it optimal to pay workers a fixed base wage and monitor their allocation of effort among tasks even if the firm has access to “good” performance measures in a statistical sense. Their key insight is that jobs may involve multiple tasks, and as a result, incentive pay based on any given performance measure can easily lead to undesirable distortions in the amount of effort allocated to various tasks, even if the performance measure is highly correlated with total output. They discuss “teaching to the test” in response to test-based accountability systems as an example of such a distortion, and in recent years, a significant literature has explored the extent to which test-based accountability systems actually create increases in subject mastery or only increases in measured performance on a specific type of exam.
In recent work,[1] we explore a different effect of test-based accountability systems on the allocation of teacher effort, and we find evidence consistent with the hypothesis that test-based accountability systems not only shape decisions of teachers concerning what to teach but also whom to teach. We show that even though advocates of NCLB offered it as a remedy for disadvantaged children who receive poor service from their public schools, the design of NCLB almost guarantees that the most academically disadvantaged children will not benefit from its implementation and may actually be harmed.