Universities and the federal government make strange bedfellows,
and about the only time they mix is when grant money and
scholarships are involved. But starting next week, that
relationship might get a bit more intimate.
That’s when the U.S. Department of Education is launching
its new commission on higher education, a panel of business and
education leaders that will examine “big picture”
issues at universities around the country, such as access,
affordability and work-preparedness.
But the commission’s first meeting has raised plenty of
red flags at universities and higher education organizations the
country over ““ and for good reason.
The 19-member panel consists of twice as many business leaders
and corporate executives (six) as it does faculty ““ and it
has no students. This raises the question of whose needs, exactly,
the panel will be addressing, and to what end. CEOs of corporations
don’t always make the best education leaders (see some
members of the UC Board of Regents for further proof) so it’s
baffling as to how these people intend to better higher education
without a majority board of people who are currently studying or
working at universities.
Some analysts have speculated the creation of this commission is
Bush’s attempt to leave his mark on higher education. What
will be particularly worrisome is if that mark turns out to be
similar to the one Bush tried to leave on primary and secondary
school education with No Child Left Behind, one of the
administration’s signature initiatives that so far has had
dubious success in actually improving schools.
Commission members insist they’re not out to blanket
college campuses with standardized tests, a la No Child. But the
commission chairman, a private investor named Charles Miller,
endorsed testing all freshmen and seniors in the University of
Texas system when he served on its board of regents. That test has
since been implemented in the system’s nine undergraduate
colleges, and a second is in the works.
And in a testimony he gave to Congress in 2003, Miller said
colleges should test students in their first two years “to
measure student learning at the undergraduate level across
institutions.”
Miller said all he wants is accountability at universities.
That’s fine. But there are more effective ways to gauge
universities than tests. For example, graduates of UC campuses
through 2011 are projected to contribute up to $2 billion in
revenue to California when they enter the local workforce, which
more than refunds the state for the amount it spends to educate
each UC student. What a school gives back to its community ““
not test scores ““ is the ultimate accountability measuring
stick.
But what’s most worrisome about this commission is that it
smacks of federal intervention in the university system. And
that’s a problem. The university is where people are supposed
to learn about, question, and critique conventions, even when it
comes at the expense of the federal government.
Otherwise, universities become just diploma mills, and no one
““ at least, we hope no one ““ wants that.