UHCN Article
Joseph A. Kotarba
President, Faculty Senate
(Printed in February 2007 UHC News)

Strategies for evaluating the effectiveness of higher education are all the rage lately.  In 2006, at the national level, the Department of Education Secretary’s Commission on the Future of Higher Education issued the Spelling Report, which called for more accountability for higher education.  Just this month, Governor Rick Perry of Texas went one step further.  He proposed a major expansion of state support for public higher education and for student aid—but with an interesting price tag.  He proposed one of the broadest testing requirements for graduating college students to date. Seniors would be required to take either licensure exams in their fields or Education Testing Service exams for various college majors. While students would not be required to pass the exams to graduate, colleges’ and universities’ state funds would be linked to students’ scores, so institutions where many students did well on the standardized exams would get more money.

             Although fresh off the press, Governor Perry’s testing proposal has received much criticism.  As noted in the newsletter INSIDE HIGHER ED, some faculty groups fear that the exams will mirror the redoubtable “teaching to the test” approach that has marked State efforts to instill accountability at the elementary and secondary levels.  Other critics claim that a universal testing system would encourage uniformity and discourage creativity in undergraduate education.

            One thing we can bank on is that Governor Perry’s proposal will garner much debate throughout the current legislative session.  As a faculty member, taxpayer, and parent, I can easily understand the need to insure that the graduates of our institutions of higher education are worthy of their degrees.  I am concerned, though, that the current strategies in higher education reform tend to deal with faculty in less than truly professional terms.  Put simply, professors are expected to be better professors as the result of possible rewards and probable punishments, as if faculty were assembly line workers paid by the unit produced.  As professors, our role is to discover, manage and protect—as well as disseminate—knowledge.  What’s missing from the debate over accountability are programs for investing in our professors, to provide them with the resources they need to do the best job possible in the lab as well as in the classroom.  In future essays here, I will discuss the fundamental value of increasing support for travel to professional meetings, for engaging in short-term research projects that involve undergraduate as well as graduate students, and for developing innovative courses.  I will propose no easy answers for improving higher education in Texas, but I will remind everyone that we must enhance the status of the professorate at UH in order to achieve our goal to be a major research university, as opposed to deskilling the professorate.