Should U.S. Adopt Pan-European Standards for Higher Education Outcomes
Posted on May 28, 2008 by David Gray
This article’s scope is far larger than online learning, but comments on a movement with which we all need to come to grips! Written by Scott Jaschik for Inside Higher Ed and entitled “Wake-Up Call for American Higher Ed,” it’s about the growing popularity across Europe of higher education outcome measurements that are more specific, perhaps more relevant, and, say proponents, more easily compared across multiple institutions. In short, the evolving European system challenges U.S. colleges and universities to better define learning outcomes; it questions our system of granting credits without much regard to subject matter difficulty; it chides us for not taking a granular enough look at various groups of students or ignoring whole categories of learners, such as adults who may take only a course or two at a time over a long period of time.
There are those who say, and I agree, that in an increasingly global labor market where degree mobility is of increasing relevance and concern, the United States’ higher education system risks being marginalized if we cannot verify and validate the specific skills of our graduates. Can they do the math, so to speak. In truth, in America today, we can’t even be assured that an engineering graduate from a college in California has the same specific abilities and knowledge as an engineering graduate from a Massachusetts college.
Coming to agreement about what a set of specific standard outcomes should include and imposing these measurements is, of course, a highly charged subject. Detractors of the idea argue that college professors will sacrifice critical thinking skills in favor of teaching to the test. They further argue that it weakens the time-honored principle of faculty control over the curriculum. Maybe. But even if we concede these points, I raise the following questions:
- How do we as a leading nation assure others worldwide that out graduates are at or above a par with other international students?
- If we can’t map our system to a pan-European model that seems to be working, then what blueprint would be better?
I welcome your thoughts on this subject because in my opinion it is one of the most critical issues facing U.S. higher education in the coming decade.
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I support a national education standardization on degrees and requirements. There should be some standards of acceptance that degrees should follow and some standard in titles and curriculum.
I have seen degrees offered by some schools that do not relate to other common degrees by title but by curriculum they are identical. This creates issues when looking for work, having to spend precious time defending a degree title for an administration that wanted to be different.
In addition, this would allow academic standards across the board by having the curriculum standard, making transfers and advancement to another University simple. A school would not need to request the syllabus from other schools for unknown courses.
I know there are those who oppose this. It would in essence make the curriculum at Fresno State the same as Harvard. This is where faculty and environment come in. The schools would have a requirement to teach the same material, the experience is what differentiates the schools.
Just my thoughts.