Derek Bok on the New U
Derek Bok, former Presdent of Harvard University (1971 - 1991), and the appointed Interim President of Harvard University (July 2006), has contributed a column to Forbe's Magazine's "Blank Slate" section - The Nes 'U'. His latest book, Our Underachieving Colleges, was published in January.
The essay / editorial starts with a list of short comings he attributes to outmoted teaching methods being a major embarrassment to higher education but then makes a leap to imagining a cure based on standardized assessments of student performance - using "computers capable of scanning and evaluating written essays to measure students' understanding of complex material or their clarity and style in writing the English language."
He observes
For all their success, however, American universities have one major weakness. The quality of education they provide is not all that it should be. According to a large body of research accumulated over the past 30 years, students do make progress in attaining the knowledge and skills they need, but the progress is typically modest. For example, college freshmen with critical thinking skills at the 50th percentile of their entering class only improve to a level equivalent to the 69th percentile by the time they graduate. Many students who major in science and engineering leave writing English no better than they did when they entered. Conversely, seniors majoring in the humanities often graduate without the improvement in quantitative skills needed to understand simple statistics or compare different options for financing their home. Fewer than ten percent of college seniors believe that they have made substantial progress in mastering a foreign language. According to one former college president, the rest “know enough to read a menu, but not enough to compliment the chef.”
After exploring some possible reforms and some wishful thinking ...
Other reforms would be welcome if only someone could figure out how to achieve them. It would be wonderful if colleges could strictly limit the time undergraduates spend with their iPods, computer games and television sets, and thereby halt the seductive distractions that are gradually eroding the quality and quantity of time spent preparing for classes. It would be a blessing if American high school seniors could graduate with academic skills that were at least equal to the average levels in other industrialized nations. But these reforms, however valuable, are beyond the reach of universities.
... he come up with suggestions for standardized assessment measures ...
What I would wish for is a set of reliable, universally accepted measures for evaluating and comparing student progress toward all the educational goals appropriate to every college and professional school. Some of these measures might be artfully constructed short-answer tests that could accurately assess student progress in critical thinking, moral reasoning, quantitative skills and foreign language competency. Others would require computers capable of scanning and evaluating written essays to measure students' understanding of complex material or their clarity and style in writing the English language.