.
A couple of days ago, I noted that scandals and absurdities are pretty much anywhere that has generally avoided the spotlight (and lots of places that haven't!). In our time, all you’ve got to do is point somewhere and then walk up to the trouble. It’s there.
One such object of absurdo-scandalosity is “
credit inflation” in higher education—that is, the trend of accepting less student effort (homework, etc.) per credit or unit. As things stand, many students pass (some of) their courses having made precious little effort. I’ve been carping about this for years.
Here’s the problem as it seems to play out at the community college level. Take my college: it is supposed to follow the old “
Carnegie unit” standard, according to which the average student is supposed to put in
at least two hours of homework per week per “credit.” The typical community college course is 3 units/credits (and 3 hours in class per week). And so, theoretically, a student does six hours of homework per course per week. (I snigger ruefully.)
Now do the math. The typical full-time student takes four or five courses per semester. Let’s say that
Janey Jones is taking four courses this semester. That means she’s supposed to be spending
at least twenty-four hours on homework per week. That’s on top of the twelve hours per week she is supposed to be in the classroom. 24 + 12 = 36 hours. (Do students attend class regularly?
Heimatland!)
Sounds good, except that Janey is a typical student, and so she also spends maybe 20-35 hours per week at her job–and who-know-how-many hours per week on her social life.
That 24 hours of homework?
It ain’t happening. Not even close. Not even close to close. (See the NSSE data for 4-year institutions above. 68% of freshmen do
15 homework hours or fewer per week. Nearly half do 10 hours or fewer.)
Meanwhile, the system refuses to acknowledge the problem. Indeed, “the system” endlessly shines its mute 'n' sunny gaze upon the phenomenon of working, socializing students taking full course loads, year after year, decade after decade.
The system is an idiot. (Are you dazzled at my command of understatement? Amused at my grasp of the obvious? Annoyed at my inveterate negativity? They
execute philosophers, you know.)
The result? Well, in the classroom, it's like this. When an instructor of, say, anthropology or philosophy announces his expectation that students will do homework in accordance with the Carnegie unit standard (i.e., at least six hours of homework per week), most student are incredulous;
they simply will not do it. If an instructor forces the issue, students become hostile. Eventually, torches are lifted and castles are marched upon in the night. Ouch.
As usual, dear reader, we’re going to hell in a hand-basket.
Well, this particular issue has popped up recently in the course of recognition of another instance of randomly noticed absurdo-scandalosity, one I identified a couple of days ago: the massive scam of for-profit “universities,” such as the U of Phoenix, taking shit loads of tuition money (ultimately provided by the taxpayer in the form of student loans—that students often do not or cannot repay) for their often hinky educational programs, many of which are on the “cutting edge” of such untried-n-true whiz-bangery as online instruction.
Here’s the latest:
Credit Hours Should Be Worth the Cost, House Panel Members Say (Chronicle of Higher Education)
The U.S. House Committee on Education and Labor heard testimony on Thursday from the Education Department's inspector general and Sylvia Manning, president of the Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools [HLCNCACS], one of the nation's major regional accrediting organizations. Late last year, the department's inspector general recommended that the department consider limiting, suspending, or terminating the commission's authority as a federally approved accreditor after the commission gave its stamp of approval to American InterContinental University, despite a review that found the institution had inflated the amount of credit it was awarding for a small group of courses.
As a result of that recommendation, the Higher Learning Commission is negotiating with the department on ways to set more explicit standards for a credit hour "without being prescriptive," Ms. Manning said at the hearing.
The standard of a credit hour, which is not actually a full 60 minutes in most cases, is deeply embedded in higher education as a benchmark for earning a degree. But the definition of what constitutes a credit hour has become muddled in recent years with the increase in online education.
The Education Department is seeking to bring some clarity to that issue with its proposal to define the credit hour as one hour of classroom instruction and two hours of student work outside the classroom over 15 weeks for a semester and 10 to 12 weeks for a quarter. Institutions and accreditors, however, would have some flexibility under the proposals to develop alternative measures.
Rep. George Miller, a California Democrat who is chairman of the House education committee, said defining a credit hour is critical to ensure that students and taxpayers, through federal financial aid, are not footing the bill for courses that are not worth the amount of credit being awarded.
If it's a for-profit institution that is getting more money for a course than it's really worth, Mr. Miller said, then the awarding of credit hours could become a part of a company's business plan to bolster profits.
Ms. Manning said her organization shares committee members' concerns about the rising cost of higher education and accountability for federal aid dollars. But strictly defining a credit hour is a complex issue, she said, because credit is now related more to what students should learn during a course than the amount of time they spend in the classroom.
"Anyone who has ever taught or taken a class knows the concept of credit hours is mushy," Ms. Manning wrote in her prepared testimony to the committee.
Instead of setting a strict definition of what a credit hour should be for an institution, the commission relies on its peer reviewers—typically drawn from a corps of faculty members and administrators at similar institutions—to determine if the content of courses is compatible with the amount of credit a college awards for them, Ms. Manning said.
In the case of American InterContinental, the commission was able to persuade the institution to correct the credit hours it was awarding for the specific courses, she said. If the commission had simply denied accreditation to the institution, the college would have kept awarding the inflated credit because it was already accredited by another regional organization, she said.
Democrats on the committee, however, were critical of the commission for accrediting American InterContinental before seeking to correct the deficiencies in credit hours and pressed Ms. Manning on whether a more specific definition of credit hour would prevent such a problem in the future.
Rep. Timothy H. Bishop, Democrat of New York, said he found the state government's strict limits on credit hour helpful when he was provost of Long Island University's Southampton College. He asked what would be the harm of having a minimum definition of that standard.
Ms. Manning replied that having a definition of what constitutes a credit hour won't do any harm, but it also doesn't help accreditors or institutions set a standard for how much students are learning.
The for-profits really are on the cutting edge: they are a growing division, the avant-garde of the higher education army in America, marching itself off of a cliff. --RB (BvT)
SEE ALSO
Method to Miller's Madness (
Inside Higher Ed)
