Page 372 - Crisis in Higher Education

342 • Appendix B

B.2 IMPACTS OF THE SOLUTION ON
QUALITY CONCERNS

It is essential to focus on cost reduction and quality improvement simultane-
ously because there are many cases where both can be achieved. For example,
investing in technology to support course development can improve faculty
efficiency, lower cost, and increase the quality of instruction. Too often, a sin-
gular focus on cost reduction leads to lower quality. For example, removing
student advisors to save money often results in students making bad deci-
sions about what courses to take, which causes them to waste time and money
taking the wrong courses. Following are recommendations to enhance qual-
ity, and some are repetitive with recommendations in the cost section.

1. Students should demand a rigorous curriculum so they have a more
valuable education.
2. Universities must diversity their pedagogy to cope with the various
learning styles of students. This should enhance learning, reduce
costs, and change the roles and responsibilities of faculty.
3. Universities must change how students evaluate instructional fac-
ulty, so they feel less pressure to reduce content and lower learning
standards. This can be done by:
a. Eliminating instructional faculty’s role in setting course content,
preparing exams, and assigning grades. These tasks would be
done by tenured and professional faculty.
b. Assessing teaching effectiveness of all faculty members, contrac-
tual and tenured, by evaluating them based on what students learn.
c. Student evaluations would assess (1) how faculty members treat
students and (2) the learning environment including the appli-
cation of student-centered learning so that students learn more
quickly and easily.
4. Universities should create program advisory boards (PABs) for
each area of study by reaching out to potential employers, graduate
schools, and certification and licensure agencies. PABs are vehicles
that tenured and professional faculty can use to determine curricula
and set performance standards so graduates are well prepared.
5. Federal funds are used to support private, for-profit universities that
have very poor performance outcomes. The poor performers must be
disqualified from receiving federal aid.