UsingStudentLearningasaMeasureofQualityinHigher.pdfVIP

Using Student Learning as a Measure of Quality in Higher Education Stephen R. Porter September 2012 Introduction Accountability for colleges and universities has greatly increased during the past several decades, driven by stakeholder interest in understanding exactly what institutions of higher education are accomplishing. At the same time, consumer demand for information about college quality has fueled a mini-industry of commercial college rankings. Yet there is common agreement among most educational researchers and policymakers that quality measures based on student inputs, such as SAT scores, tell us little about institutional quality. And while degree completion rates provide one way to compare institutional quality, they tell us little about the quality of the education that students receive. Given that students attend college to increase their human capital, it is dif?cult to discuss quality metrics for higher education without some consideration of student learning. In the end, receiving a diploma for completing a certain number of credit hours is not what matters; it is instead what students have learned while earning those credit hours. Logically, students who attend college should greatly increase their knowledge, skills and abilities during their studies. Yet recent research suggests that many students learn very little during their years at college.1 The purpose of this paper is to review existing measures of student learning, and to explore their strengths and weaknesses as a quality metric for higher education. Unlike the K-12 arena, which employs standardized testing in a variety of s