November-December 2007

Education Department not the Entity to Force Needed Changes
Judith Eaton’s article, “Institutions, Accreditors, and the Federal Government” (Change, September/October 2007), is the clearest account yet of the yearlong battle between the Department of Education and higher education’s accreditors. Read alongside your pieces by Kevin Carey and George Kuh, we have the best compilation of thought yet on the whole testing-for-accountability brouhaha. Bully for Change!

The battle is not over yet, but it is clear that the Education Department—impatient, artless, and ill-led—misfired in turning to accreditation as its lever for change. Had it forced through the changes it wanted, federalized accreditors would have become estranged from their member institutions, with some of them failing. Our technologies for stating gains and outcomes remain thin; accreditor efforts to improve undergraduate learning through assessment would likely have been swept aside; and, as Kuh notes, temptations to fudge high-stakes reporting would be heightened. All this the colleges, if not the department, knew. Not all opposition to the proposals was unfounded.

Yet as Eaton, the department, and we all know, higher education does have to figure out how to affirm the integrity of its degrees and provide better information for students and funders. I doubt this will come about through “leadership” from the Department of Education or accreditors. It is time to attack this through the agency of associations, funded consortia, and state systems. The goal, Carey reminds us, is to develop accountability systems that speak truth and prompt improvement. The department might fund the R&D and experiments we need, and accreditors might audit our public representations. But let’s get this ball out of the hands of parties in Washington and into those of people and institutions that can show us and our publics how to do it right.

—Theodore J. Marchese
Senior Consultant
Academic Search, Inc.
Washington, DC

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Cultural Changes Key to Altering An Intellectual Community
I want to draw attention to Joseph Heathcott’s distinction, in his article “Blueprints, Tools, and the Reality Before Us” (Change, September/October 2007), between curricular and cultural changes in a graduate program. He lays out several ways the Department of American Studies at Saint Louis University modified its graduate program to better educate its students. While curricular changes are the most tangible evidence of change to most observers, in my opinion cultural changes can be the most effective.

However, the difficulty in explaining and assessing the efficacy of a cultural shift can be a barrier to its implementation. Heathcott offers a brief look at the evidence of positive change he sees in his own program. I want to add to it by sharing my experience as a graduate student in the English Department at Texas A&M University. 

Our department was a partner in the Carnegie Initiative on the Doctorate, and I participated as one of our representatives. Inspired by the discussions during the initiative, we took the idea of altering the intellectual community in our department seriously and began to effect changes. We set aside space for a departmental lounge and organized times for coffee where faculty and grad students could get together informally. We encouraged the founding of working groups by students or faculty in any and all areas of interest. We held lunch/roundtable discussions on topics like cultivating an intellectual community where students are brought into the discussion.

These examples echo some of Heathcott’s—but more importantly, so do the successes. Graduate students’ attendance at department colloquia, meetings, and other functions is way up.  Graduate students are more involved in sharing research and seeking informal feedback from peers as well as faculty. Finally, we are more proactive in building our academic careers through publications, fellowships, and more ambitious projects. All of these allow us to acclimate to the academy throughout graduate school rather than making a leap into it after finishing our degrees.       

—David Cockley
Doctoral candidate
Department of English
Texas A&M University
College Station, Texas