Truth without Action

This reflection utilizes Kevin Casey’s 2007 article, Truth without Action, as a springboard to address contemporary issues related to autonomy, accountability and accreditation in higher-education. With escalating costs, rising unemployment and deepening consumer debt, it is natural for government officials to seek out a cause, or more accurately, a scape-goat for the evolving crisis. Over the last few decades, starting with A Time for Results in 1980, following with The State Post-secondary Review Entities (SPREs) in 1992; and continuing with the Spellings Commission on the Future of Higher Education Report in 2006, federal agents have politicized American education and issued indictments against higher-education. Tuition costs are too high, graduation rates are too low and student learning-outcomes remain ineffable. With the recent re-election of President Obama, “the Education Department will continue to play an active role in regulating and attempting to influence colleges and universities.” (Nelson, 2012) Amy Laitinen, deputy director for higher-education at the New America Foundation and former Education Department policy advisor, recently stated, “The President himself, not just his advisors, is very interested in the college cost and the college outcome issue.” (Nelson, 2012)

Assessing the Composition Program on Our Own Terms

As Jacqueline Jones Royster articulated at the 2006 Conference on College Composition and Communication, English departments are already assessing themselves and should resist suggestions by the Spellings Commission on the Future of Higher Education that a standardized method of assessing students and programs in higher education is needed. In the fall of 2006, the University of Louisville was due to be reviewed by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS). The First-Year Composition program chose to conduct an internal assessment in the fall of 2004. This chapter details the Composition program assessment conducted at the University of Louisville and includes a comprehensive analysis of its rationale, theoretical foundations, methodologies, and results. This chapter also articulates the difficulties of such a large-scale assessment as well as the uniquely local challenges faced during the process.

Bologna in America: The Spellings Commission and neo-liberal higher education policy

This article summarises/analyses the higher education reforms proposed by the 'Spellings Commission' in the United States on quality assurance and accountability, and draws attention to the links I see between these reform proposals and the Bologna Process. I trace a brief history of the Spellings Commission and analyse it in order to produce questions for discussion about the 'parallel' processes of reform in higher education in the U.S. and Europe.