Accountability in American Higher Education

by Carey, Kevin; Schneider, Mark

• ISBN13: 9780230110311
• ISBN10: 0230110312
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2010-12-15
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

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. InAccountability in American Higher Educationprominent 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 volumeprovides insightful analysis that legislators, administrators, and consumers can use to engage institutions of higher education in the difficult but necessary conversation of accountability.

Author Biography

Mark Schneider is Vice President for New Education Initiatives at the American Institutes for Research with the American Enterprise Institute and Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Stony Brook University, State University of New York; Kevin Carey is Policy Director of Education Sector in Washington, D.C.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. vii
Introduction	p. 1
On the Foundations of Standardized Assessment of College Outcomes and Estimating Value Added	p. 7
Faculty Scholarly Productivity at American Research Universities	p. 33
Student-Unit Record Systems and Postsecondary Accountability: Exploiting Emerging Data Resources	p. 121
Higher-Education Finance and Accountability	p. 141
Death of a University	p. 165
What's Governance Got to Do with It?	p. 189
How College Rankings Are Going Global (and Why Their Spread Will Be Good for Higher Education)	p. 211
The Politics of Higher Education	p. 251
Accountability for Community Colleges: Moving Forward	p. 273
Scaling Back Tenure: How Claims of Academic Freedom Limit Accountability in Higher Education	p. 295
Policy Barriers to Postsecondary Cost Control	p. 317
Notes on Contributors	p. 337
Index	p. 343
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