salvo lavis education thesis
TRANSCRIPT
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Perceptions of College & Indicators for Accountability
Essential Questions Everyone Should Ask About College
or
An Elephant In Higher Eds Living Room?
Salvo A. Lavis
TC 660HPlan II Honors Program
The University of Texas at Austin
May 7, 2004
Daniel T. Slesnick, Ph.D.Department of Economics
Supervising Professor
Michael Starbird, Ph.D.
Department of MathematicsSecond Reader
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ABSTRACT
Author: Salvo Lavis
Title: Perceptions of College & Indicators for Accountability
Supervising Professor: Daniel T. Slesnick, Ph.D.
Why go to college? Because I have to. Because I want to get a good job. Becausethats what you do after college.
College is a necessary step in America today. Students and society demand higher
education, and the university and its professors supply its content. Given that college is soimportant, how does the University of Texas ensure the goals of suppliers and demanders
are met? How do faculty members view the goals of their work, and how does that relateto the students goals?
Is a college education connected to the reasons that students and faculty are in college inthe first place? And whos accountable for ensuring a connection?
Much educational research concerns best practices. My study explores the behavioralsocietal factors that bear on college experiences, and ultimately how they affect the
effectiveness of the university. In first-hand interviews with some of UTs best facultymembers and surveys of students at various stages of their college careers, I ask if we canuse perceptions of college as indicators for accountability.
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Introduction & background
Every year the University of Texas at Austin unleashes over ten thousand new graduates
into the real world, which for most people means the job market. But aside from a
diploma on the wall, what does the undergraduate have to show for his or her college
education?
Today, a college education is an essential tool in the arsenal of any job hunter. Common
advice regarding education goes like this: If you want to get a good job, you have to go
to college. Just as common: It used to be that you needed a high school diploma for that
job. But now you need a college degree. Some even add that soon enough, graduate
school will follow in the footsteps of college in this respect.
From the economists point of view, this demand for education is important for a couple
big reasons: First the opportunity cost of education is very high, as expected lifetime
income increases substantially with the attainment of a bachelors degree. Second, the
barriers to entry into low-to-mid level jobs (and above) are also great. College education
is now inextricably linked with eligibility for higher than base-level jobs.
What about the demand for college is related to the education the university supplies?
Does the necessity of a college degree for work lead to increased demand for education?
Or is it the other way around? Meaning, whatabout that degree is changing students into
better employees? There are two economic models that can address these issues: the
theory of human capital, proposed by Gary Becker1, and that of market signaling, for
1See http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/HumanCapital.html for a concise overview of Beckers human
capital theory and other economics work.
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which Michael Spence won the Nobel Prize in 1992. 2
The human capital theory stresses that knowledge and skills acquired in formal education
directly increase future productivity of the worker. School produces this productivity
increase by teaching [students] marketable skills andproductivity is later rewarded
when the graduate enters the labor market, according to economist John D. Owen. The
gain in the individuals productivity takes two forms, improvements in cognitive
achievements and socialization.3 This kind of transformation is clearly exemplified in
trade schooling: learning how to fix leaks, draw blood, or wire circuits increase the
effectiveness of plumbers, nurses, and electricians at their respective jobs.
Arguably at the University of Texass professional schools, this model holds nicely. The
Nursing, Pharmacy, Law, Engineering, Social Work, Education, Public Affairs, and
Business Schools ostensibly relay capitalizable knowledge to their graduates, who then
directly apply that knowledge in their post-college jobs.
One must question if this is the case in the College of Liberal Arts or Natural Sciences?
Given that most liberal arts grads dont pursue professions immediately related to the
content of their studies, the human capital theory seems challenged from the start.
Furthermore, while students enroll in professional schools with the expectation of future
employment in the field, this also doesnt hold for liberal artists, whose post-college
2 More information about Spences Nobel Prize is available online at the Nobel website:
http://www.nobel.se/economics/laureates/2001/spence-lecture.html. For a digest of signaling theory,
Nature provides a good article: http://www.nature.com/nsu/011018/011018-7.html.
3John D. Owen, Why Our Kids Dont Study: An Economists Perspective (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1995), 33.
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paths are on the whole undecided.
The second theory to consider, as mentioned, is that of signaling. Since employers desire
hard-working recruits who complete duties according to company specifications, they
turn to indicators of a prospective employees work skills. More technically, in the
market for labor prospective employees have substantially more information about
possible employers than the companies have about their applicants. This asymmetric
information of the labor market leads to the need for differentiating factors among
applicants for jobs. The college diploma serves as one such signal, indicating that
someone endured the work and effort of college to attain the goal (graduation) in the end.
This demand for greater information about applicants is rational on the part of employers,
since like any actor in an economic game, they seek the most bang for their buck.
Requiring a signal about applicants abilities helps ensure more effective hiring of hard
workers. Yet it bears noting that the signal alone does not speak to the technical skills of
the worker per sejust to the fact that he or she acquired the signal, presumably through
high quality work.
But as opposed to the human capital theory of education, the signaling theory does not
require learning any particular proficiency; it may happen, but its not relevant to the
signaling theory. Conversely, one might full well possess capitalizable abilities yet not
obtain a signal required for employment.
Understanding how the human capital and signaling theories apply to the decision to
attend the university encompasses a large part of my thesis investigation. Given that
college is important to future income and viewed as a necessary step, from a behavioral
point of view we should understand choices actors make when demanding education.
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Furthermore, we should understand how the demand for college affects choices actors
make at the university. Shouldnt those reasons be observable, and can we devise a
method of measuring the effectiveness of the college process?
Examine elementary, middle, and high schoolswhat we can collectively label lower
educationand youll find that guidelines set by educational boards expect students and
teachers to live up to rigid standards.
At the lower level its easier to identify concrete, curricular goals of the educational
system. Functional reading, writing, and arithmetic at various grade levels are
unquestioned benefits for growing youths.
Furthermore, these skills are observable and testable. The trademark standardized tests of
accountability in primary and secondary education, for better or worse, are designed to
evaluate teacher and student performance. Even if they dont work effectively in practice,
at least in theory they evaluate learning skills.Designers of the system care about
ensuring accountability.
Even the staunchest critics of standardized testing still express interest in ensuring that
education is a useful exercise. Several faculty members at UT with whom I spoke held
disdain for standardized tests, voicing concern that testing averts attention and motivation
away from learning and toward performance for the test itself. They identify the goals of
education as something other than will this be on the test, yet they dont oppose
successful classrooms in any way. Even without tests, we desire a system that does its
job.
Though standardized testing might avert the goals of higher education for the sake of
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evaluation, this doesnt mean that some commitment to accountability is undesired. As
my research indicates, the ill-defined and institutionally unsupported goals at the higher
level fail to meet criticism about accountability at all.
In an economy where possession of a college degree statistically forecasts higher
expected lifetime income, and where college is so necessary, focusing on the meaning of
the degree itself seems critical. Since suppliers and demanders all want the best college
education, shouldnt there be concern for accountability in higher education? Of course,
by accountability we use a lowercase a since were not implying standardized tests.
Rather, lets ask: whos accountable for making a college education concurrent with the
goals that it is supposed to fulfill? How is a college education connected to the reasons
that college is demanded in the first place?
The Department of Education, which concurs with the importance of college, states on its
website: Today, more than ever before, education is the fault line between those who
will prosper in the new economy and those who will not.4 Deciding not to go to college
doesnt just mean lost opportunities to read Shakespeare; it means a lost opportunity for
higher wages. Given that college is so important and expensive, and given that the
classroom content of college defines academic work for four years, how can
accountability apply to university education?
Because of the non-uniformity of curriculum and observable ends of higher education,
statistical analysis seems inappropriate as a first step in evaluating the effectiveness of
4http://www.ed.gov/students/prep/college/thinkcollege/early/aboutus/edlite-whatistce.html
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higher education. Its not even clear what indicators one would start with. In this sense,
perhaps all that matters is what people thinkdoes it seem like college is effective?
This thesis aims to answer: Can we use perception as an indicator for accountability? Or,
more explicitly: Can perceptions of the college experience indicate if teachers and
students are going about their jobs at the university in a responsible and effective way?
To go about this study, I propose an indirect behavioral approach: look at the motivating
factors behind the college market. What are the stated goals and missions of the actors
involved? These actors include students, faculty, the administration, and the government.
Ultimately, we hope to understand what divergence of actors goals might indicate about
the success of college from anyones perspective. Are needs and goals being met? And is
UT accountable to different constituencies by any metric?
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Research Description
Research in the field of education is plentiful. While I am not an official student of
educational psychology, classroom organization, curriculum planning, or anything of the
sort, my 17 consecutive years of entrenchment in formal education do make meand all
college studentsexperts at attitudes and experiences of the schooling process.
I aim to step back from education. Hardly do students or teachers take a birds eye view
of the educational process, asking about the meaning behind it all. What do students and
teachers think about college and its significance? In browsing academic literature on
education, a surprising gap appeared in information on motivating goals. One can find
plenty about teaching methods, but almost nothing about why students and teachers
might want to get together in the first place.
After frustration from library rummaging, I realized that my best research plan involved
taking advantage of the professors and students right here at UT. Graduating without
interviewing faculty and taking advantage of their stories seemed a waste of an
opportunity. I decided that interviews and first-hand responses would make this
investigation most effective and meaningful.
For the economists reading this, I note again that statistical analysis was not the best
approach for my investigation. To conduct a statistical analysis of teacher attitudes would
have required constructing a scale with which to quantify results. I did not want to
present a list of qualities or attitudes and have people rank them, nor did I want to
assign such qualities to professors after their interviews. From the start, I felt
qualification of responses was more important then quantification. And if you think about
it for a moment, what would I quantify? Limiting myself to specific, quantifiable
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indicators didnt seem concurrent with my original ideas.
With no index for perceptions, no obvious dimensions for analysis, and no clear objective
indicators to quantify, statistics dont answer my question. My research is not about
whether approach A or B is more effective for teaching history, or if it fosters learning.
Rather, from a behavioral point of view, what do students and teachers perceive as
reasons for being in class (and college more generally)? Where does the burden fall for
designing the educational experience?
The bulk of my research involved getting a clear picture of what the faculty think about
higher education. As it turns out, they carry the enormous responsibility of designing the
meaning of college. I began my research interviewing faculty, since I knew conversation
would familiarize me with the concerns facing the supply side of the educational
market. In the light of professors responses to my interviews, I planned then to formulate
student questions aimed at addressing the same issues that the faculty talked about.
To draft an interview list, I selected a few professors that made good impressions on me
during my time at UT. In addition, I chose a few more faculty who received teaching
awards, student acclaim, and colleague praise. If any professors at UT think about their
goals of teaching, I assumed that my interviewees would be part of that group. My initial
list included professors that have made a difference in my career, along with those
recommended to me by other teachers and specialists in the field of education. The list
grew as I gathered references from my interviews.
In the end, my interview set included a mathematician, a physicist, an educational
psychologist, a biologist-turned-educational psychologist, a poetry professor, an English
literature expert, a philosopher, two economists, and a policy advocate. I also drew from
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conversation with some of my own professors and advisors. The quantity of people in
this set turned out not to matter as much as the quality of the interviews. The more
teachers I interviewed, the more I realized how in-sync their views on the goals of good
teaching wereespecially compared with the demand side of the market. Approaches to
the classroom were different, but the higher goals of teaching were remarkably similar,
even across these various disciplines.
I could have written a lot about my interview with any one of these people. They all
provided insight and aid for my research, due in no small part to their thoughtfulness as
faculty. I realize that while these specific professors are some of the crme de la crme at
UT, they are in no way an exhaustive or exclusive collection of such people.
Also, these teachers were not meant to be part of a random sample. I was not looking to
find out what the average teacher at UT thought; the notion of conducting such a
project seemed meaningless. Interviewing a random sample of professors surely would
have given me a different set of responses, likely including various faculty who didnt
think much about their classes beyond the textbook. This is a safe enough assertion to
make, based on personal involvement in college for four years.
I set out to investigate if perceptions of the college experience indicated if teachers were
going about their jobs in a responsible way. Once again, I was not looking to determine
what the average professor was thinking, or what the best and the worst had to say. The
important thing was that ostensibly, if anyone involved in teaching has thought about the
ways that education ought to be evaluated, the best professors have.
Out of necessity to get truthful, unabashed responses from the people I interviewed, and
also because of confidentiality requirements, I agreed not to reveal the identity of my
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participants beyond their position at the university. Departments and titles as referenced
in this paper are correct; references to gender may or may not be. Only where indicated,
as in the case of a state representative, are true identities revealed.
To record my interviews I bought a digital voice recorder, which enabled me to discreetly
record the interview without putting people on the spot. Furthermore, I could upload
the recording to my computer for easy transcription and review.
I compiled a large set of feasible questions before I started my interviews. The whole list,
with which I entered my interviews, is attached in the appendix of this paper. Some of the
most pertinent included:
How do you determine what a student should take when he/she comes to college?
How much of what a student learns should be real life applicable?
How should a student change in those four years?
Many students see class as an impediment to their livesuninteresting or not
stimulating. Why do you think this is?
How do department members coordinate what a student should retain coming out of a
course?
This list is not exhaustive, nor did I touch on all these questions with every interviewee.
Rather, they were principles behind my work. From experience in radio journalism, I find
that the best way to interview is to come prepared with a list of potential questions as
icebreakers. The conversation then directs itself toward pertinent topics in due time. But
questions on paper are very useful.
Armed with my voice recorder and a notepad, I approached my set of UT faculty to
conduct the interview part of my research. Faculty interviews, which all took place in
professors offices, lasted roughly forty-five minutes. I transcribed the audio recordings
to pull quotes for reference.
After most of my faculty interviews, I approached students with a survey. Once again,
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aiming for statistical significance in my answer pool was not the objective. I opted to
assemble from the horses mouth viewpoints. I find it analogous to a reporter standing
on the street looking for quotes to support or oppose certain themes. What respondents
said doesnt necessarily indicate every students opinion; they simply reflect certain
viewpoints. A copy of the full email survey is included in the appendix of the paper.
My student survey went out in a mass email to an introductory Government 310 class
which is required of all graduates of the university. Therefore, the class presumably
contains a fairly representative cross-section of UT. However, the response rate from a
class of over 450 was tremendously pooronly 20 students responded. However, the 20
responses provided me with a level of congruence about perceived goals that I expected,
as well as a variety in quotes about perspectives on education. Also, they were not
answering questions for numerical manipulation.
Further resources used in my investigation included institutional Mission Statements and
a speech given at UT by the Chairwoman of the Texas House of Representatives
Committee of Higher Education, Geanie Morrison. I also browsed a number of books and
articles pertinent to academic goals. However, the largest part of my reference comes
from synthesizing first-hand interviews.
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Faculty Perceptions
The only sample of people worse about understanding what goes on in the education world than
students themselves is the faculty. (--Physics professor)
Ironically, while society rates college education as a must- have, the providers of higher
education dont agree that everyone should attend. A professor of educational psychology
(EP) asserted in our interview:
EP: I personally think we have too many people in the outside world saying that a
college education is a base requirement for [positions that students easily could
have handled without college]. I think there are a lot of positions where they
require a college education where they dont need it. And thats a problem.
SL: Because it sends a lot of people to college?
EP: Yeah. Unnecessarily. Because I think youre rightthere are a lot of things
people really dont need college for. And Im not saying that those are not good
things. But why should this person spend all this money just to get this diploma,
which allegedly certifies that theyre smarter than everybody else? Excuse me, but
I dont think so!
She not only thought the expectation of attaining a university diploma was undue but
unfair as well, since to expect that everyone should go to college is a tremendous drain
on everybodys resources, including the students. But unlike economic models of
resources, teachers dont simply consider dollars per student but attention and motivation
required for learning. An English and poetry professor said, I believe philosophically
that students want to learn, but when youre in a system where theyre forced to
learn[pensive pause]. Pressure to be in college, and in class, is both an asset and a
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liability for teachers. On one hand they reap the benefits of a larger audience; on the
other, they face a more dilute, distracted student body.
No professor I interviewed thought college was meant to be an exclusive club, but they
all shared the sentiment that personal motivation was key to high performance. Its like
skiing, analogized a science professor. No pain no gain, but you gotta want to ski! To
professors, the desire to learn wasnt just a means to good grades but the whole reason
that students should be in college in the first place. Good professors cherish passion for
learning and value dedicated students. Enthusiasm from students fuels their want to teach,
and the faculty I interviewed expressed desire to get students thinking as they hadnt
before. However, economic consequences of a college degree were very much on the
backburner for the faculty I interviewed. Of much more importance was stressing the
drive to learn. And though learning is abstractly defined by different teachers you ask, it
always involved aspects of personal drive, enjoyment, and growth.
After sharing the observation that everyone is expected to come to college with a noted
professor of physics, he reflected and responded, Maybe the entrance exam should just
be a simple question: do you really have fun when youre learning? Do you really have
fun when you know more about something? Is that fun? If its not, dont come!
But students hardly ever view schoolwork as fun, and you dont need to survey students
to find this out. If you just ask professors, they will tell you the same thingafter all,
theyre the ones trying to elicit some kind of response from students. Professors: aside
from your top students who are obviously deeply interested in class (or perhaps just
grade-grubbers), can you say with deep conviction that theyre in class for fun? Does the
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fun of learning rank high among their goals for coming to collegecan you honestly say
this is the case?
Furthermore, implicit in the faculty view that college is not necessary is the idea that
students should make a conscious decision to come to college or not. Ideally, a high
school senior would sit down at the end of twelve years of lower education and question
herself, Is learning and school enjoyable? If she answers affirmatively, then the student
should come to college; if not, she should explore non-academic opportunities. As is
clear from the automatic jump to college, however, this is not the case.
In the course of reviewing my interview responses, I came to understand how faculty
view college as an opportunitywhich fits nicely with the model of college as a
conscious come/dont come decision. Along with viewing learning as fun, one should
appreciate it as an opportunityi.e. not required, but a valuable option to better oneself.
To preface his statement about the intellectual sophistication of math, one teacher
asserted, to me its a question of an opportunity. He later expounded: In the math
world, to me the real tragedy of the habits we have is that mathematics and the
experience in math classes could be so significant to the development of the intellect, and
its missed opportunity. And thats too bad. Because I think [math] could change
[students] lives. An educational psychologist wished that her students would be
willing to try things, take risks, persist in the face of failure, take an error not as a
horrible thing but as an opportunity to learn.
This opportunity refers to future payoffs from the content of class itself. The best faculty
understand long-term benefits to an individual and design classes to approach such goals.
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However, long-term in their case reaches beyond a diploma. The opportunity to learn
in college, for a professor, is a chance to change intangiblesways of thought and means
of appreciation.
Ideally, students would have fun learning, experience new ways of thinking about
problems, and carry the content of their educationnot just their diplomabeyond
graduation
Curriculum
Theres a tendency in math education to direct all of the lower level courses in a linear
direction toward calculus. And then its not clear what happens afterwards. And I think the fact is
most students would do better to have a different kind of experience, particularly than the pre-
calculus classes. (--Professor of Mathematics)
You dont need a Ph.D. to recognize an important but subtle quality of college professors:
they all love school. By definition, a professor thrives in the university. They were the
members of their classes who got the good grades, who found academic passions in
college, whose enthusiasm granted them entrance into doctoral programs, and whose
endurance allowed them complete a Ph.D. By the time a professor can hang her doctoral
diploma on the wall (which is almost universally a requirement for university
professorship), she has come to love her subject area. The professor couldnt have made it
that far if she didnt.
Along with lifetime investment in a particular field comes the opinion that ones
particular area of expertise is tremendously important. As the mathematician quoted
above noted, I think mathematics can contribute an incredible amount to the intellectual
sophistication of any thinker. A philosophy professor explained, My view as a
philosopher [is] that what I want to do is expose [students] to something that opens up
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a whole new realm of possible ends and values. This applies in the most liberal of arts,
too. I only taught things that you need for life, said a poetry professor. Thats why I
chose English. To university teachers, their proficiencies are both professions and
fundamental ways of thinking about the world. How, then, do they go about designing a
curriculum for students passing through the ivory tower?
A UT educational psychology professor asserted that each UT faculty member should ask
himself, Why am I teaching? Teachers should question the courses they teach, and
know why its important to teach them. This particular psychologist affirmed that for
required classes, faculty better know why its required. And it shouldnt be required just
because somebody says oh they need 3 hours of that. Thats a hell of a reason to require
a class.
Its worth noting that the university does not dictate to the departments whator how they
should teach. Academic freedom and professional opinions are important in this design
nonetheless, how do the departments design meaningful learning experiences, given
that love of learning is a big faculty goal?
My discussion with the educational psychologist about class requirements continued:
SL: So should the department sit down and
EP: Absolutely!
SL: Decide why
EP: Absolutely! Not only that, they should sit down and say how they all fit
together. Do they all do that?
SL: From what Ive seen they dont.
EP: And from what Ive seen they dont either.
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She was not the only professor who noted this. In fact, no professor didnt! This bears
repeating: of this faculty with whom I spoke, none of their departments formed consensus
about what the classes meant in terms of learning, which is what college should ideally
be about. Most often, departments didnt even meet to try! This means there was no
discussion about what classes majors or non-majors should take, what competencies
should be taken away from the classes, what skills were important to impart, or what
proficiencies were most necessary to emphasize. In fact, in most departments, there was
no discussion about what the majormeantthat is to say, aside from requiring X number
of hours in the department, the content of the major was not addressed on a departmental
level.
A professor of mathematics and I spoke about this:
SL: On a departmental level, is there good discussion about teaching methods,
about what it is that students should be taking away from classes?
Math professor (MP): No. Theres no discussion. At this departmentnow, at
colleges where the education mission is more central, then there would be those
discussions. Butthe main focus of the University of Texas at Austin is research.
[]
SL: So when someone comes to be a faculty member here, theyre brought on
because of research. And some of them just happen to be good teachers, and some
of them dont?
MP: Thats right. Thats not a criterion for being hired. But there are some people
who are very much interested. And the chair of the department is interested in
various educational issues. So there are some very excellent teachers in the
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department.
Upon hearing this, I wondered if this was viewed as something acceptable, or if it
bothered him. He replied:
I dont view that astheir [other professors] job at the university. And in a
large sense its not. So I guess Ive come to see it more asthat the university is a
very big place, and there are lots of people who have a variety of ideas and its
like a city: you dont expect every single person you meet to be interested in
promoting the welfare of the city. People are in this business or that business or
the other. I think thats the way to view the university.
The picture that emerges is one of each classroom standing as a bastion of learning at
best, yet possibly unlinked to other classeseven in the same department. But as
education psychology will point out, such a structure hardly promotes learning for all
undergraduates; more control is needed.
Some professors said the idea of departments and other faculty managing the content of
various professors classes goes against academic freedom. This is to say that its not for
one professor to step on the toes of another, since autonomy in the classroom is
something a teacher earned over years of study, research, and teaching. To insist upon
certain goals in a teachers classroom would be to impose upon the professors ability to
make these decisions for herself. A philosophy professor asserted that within his
department, each of us values our autonomy. And to start poking into what somebody
else is doing with their course would be to risk reciprocal poking into of ones own
courses. So theres very little of that.
At this point the discrepancy between two very big mantras of higher education becomes
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apparent: on one hand, faculty all value autonomy in the classroom; on the other, they
value progress of thinking skills in their students, which requires a degree of coordination
that impinges upon autonomy. A physicist shared the best example of the clash of
educational philosophy at work: in the physics department, discussion about goals is
diverted to an emphasis on subject material. Professors discuss which topics a graduating
physics major should know: thermodynamics, relativity, modern theories of gravity, and
so on. But my interviewee observed:
Whenever we talk about curriculum it ends up being a list of content items. []
We never get down to these discussions of could they teach themselves? How
do you give them the tools that they could teach themselves any physics subject
that they wanted? But we never get to that discussion.
This kind of discussion devoid of objectives works to the detriment of students, he
explained, since focusing on bits of information alone doesnt address long term learning
goals (the point of classes, according to faculty). The professors I interviewed, most
likely due to their established teaching quality, saw this as a problemand pointed to
classroom incentives as an exacerbating factor.
Grades and Incentives
Salvo: Do you think that having tests and grades are a necessary means of evaluating learning
progress?
Professor of Educational Psychology: Of course not. [pause, cringes] Man, this is just a huge
area! I mean its like enormous.
Of the faculty I interviewed, none of them held grades as indicators of the higher qualities
of learning they admire. One professor of educational psychology reminded me that
sometimes the best studentswhich he took to mean the most motivated to learn and
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insightful in the classwere not the recipients of the best grades. Likewise, some
students earned good grades through a kind of academic rigor devoid of affinity for
classjust knowing how to say the right things on tests and papers.
I asked a physics professor, what do you think a grade should indicate about a student
after the class is over? What does that indicate about? Do you think it has meaning?
No, not much, he replied. There are tops to the curve, and there are bottoms to the
curve. But theres this big unwashed middle that its just notthe sorting and the
ordering in there couldnt matter less. Especially when talking about a grade on one test
or paper, surrounded by external factors that have nothing to do with the class or its work,
clearly a grade couldnt mean much. An educational psychologist also shared the
irrelevance of grades in evaluating learning: The grade, and the focus on the grade, and
the illusion is that the grade is somehow an effective measureit isnt. No faculty I
interviewed expressed even remote enthusiasm about having to grade.
Even faculty not flatly critical of grades as a means of evaluation still questioned a
grades ability to indicate student learning in the abstract. A philosophy professor noted:
This is the great challenge of evaluating. This is obviously what youre supposed
to do. Anybody can come up with some sort of method that will assign a
reasonable distribution of grades to people. Of course this gets back to the
larger questioneach course youve got to think about, well, what is the most
important thing for them to learn from this course? I dont think theres a
simple answer for that question.
Though he indicated that a well-designed exam could test for targeted skills, he still
asserted that grades were weak signals of learning.
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As for improving grading systems, the only thing that saves [professors] is that we give
lots of [grades], so that the huge noise factors tend to cancel out, cited a physics
professor. There is in that large-scale average some information about the individual.
But it is true that since most classes are what you might call factoid-driven, that kind of
thing can start to dominate the average. More importantly than measuring, designing a
preferable grading system requires analyzing the larger question as posited: What is it
about my class that I want to impart, and therefore to test for?
Along those lines, many professors prided themselves in seeing through grades. If I tell
a class, and theyre not grade grubbing, think aboutthis
, said a poetry teacher, they
ought to be intellectually interested enough to go off and think about it. She added that
spotting the intellectually disinterested or grade grubbing may not be obvious from the
students point of view, but its just night and day from the professors. Can I get extra
points if I do X? [raising her hand and mimicking a student] The same philosophy
professor who talked about designing evaluative tests had this to say with regards to
grades and student motivations:
I certainly know the difference between students who are still just going through
the motions because they want the grade and those for whom that little light bulb
has turned on and theyve just gotten to the point where theyre interested in the
philosophical question, dont much care about the grade anymore. They just want
to learn the philosophy. You certainly see that difference, and the point of the
whole exercise is to: A) get as many of those light bulbs on as you can, and B)
once theyre on, to nurture that and develop it.
Professors hope that students begin to exhibit qualities of intrinsic motivation, which
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means they work for the sake of learning and personal gainnot grades or other external
rewards. Grades would somehow supplement personal drive to be in class, absorb
material, synthesize, and learn. But as a philosopher speculated, if students just went to
lectures if they felt like it and there were no tests or grades or anything to think aboutI
suspect if we did that wed become a kind of Club Med with classrooms. Nobody would
actually do much work. Certainly this doesnt reflect a model of students learning
because of intrinsic motivation.
In this light, the adverse effect that professors claim grading has on motivation is a
greater problem than grades difficulty in measuring learning. For if grades become the
sole means of evaluation, the only thing that stands on a transcript as a record of
performance, then students begin to workforthe grade. In this case, grades not only
remain imprecise measurements of learning, but they take on an importance of their own.
Grades become the motivating factor for learning, frequently supplanting higher goals
as the end of education. This is to say that if ideally grades evaluate learning and
motivate work toward that learning, their implementation turns them into an aim of their
own.
One classic example of this behavior at work is the will this be on the test
phenomenon, which anyone whos been a student or teacher will recognize all too well.
During the course of the semester, students are eager to call out a teachers deviations
from the syllabus. Topics presented in class which stray from the established contract
of material send students on edge. Teachers are, of course, acutely aware of this
phenomenon. You can see students switch off when a professor says, no this wont be
on the test but its good to think about. It irks professors. Of course, as much as hard-
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working faculty try to engage students with the material for the sake of interest, one must
concede that working for the grade is completely rational behavior within the incentive
system of college. Students know this, teachers know this, but it seems to get ignored like
a leaky faucet.
I asked faculty whom I interviewed why they thought giving grades was important, and
what it indicated about the student, if anything. A professor of physics related: Were
required to provide a level of differentiation that the university seems to need, but you
cant kid me into thinking that 10 years after a students out of here, whether they got a B
or an A or a C is gonna matter one epsilon of difference in their life. A poetry professor
(PP) noted:
PP: After about late 70s, early mid 80s, students got very professional about their
work. It meant grades became much more important. There used to be something
called the gentlemans Cthats no more. Students are very stressed.
SL: What do you think accounts for that?
PP: The job market.
The sentiment that grades played into the post-college job search was common. An
educational psychologist said, We have to give finals and grades and turn in our annual
reports. He later added: When you go out and find employment youre graded. If you
dont fulfill your responsibilities A through Z, youll be released from your position. So
thats your gradeyou wont take home a paycheck anymore. All of these professors
who talked about the importance of learning, of not viewing education as a means but an
end, recognized grades as pertaining more to training for job responsibilities than to
educational ends. They know students work for grades to get higher GPAs to get better
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placements after college, yet many still approach their classes as if they were filled with
future graduate students. Perhaps they believe that their students could become more like
them? However, if the university as an institution serves the demands of society and the
labor market, would we not expect to see some indication that academia at least
recognizes the disparity between its goals and those of demanders? For the number of
faculty who voiced concern about the effectiveness of grades, indeed their detrimental
effect on learning, its surprising theres not more discussion among faculty about
restructuring evaluative methods. But as I observed, coordination among faculty was
quite poor.
I do acknowledge professors who try hard to engage the students in material, to connect
the meaning of courses with students lives. I also recognize students who value learning
over the grade. I certainly couldnt have written this thesis if I only cared about a grade.
Professors would probably throw in the towel if a few students didnt come along who
reminded them of their own work mentality. But imagine telling a group of college
students, grades dont mean anything and 75 basically equals 95. Youd be kidding
yourself to say theyd buy it; faculty realize this, too. The importance of grades is
ingrained on the psyche of college students today. Many try to shed a work-for-the-grade
mentality, but it still lurks.
What matters most to the best faculty are the abstract thought processes and ways of
thinking that students should pick up from their classes. Certain items, nuggets of
knowledge, here and there are good-to-knows in the intellectual repertoire of college
grads, but the process of making such lists tends to distract faculty and students focusing
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on thinking as a goal.
I asked one science professor at UT if standardized testing might be to the detriment of
secondary education. Oh yes, he quickly affirmed, asserting that it drove the attention
of students toward memorizing bits of information for repetition. He later added that
[knowing different factoids] has so little to do with wisdom. And if anything, the best
university professors worry about wisdom.
But wisdom isnt a class; admittedly, thought processes cant be taught without subject
material. Educational psychologists agree that only through applied study can you begin
to master critical thinking. Though thinking skills are a resounding goal expressed by
faculty, such skills alone are not teachable. A professor of educational psychology
affirmed, you cannot teach critical thinking skills separate from the discipline. Jokingly
she imagined the teacher saying to the class, Were just going to practice being
skeptical. Indeed, even though skeptical thought may be a goal of history or philosophy,
you need to have material to intelligently talk about. If youre going to strengthen critical
thinking skills, it has to be with regard to particular arguments or events.
Ironically though, through fixation on the material and concrete work of classes, teachers
often lose perspective of analytic thinking skills related to the discipline and obsess over
the details that we already know wont last in the long run (minutia of information). In
this way, the goal of many classes becomes regurgitation of information for the sake of
evaluation. As is the case with many classes, the professor worries only about covering
topics to the point that learning takes the backseat to memory loading. For a professor
this process is somewhat tolerable, since the minutias of his discipline are part of his
daily work and base of need-to-know material. But no departmental check evaluates
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teachers who might only require repetition of factoids, without evaluation of learning.
Philosopher of education Rudolph H. Weingartner asserts that [p]rogress is achieved
through a cumulativeness that comes about when students are required to use the methods
of solving problems in different settings and contexts, with different problems and issues,
and over extended stretches of time.5 If we take this extended stretch of time to mean the
whole of an academic career (and beyond), it would only make sense that the crafters of
an education would spend much of their time ensuring consistency and quality in the
instruction they provide. Ostensibly, faculty members would plan courses collectively.
As well they would spend time devising methods of teaching and evaluation that get at
the goals they mutually set for their courses in the first place. But are these goals
effectively communicated, even among faculty?
As part of identifying these goals, one would assume that university-wide and
department-wide discussion would take place with regards to such motivations. The
resounding answer is that these discussions are non-existent, or misguided at best.
To summarize, the best faculty worry that grades, incentives for work, and pressure to
attend college divert goals away from learning in the first place. While these factors are
beyond immediate control of departments, class coordination is not. Yet class
coordination is absent at UT. Teachers need to ask if learning and intellectual growth
are really the goals of higher education, since institutional design points elsewhere.
5Rudolph H. Weingartner. Undergraduate Education: Goals and Means. New York: American Council on
Education/Macmillan Publishing, 1992. p. 94.
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Student Perceptions
I have a friend, has a daughter, hated school. I said, whats she gonna do when she graduates
high school? She said, go to college. I said, she hates school! My friend was so offended that
maybe her daughter shouldnt go to college. (--Professor of Educational Psychology)
Faculty like to think that students make a deliberate and zealous choice to attend college.
For professors, every Sally and John at the University of Texas ideally would sit down
and ponder their life goals. If, after deliberation, love of learning and exploration of
knowledge ranked high on their list, they would come. Thats just not the way it works.
Certainly social influence drives students to college. Aside from economic necessity,
students in high school face pressure from parents, counselors, and school systems which
expect them to go to college. Standardized tests at the secondary level focus on college-
track skills. Of the people who came to college, a scant few could truthfully admit they
were not expected to do so after high school. Almost all college students were high
schoolers with twelve years of formal education momentum behind themmomentum
which rolled them into freshman year as if it were 13th grade. It seemed like the next
logical step, wrote an English major, and I understand that in society today it's a must if
I want to be paid well and be competitive in the job market. Another student wrote, I
came to college because that's what you do after high school: you go to the best college
you can get into, and figure out what you want to do after you get in. A freshman
government major expressed similar sentiment: College seems to be the expected course
after high school for pretty much everyone, and I don't think it's right for everyone. An
engineering senior shared that she came [t]o get a degree so I could be able to provide
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the kind of life I want in the future -- successful, wealthy, stable. She added, I would
feel inadequate if I didn't get at least a bachelor's degree.
Yet the fact that high school graduates almost mechanically move on to higher education
shouldnt a priori vilify that transition; such an expectation may or may not be
reasonableit would be up to the university to justify why.
While the decision to come remains almost universally unquestioned, the goals posited
by students when asked why did you come to college? are divergent from faculty goals.
Some are rather straightforward: I came to college to get a degree in journalism. I want
to get a great education of it and be able to get a great job in the future, too, responded
one junior. Job motivation is universal, even among learners. One student responded
that she came [t]o get an education, and to be able to support myself on my own. When
the survey asked ,What did you want to get out of it? she replied, a degree and a
career in physical therapy. Even students with aspirations in academics sought a degree
to further their job prospects. I came to college because it is the only route I can take to
do what I want as a profession, which is Government, said a freshman. In fact, no
student that responded to my survey viewed college as an end in itselfall saw it as a
means to something else, whether more school, work, or just moving on.
Another frequently-cited goal of college students was personal growth. One student noted
she came to college for the experience and opportunity to grow as a person. The junior
who was so bent on studying government added, I wanted to get out of college a good
education, meet new people, have fun, and grow and mature. A freshman noted she
wanted to leave home and learn about new things, make new friends.
The adage that most learning takes place outside of the classroom is truly embodied in
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the motivations of college students. This is not to say that all students view classes as a
burden on their social lives (this isnt too far off the mark for many), but that the social
component of college is extremely important.
Given that other venues for social interaction exist beyond college, the university needs
to identify what about college goals differentiate it from all other opportunities. For
example, if students enter UTnot the Peace Corps, or a job, or an internship, or
traveling, or one of many other ways of growing as a personwhat makes college per se
such an important step?
Having been a student for 16 years, and having numerous colleagues with similar
credentials, I can confidently say that two descriptors accurately fit most college students
I know: A) College was not a go or not go decision. They just went. B) Goals of
education that have to do with abstract learning and thinking development take backseat
to social ones. Developing thinking skills lags way behind get ready for the real
world and be exposed to different viewpoints.
In casual conversation with friends who reply that theyre in college for the growth
experience, I like to ask how college is different than working for four years or
volunteering. In other words, there are various ways to live in a community environment
and grow without being in college. If indeed the college experience boils down to
personal growth and getting along, why come to a university where you have to take
classes? Why did you come to college?
The reason that people are coming is that they have to! The behavior of students in
college, behavior that on the whole college professors work to fight against, indicates that
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abstract learning is not the key. Students wouldnt grade-grub, push for extra credit,
and ask will this be on the test if it werent the case. All the rhetoric about valuing
learning is wholly unsupported by the way college affects life post-college. The incentive
structures involved point to the same conclusion.
One English major encapsulated a prominent view among students when he said:
[I]n a few classes like Math and Psychologythey told us that this isn't a class
where you're expected to use anything we learn in practical life, it's just a
sampling to help us figure out whether we would like to take more of that kind of
class. In other classes though like Government and especially in Spanish, I'm just
trying to make it through the class with a decent grade and am fully prepared to
forget everything I learned once I finish with the subject. Unfortunately for both
subjects I still have more levels to complete so I can't forget everything just yet.
Though curriculum material occupies most of their time while in the class, its not the
largest means by which most students I interviewed evaluated their performance. In other
words, absorption of knowledge is only a small part of digesting a class. I asked students,
How do you evaluate if a class met your expectations after the semester is over?
Formally, the only records the university retains are grades and teacher evaluations.
One student replied, I generally judge a class by how much I have retained from it, the
skill of the instructor, and whether or not I feel it was worthwhile no matter what grade I
received. Another: Sometimes I think wow, Im glad that class is over, and that Ill
never use that stuff again, and sometimes I think wow, Im proud of myself for doing so
well in that class, and I learned a lot. Grounds for evaluation included applicability of
the material to everyday life, desire to continue study in the field, knowledge of the
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subject material, enjoyment and stimulation of lectures, grades, quality of the professor,
quality of coursework, interaction with other students, advancement towards career goals,
and how much fun the course was. One senior said a course was good if I remember
anything afterwards and if I liked the way my prof taught the course.
Frequently students also expressed concern that teachers set different goals for their lives
than they did. Said one senior:
I believe that my goals go beyond the goals of my instructors, since they are stuck
in academia and I want to actually get out of here. I think the goals of faculty are
different, but if you want a blanket statement, I think that their goal is to make
sure that the comprehension of their material follows the normal curve.
Others were also critical of faculty not expressing enough concern for students learning.
A freshman wrote:
I sometimes feel that the faculty does not place much emphasis on the educational
needs of students. That said, I have had some wonderful instructors here who
geniunely [sic] care about their students' education, but I am aware that they are in
the minority. My goals are to learn as much as possible while putting forth my
best effort, while my instructors measure success by how well I do on tests.
While all arent so cynical, the sentiment isnt too far off the mark for many students I
know.
As I progressed with my synthesis of views, I realized that independently of student
survey results, the faculty expressed concern over the same divergent views that cropped
up among undergrads. In other words, since faculty are the ones designing education, the
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mere fact that they express such concern over divergent goals and diverted motivation
indicates a deep problemeven before seeking supporting evidence from students.
Students simply arent making the come/dont come decision that faculty want them to,
and the external pressure of going to college isnt providing the incentive structure that
faculty desire. Grades arent set up to be intrinsically motivating, and the flow of students
into college isnt intrinsically motivated. The learn and dump attitude of many students
certainly doesnt indicate motivation for long-term learning. In situations between
working for grades and working for personal satisfaction, grades hardly lose.
As a recap of the divergence of goals we infer:
Stated Goals
Faculty Students College not necessary College certainly necessary Opportunity to enrich thinking
skills
Necessity to enhance job market
attractiveness End in itself Means to other ends
Conscious decision to attend (ideal) 13th grade: no conscious decision
Intrinsically motivated for learning(ideal)
Incentives for external motivationand signaling
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Administrative View
I decided just to check the mission statement on the university webpage. And I noticedit had
been up for 6 monthsthat the word excellence was spelled wrong. So I called [university
president] Larry Faulkners office, and about half an hour later I got profuse thank yous! So it
shows that nobody had either read it or knew how to spell excellence! (--Professor/Policy
Advocate)
Mission statements serve as convenient starting blocks to inquire about institutional
goals. Since my investigation took place at UT, and all of my interviewees worked here,
The University of Texas mission statement looked like a good place to start searching for
motivations behind college. And furthermore, if the goals of the university exist
anywhere, wouldnt they be in the Mission Statement?
The UT Mission Statement reads as follows:
Mission
The mission of The University of Texas at Austin is to achieve excellence in the
interrelated areas of undergraduate education, graduate education, research and publicservice. The university provides superior and comprehensive educational opportunities at
the baccalaureate through doctoral and special professional educational levels. The
university contributes to the advancement of society through research, creative activity,
scholarly inquiry and the development of new knowledge. The university preserves and
promotes the arts, benefits the states economy, serves the citizens through public
programs and provides other public service.
Core Purpose
To transform lives for the benefit of society.Core Values
Learning - A caring community, all of us students, helping one another grow.
Discovery - Expanding knowledge and human understanding.
Freedom - To seek the truth and express it.
Leadership - The will to excel with integrity and the spirit that nothing is impossible.
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Individual Opportunity - Many options, diverse people and ideas; one university.
Responsibility - To serve as a catalyst for positive change in Texas and beyond.6
Transforming lives is quite a broad goal. Suffice to say the University mission sounds
idyllic, but what does the university perceive as concrete ways in which students should
change in college?
I differentiate between technical training and liberal arts education. Nobody wonders
why people go to electrician school. Students dont get mechanic certification unless they
plan on becoming mechanics. The meat and bones of the curriculum in these
environments pertain directly to post-graduate life. Same goes for nursing school,
pharmacy school, medical school, and so on. These schools train nurses, pharmacists, and
doctors as their mission. But what about the Liberal Arts?
To focus my search, I turned to the College of Liberal Arts mission statement, which
begins as follows:
The mission of the College of Liberal Arts is to make a free people wise, by educating its
students in the ways of freedom, and by providing a model for education at other
universities. The heart of a democracy is that the people must judge. Through education
in the humanities and social sciences, the College of Liberal Arts will give its students the
power and confidence to judge well.7
What does this mean? Freedom as an operational goal is almost impossible to grasp.
Never among faculty and students I surveyedindeed among anyone I queried even
casuallydid anyone ever reference freedom or democracy as a goal for going to
college. As for dedicated faculty, might we assume that thoughtfulness about
6http://www.utexas.edu/welcome/mission.html
7http://www.utexas.edu/cola/mission_statement/
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motivations behind education would be a top priority?
Where can we find the colleges goals in terms of teacher and student motivations, and
how they should coincideor is this even a college-level concern? If you continue down
the liberal arts mission statement, youll find more goals including:
fostering understanding among students, faculty, and administration
providing a good foundation in the humanities and social sciences
students knowing how to read critically, write cogently, and speak persuasively
understanding basic methods of the sciences and conversancy with mathematics
all classes placing emphasis on ethics, integrity, citizenship and awareness of global
issues
valuing creativity, willingness to take prudent risks, leadership, and service to
community and nation
No mention is given to why students are here. Are the bullets in the mission statement
how most students perceive college? Theres no mention of the social pressure of going
to college, or of the necessity of college in todays world. And more important to note,
theres no mention ofhow the university accomplishes this.
The mission statement also enumerates specific skills that the college desires out of its
graduates:
be able to express himself or herself clearly and correctly in writing
be capable of reasoning effectively from hypotheses to conclusions and of logically
analyzing the arguments of others
have a critical appreciation for the social framework in which we live and the ways it
has evolved through time
have experience in thinking about moral and ethical problems
have an understanding of some facets of science and the ways in which knowledge of
the universe is gained and applied
have an understanding of some aspects of mathematics and the application of
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quantitative skills to problem solving
have gained familiarity with a second language
have an appreciation for literature and the arts
be competent in the basic use of computers
Theses are quite specific in terms of proficiencies, but the mission statement gives no
mention of curriculum. The college places no specifications about what, in a tangible
sense, a student should know. It doesnt say a student should be able to punctuate
sentences properly, solve two equations with two unknowns, or know the history of
Watergate. Of course, we really wouldnt expect the mission statement to specify such a
thing; its not the purpose of a mission statement. However, if UT defines such skills as
goals of undergraduate education, we expect to find faculty and departments discussing
ways of promoting those ends.
Basically, the university mission doesnt tell us much of anything about how a UT
education should unfold before the student. Looking specifically at the Liberal Arts
mission, we find appreciation of subjects and disciplines. But how this gets accomplished
remains vague. Furthermore, the very accomplishment of imparting these doesnt find
institutional support on a college-wide or department-wide scale. Professors get free reign
over designing an education unchecked by other actors at the university.
The same professor who shared the anecdote about misspelled excellence posited:
Something I take seriously is the university mission. The university mission says were
supposed to prepare leaders, but it seems like no ones responsible for doing that. If hes
right, why dont faculty think its more of a priority? After all, we see that the whole of
the burden of designing classes falls on professors. They have tremendous responsibility,
but are they living up to it? How does UT measure that?
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Legislative view
A visit to the Department of Education website8 opened a portal of myriad information
about educationfinancing, testing, teaching credentials, legislation, etc. It also
advertised the importance of college all over the place. I hunted around for information
on motivations for collegewhy should students go? One page aimed at middle school
aged students, entitled Think College Early: Why Go, had this to say:
Why should you think about education after high school?
Because it can be the [picture of a key] to the kind of future you want.
Education gives you choices that you might not have otherwise. More and more goodjobs depend on the skills and knowledge that education after high school can provide.
Staying in school and going to college will help you:
be in a better position to help your family and your community;
get a better job and earn more money;
and get a good start in life!
Even if you're not sure what your future holds, prepare AS IF you are going to college.
Anything can happen!9
As we step away from the Ivory Tower, one thing becomes patently obvious: the rhetoric
and perception of why students should go to college becomes completely different.
Theres no talk of learning or academic motivations or funits all about jobs and labor
preparedness.
Texas State representative Geanie Morrison, chairwoman of the Texas House of
Representatives Committee on Higher Education, spoke publicly at UT in February of
8http://www.ed.gov
9http://www.ed.gov/students/prep/college/thinkcollege/early/students/edlite-why-go.html
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2004 as part of a government department speaker series. 10 During her talk, she
straightforwardly declared, the mission of higher education is an educated workforce.
Dwell on that. Think about everything the University and Liberal Arts mission statements
mentioned about goalswould you have come up with educated workforce as an
encapsulation? We already know that education feeds the workforce, but to say that
entering the labor market is the mission of college doesnt address the aspects of college
that change a student.
Mrs. Morrison also mentioned that the legislature had a vested interest in the quality of
higher education, so in the Q&A portion of her session I asked her: In what way is the
education that a student receives in his or her four years in college actually connected to
the greater goals of going to college? Her answer indicated that while the legislature
funded and mandated the importance of education, it was wholly up to the university to
determine a curriculum. Effectively, the Texas legislature preaches that a college
education is necessary for entering the workforce, the workforce requires a degree for
upward mobility, yet the meaning of that necessity is determined by the suppliers of
education! Without further researchjust from perceptions of mission statements
aloneI think we see a gaping difference between what society thinks college is about
and what academia has to say.
In her speech addressing a room full of undergraduates with respect to graduating on
time, Representative Morrison added, We need you in the workforce! Imagine looking
10Morrisons speech, entitled "Higher Education Policy Perspectives in Texas, was delivered Friday
February 20, 2004. The event was presented by Liberal Arts Instructional Technology Services (LAITS)
and the Department of Government.
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up the mission statement of the College of Liberal Arts and finding the first line: The
Mission of the College of Liberal Arts is to prepare our students to enter the workforce,
since thats where theyre needed! This sentiment reflects nothing of the University or
College missions.
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Conclusions
Universities study everything but themselves. (--Uri Treisman, UT professor)11
Everyone needs to go to college, yet ironically the factors demanding this necessity lie
outside of the university itself. Industry, social pressure, legislators, and momentum from
secondary education shuffle high school graduates into colleges each year. But aside
from requiring a college diploma, society and employers have little to say about whata
college education should change in a student over his or her four years. Its as if higher
education is demanded as a package, with content determined entirely by suppliers within
the university system.
The government provides a labor-driven goal. Students basically dont evaluate their
decision to come since they have to. The college specifies character traits and
appreciation of learning as goals. The departments at best discuss only hard-core
curriculum, or factoids as one professor called them. The faculty perceive love of
learning as the highest motivating enterprise in collegeand the faculty also carry the
responsibility of making this all come together!
It seems the quality of college in the classroom is wholly a factor of the professors a
student comes across. Yet theres a laissez-faire attitude at UT toward instructor
accountability and cross-class coordination. Faculty view long-term progress as a goal,
yet institutional support to a cohesive curriculum is nonexistent. The best faculty say that
11Uri Treisman, Keynote Address, Conference on Active Learning, Laguardia Community College, Long
Island City, NY, April 23, 1994.
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critical thinking skills are the true nuggets of value that students reap from college, and
educational psychology asserts that long-term coordinated curricula are the only way to
achieve this goalyet departmentally, faculty are averse to the idea of goal-coordinating.
A view of academic freedom as professor autonomy conflicts with the pedagogical goals
that faculty hope to achieve. How then do we know that the goals of college educators are
best met by the structure of college classes and curricula as they stand, which are still
reminiscent of institutions hundreds of years old?
Considering the vast responsibility that befalls the university, it seems appropriate to take
up the educational mission with utmost scrutiny. It bears consideration: freshman arrive
in college, driven in by a society that demands their being there, but the four-year life-
changing experience is totally left up to the university. Are the goals of students and
teachers aligned? This is the universitys predicamentits been given a blank check for
supplying education, but does it consider the factors that move students into college in
the first place? Are the perceptions of the goals of college congruent between the
suppliers and demanders of education?
Weve seen that the demanders of college dont specify the content of education; they
dont dictate the goals of the educational process beyond attainment of the degree and a
high GPA.
Demanders give carte blanche to the suppliersthe University. The University outlines
vague, humanistic/democratic goals of liberal education which do not bear properties of
signaling or capitalization in labor markets. Even more ironically, most of the faculty in
collegeespecially the best educatorsdont believe that everyone should go to college.
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For they see the university as a place for serious intellectual engagement. They desire a
conscious decision to learn. But high school seniors arrive mechanically every fall, sifted
by SATs, GPAs, and entrance essays. Professors doubt whether these tests and
requirements themselves capture the essence of why students should come to college. But
since the duty of educational design falls upon the shoulders of the university, we might
expect to find institutional support of goals for higher education within college. In other
words, pressure makes college education a necessity, while at the same time giving
colleges a blank check as to how to fulfill the education parthow, then, is the
University of Texas handling that task?
The picture that emerges is one of each professor creating his/her own class as he/she
sees fit, with little to no regard for coincidence of material or goals with other classes.
This may result in good classes from good faculty, but the university has no apparent
system for ensuring this.
Some faculty dont see a need for coincident goals. A number of teachers, outside my
formal interview set, expressed this sentiment in conversation. Academic freedom may
be important, but educational psychology says coincident goals are necessary for long-
term learning. If we dont have coincident goals, there can be no accountabilitysince
whos responsible for what? Everythings relative.
Goals of college between the demand and supply side of education are not coincident,
starting with the most basic questions of why college is necessary. We must ask then,
Why is college necessary, if both sides differ in their views? Furthermore, with
divergent goals within the university, even among faculty who dont coordinate goals,
how can any system of accountability be implemented? Is the University itself working to
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define and refine the operational meaning of college education?
Returning to where we beganwith economic views of collegewe note the theory of
colleges signaling power. Its true that signaling is a crucial function of college degrees.
However, the model of education-as-signal does not speak to whatthat education does. In
other words, the employer views education as a binary variableeither diploma or no
diplomawhich then affects job prospects. Assumedly the university puts the student to
work in one way or another, but a model of education as a signal doesnt require
pondering Hobbes or understand ing the concept of a limit. Since the responsibility of
designing college education falls on the shoulders of faculty, the suppliers should ask,
What about that college education aligns with the aim of entering the workplace? Or
should they state, Something about demanders goals doesnt mesh with ours, and then
act in some reconciliatory manner?
So are college degrees commensurable in significance beyond the signal itself? Maybe
the only thing we get out of college is signaling, and then there should be no further
accountability because everybody knows you dont learn anything that serves you later.
Professional schools train for capitalization of knowledge itself; what does a non-
professional college degree impart? If you want a job, why not get job training? If you
want to be a doctor, you go to med school, etc. But as far as liberal education goes, at
least at UT, my research indicates non-uniformity in what college doesnot in what
students take away (which in any system will be non-uniform), but in what the system
aims to deliver.
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Some academics seriously question whether higher education might face a crisis, for
discrepancy over goals is not merely a point of irony. It determines the meaning of the
four-year experience, the graduates perceptions of knowledge, and the value of degrees.
Even more importantly, it affects the social structure of the country.
If society views the experience as a necessary credential but the university doesnt
approach the situation as such, we must consider what the whole exercise means. If we
cant parallel the perceptions of suppliers and demanders, then what does the adage you
need a college degree mean for society? Furthermore, the fact that so many students and
teachers already feel that the university system is rife with problems of divergent goals
should tell us something. For this reason, I subtitled this paper An Elephant in Higher
Eds Living Room.
Observers of higher education should consider the hypothesis that college is a high-priced
signal. College is already an expensive barrier to entry into the labor market; might it be
artificial in the sense of not relating to anything beyond the degree itself? This has strong
implications for social mobility, if essentially one must pay a lot to get paid more. Would
a present system of college-as-signal not call for greater analysis of the social purpose of
college degrees? And for students and teachers especially, wouldnt the universitys
seeming lack of accountability require immediate attention?
To vindicate the university and many faculty, I note that lots of professors and
administrators express deep concern with improving the quality of a UT education. But
good professors here are there arent good enough for a successful education institution.
The university must show dedication to addressing curriculum and goals across all
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classes, especially with respect to curriculum expected outcomes! Philosopher of
education Weingartner writes, Because the setting for undergraduate education is a
multi-purpose institution composed of a heterogeneous collectivity of people, Adam
Smiths invisible hand cannot be relied upon to create optimal conditions for the
education of undergraduates. The need for a corporate assumption of responsibility [is
stressed] particularly with respect to curricular matters.12 For an undergraduate to take a
few classes from good professors creates of picture of an education left to chance more
than uniformity and quality.
If youre a professor and you worry enough about higher education to have read this far,
its safe to say youre in the group of those concerned about this problem. Even if Im
preaching to the choirif youre one of those professors or students who questions if
your goals for education align with those of the university and the stateyou should still
want to answer the following types of questions: Should teachers be more responsible for
crafting classes that relate to students? What support for accountability can we expect to
find at the department and college-wide level?
And perhaps most interestingly and importantly: Can we have an effective university
system when perceptions of expectations are different amongst students, faculty, and
outsiders?
12Rudolph H. Weingartner, Undergraduate Education: Goals and Means (New York: American Council on
Education/Macmillan Publishing, 1992), 140.
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Appendix
Faculty Interview Questions
This is the list of questions with which I prepared my teacher interviews. They are not
exhaustive of the questions I asked of professors, nor are they inclusive or many topicsthat came up. They simply represent my thoughts and ideas going into the project:
Background
How long have you taught at this university or any other?
What initially motivated you to enter the profession?
Where did you attend college? Graduate school?
Personal feedback
Do you have much say in selecting the courses you teach?
When you entered academia, did you expect to do more research or teaching?
Departments
How do you determine what classes a student should take when they come to
college? (This refers to the 4-year class plan)
How involved are you, as a faculty member, in designing the outline for a
students 4-year curriculum?
Is there agreement between members of your department regarding what should
be taught in each of the departments courses?
Is there coordination among department members and the chair regarding what astudent should retain coming out of a course?
In the classroom
Do you notice differences between students who take your class as a requirement
versus those who signed up on their own volition? Are you even aware of whichstudents are in which category?
Would your teaching style change, given that you knew a student didnt selectyour course voluntarily?
Should a teacher assume that given time, his/her students will be able to grasp thematerial? Or conversely, should you assume the student wontunderstand? Or do
you make such an assumption at all?
Can you evaluate a students progress without direct one-on-one contact?
Of all the material presented in your courses, what should the student retain afterits over? Do you consider this as planning the course?
How much time do you spend thinking about your teaching methods (not thecurricula of the classes)?
Do other faculty members evaluate or observe the way you teach? How much do
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their teaching methods affect you?
Educational theory
What do you think it means to have learned something? How does yourdefinition of learning change the way you teach?