Accountability in American Higher Education

✍ Scribed by Kevin Carey, Mark Schneider

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2010
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 364
• Series: Education Policy
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Three years after U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spelling's national commission on higher education, and nearly a decade after No Child Left Behind revolutionized k-12 accountability, there is little agreement on what accountability in higher education should look like. While more students are enrolling in (and failing to complete) postsecondary education than ever before, scholars and policymakers have paid far less attention to questions of how well colleges are teaching students and helping them earn degrees while simultaneously contributing new research and scholarship. In Accountability in American Higher Education prominent academics, entrepreneurs, and journalists assess the obstacles to, and potential opportunities for, accountability in higher education in America. Key issues include new measures of college student learning, power education data systems, implications for faculty tenure, accreditation, for-profit higher education, community colleges, and the political dynamics of reform. This volume provides insightful analysis that legislators, administrators, and consumers can use to engage institutions of higher education in the difficult but necessary conversation of accountability.   

✦ Table of Contents

Cover......Page 1
Contents......Page 6
Acknowledgments......Page 8
Introduction......Page 10
1 On the Foundations of Standardized Assessment of College Outcomes and Estimating Value Added......Page 16
2 Faculty Scholarly Productivity at American Research Universities......Page 42
3 Student-Unit Record Systems and Postsecondary Accountability: Exploiting Emerging Data Resources......Page 130
4 Higher-Education Finance and Accountability......Page 150
5 Death of a University......Page 174
6 What’s Governance Got to Do with It?......Page 198
7 How College Rankings Are Going Global (and Why Their Spread Will Be Good for Higher Education)......Page 220
8 The Politics of Higher Education......Page 260
9 Accountability for Community Colleges: Moving Forward......Page 282
10 Scaling Back Tenure: How Claims of Academic Freedom Limit Accountability in Higher Education......Page 304
11 Policy Barriers to Postsecondary Cost Control......Page 326
Notes on Contributors......Page 346
Index......Page 352