Learning Outcome Assessments

The Misguided Drive to Measure ‘Learning Outcomes’ “No intellectual characteristic is too ineffable for assessment,” states Molly Worthen writer and  assistant professor of history for the University of North Carolina. As an educator, Worthen feels highly critical of the abrupt invasion the capitalist market has embedded on institutes of higher learning in the form of learning outcome assessments. In other words, why have college students seen a spike in assessments comparable to that of standardized testing in grade school? The answer is simple according to Worthen, because state legislatures all over the country decided that education better serves as a skills training business rather than an intellectual institution. The decision to reduce spending on public universities first occurred in the 1980s, coinciding with the assessment boom, placing a major financial responsibility on parents and students alike. The unfortunate collusion between the Department of Education and the capitalist market has left students and educators alike scrambling to meet standards placed by the very government who diminished their funding. In 2006 when Margaret Spelling, the secretary of education, criticized institutes of higher education for their lack of efficiency in preparing students for the workforce; institutes of higher learning all over the country replied with an increase in assessment staff, despite the major cost increase in public education. In her opinion piece, Worthen notes that assessments not only devalue education but they also oversimplify the intellectual advantages gained through a college education. Equally, many educators feel the need to sell their “product” in order to help students identify with the job-ready skills they can later transfer to the workforce. They point out that assessments only help politicians further ignore the roots of the problem and point fingers at faculty rather than address the real issues. Erik Gilbert, professor of history at Arkansas State University, describes how assessments fail to capture the real lessons taught in classrooms and the real reasons students struggle with higher education. He mentions how most of his students need full time jobs in order to obtain their education. A secondary problem of learning outcome assessments in public education would be the major disadvantage it places on students. Most public colleges are required to assess students who come from financially disadvantaged districts and are therefore unprepared for the rigours of a higher education both financially and mentally. Author Worthen asks us to consider the real value of higher education as institutions of intellectual exploration. If colleges and universities cannot make themselves immune to capitalism and politics, how will future students change and carry out systematic and protracted inquiry on a government that so desperately calls for frequent change. Worthen concludes her opinion by stating that education is not a cheap product that can be quantified by assessments that do not account for external forces affecting students and educators, but rather it is an institution that gives society a space for invaluable intellectual endeavors.

Unfortunately, Worthen makes some very valid points in her argument against learning outcome assessments. By using higher education institutions as a skills training centers, we diminish the value of education. In effect, students become customers and teachers become desperate sellers in search of meeting quotas set by assessments that try to quantify learning. All the while, state legislators have not even scratched the surface of the problem but rather added to it by reducing public education funding. Molly Worthen makes an impassioned effort to reason with the educated public that learning outcome assessments do not help but rather hurt education. By catering to the capitalist market, institutions of higher education lose their real value as notable institutions of intellectual exploration and become another specific skills-based training program.