There is a very interesting column in today’s NYTIMES about
the lack of academic standards in higher education. Entitled “Who will Hold Colleges Accountable?”
it is written by Kevin Carey and can be found at http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/10/opinion/who-will-hold-colleges-accountable.html?hp
It starts with an anecdote about how athletes at major
football colleges are obtaining credit hours at on-line institutions by taking
“gut” courses to remain eligible for varsity competition at their “home”
institution while really not learning anything. (This practice was first exposed in last
month’s edition of the Chronicle of Higher Education.)
The author uses this story as a jumping off point to
criticize the lack of uniform performance measurements in higher education and
states that “the notion of recording academic progress by counting the
number of hours students spend sitting in a classroom [credit hours] is
nonsensical.” He goes on to assert “the
most promising solution would be to replace the anachronistic credit hour with
common standards for what college students actually need to know and to be able
to do.”
As a professor, I’ve always been a little skittish
about creating a long list of common standards that can clog up a curriculum
with mandated readings. I like the
intellectual freedom that I currently have to present students with a host of
competing ideas and intellectual frameworks.
I then challenge them to think critically and to decide which set of
tools and possible action steps will be most effective in any particular
situation.
But as a program director, I understand the
usefulness of broad academic benchmarks for comparing the depth, breadth, and
quality of different nonprofit masters programs. This is why we applied for and received
certification of our nonprofit profit programs from the Nonprofit Academic
Center Council (NACC). Unlike many
other nonprofit programs that are appendages of business, public policy, and/or
social work schools, all the topics identified by NACC as being critical to quality
nonprofit training are found in the core curriculum of Bay Path’s nonprofit
programs. You can see the rigor and
thoroughness of our programs by looking at our course descriptions on this website. Thoughts?
Jeff
