In ?Measuring the Humanities: The Slippery Slope from Assessment to Standardization? Michael Holquist argues?to simplify it in a way that does violence to its nuances?that learning outcomes assessment initiatives in US higher education could lead to standardization, specifically a type of standardization that reduces the diversity and richness of higher education to a single business-oriented model.
He argues that faculty proposing to take control of their own assessment initiatives as a means of warding off this sort of standardization fail to appreciate the influences they will expose themselves to. That engaging in assessments of their own will not be enough to ward off budget cuts and department reductions or government or other bureaucratic attempts at standardization, particularly in our current difficult economic climate.
He offers, as an example, the fact that reductions in foreign language programs have been occurring despite the fact that foreign-language instruction programs have been more engaged in assessment than other humanities disciplines (or, at least, have been more engaged in a particular notion of assessment). He also references the passage of HB2504 by the Texas legislatures?described as a kind of education consumer protection/shopping act?as proof that ?governmental oversight can trump whatever local efforts of well meaning faculty at Rice University and the University of Texas might have made to institute their own assessment program.?
Such standardization, he concludes, will lead to all universities become more like for-profit colleges, which means dire things? for the future of humanities and indeed, of human kind.
But I don?t believe that the initiation of our own assessment initiatives will necessarily?or even likely?lead down this road. And here are a few ?reasons??it might be better to call them ?impressions??why:
1) US higher education consists and has consisted of a variety of different educational options?4 year BA institutions, 2 year community colleges, professional, trade, vocational, and career schools, religious schools, fine arts schools, for-profit schools, regional schools, extension programs, distance learning programs, and technical institutes?just to name the ones that I can immediately recall seeing advertisements for?Such diversity suggests that Americans and American institutions have long recognized that meeting the needs and goals of US higher ed requires a variety of different education institutes that are meant to meet different outcomes
2) There has been a backlash?publicly and administratively?against for-profit colleges. They are seen as increasingly ?unprofitable? for everyone involved except the corporations that own them. While questions have been raised about the ?value? of a BA from a 4 year liberal arts college and while we obviously view future employment as one of our goals, we are not structured around the same explicitly financial equation: X degree=Y job=Z income
3) While many?justifiable and important?questions are being raised about the cost of a 4-year degree, that is not the same as saying that Americans believe that such degrees have no value or are useless?parents continue to save and students continue to apply to institutions like UMD, precisely because they believe the education it has to offer is even more important in today?s economically-constrained job market
4) Our recent and ongoing economic and political situation clearly demonstrates that Americans are as likely?perhaps more so?to view ?businessmen/corporate America/government? as part of the problem than they are to assume they have the answers to those problems or even know what they are doing. Likewise, it has also made clear that even in the midst of an extended economic crisis we are unable to come to a ?standard? agreement about much of anything.
And finally, but perhaps most importantly:
5) If we accept Holquist?s argument, then there?s nothing we can do to prevent this outcome, either we will invite it ourselves (however well-meaning we may be thanks to corporate creep) or it will be imposed on us by governmental forces. If anything, arguments like Holquist?s emphasize the need for all of us to take the initiative in developing, directing, and overseeing assessment within our individual disciplines and schools.
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Source: http://assessmentforlearning101.wordpress.com/2013/01/15/why-i-dont-buy-the-slippery-slope-argument/
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