Commission on the Future of Higher Education - American Education

A commission appointed by Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings to determine the skills college students should be acquiring—writing, critical thinking, problem solving and the like—and whether American colleges are succeeding in teaching their students those skills. Spellings created the commission in 2005 in response to years of mounting criticism that colleges are continually charging students more and teaching them less. While annual costs of attending some colleges have soared to $45,000 and more, graduation rates remain barely above 50% on average, and minority students drop out at rates of 60% to 70%. For students who do graduate, the Department of Education’s National Assessment of Adult Literacy in 2003 found that fewer than one-third of those tested were able to read complex English texts and draw complicated inferences. In addition to parents and students, the federal government and the 50 state governments, which provide more than onethird of college and university funding, are demanding that institutions of higher education be held accountable for the educational outcomes of the students they enroll. Except for graduate school entrance examinations and certain licensing exams, few if any colleges measure what and how much their students have learned during their undergraduate years. Indeed, until recently, no standardized tests existed for such measurements. In 2005, however, the Council for Aid to Education, a former division of the Rand Corporation, developed the College Learning Assessment Test, which asks college students to write essays and solve complex problems. Efforts to introduce the test, however, have met with fierce resistance from college administrators and faculty, who call such tests an intrusion on academic freedom. (See also COLLEGE: OUTCOMES.)