by John Richard Schrock
Wichita Eagle
September 5, 2003
So you took a class at a college and now the university won't accept your transfer credits — bummer! Someone ought to do something about that. And they are.
Long a pet issue with some legislators, this difficulty in transferring college credit has led to various plans for "seamless articulation."
First there were articulation agreements. Then there were discipline committees to discuss core concepts. Now community colleges are meeting to discuss uniform objectives for undergraduate college courses.
But simpleminded attempts to solve the credit transfer "problem" have often lead instead to a severe erosion of course and program quality.
Kansas universities have good reasons to not always accept transfer credit from another institution, and it is not a matter of trying to extract more tuition. Schools vary in faculty, facilities, and rigor of coursework.
It does not take many years of teaching in Kansas before you recognize that students coming from College A are well-prepared in Course A, but similar students from College B haven't exceeded high school level work although they also took a course with this same title.
The biggest factor is the quality of the teaching; some schools have gathered excellent faculty and some have not. Programs, facilities, and leadership also vary.
Requiring common syllabi, uniform course numbers, or asserting they achieve the same course objectives does not touch the faculty-quality problem.
The best colleges and universities of Kansas have continued their internal review of faculty and course quality using faculty review procedures that ensure good-but-unique teaching and good-but-unique courses. Some others may have substituted bean counting of student enrollments, and allowed market mentality to drive down faculty and course rigor.
Further standardizing of courses, syllabi, and testing will only serve to drag the best programs down to the lowest level. To paraphrase Nietszche, education in standardized educational enterprises is bad for the same reason that food in large restaurants is usually bad.
-30-
John Richard Schrock trains biology teachers and lives in Emporia.
Original text for: "Seamless Articulation" a Simpleminded Solution
by John Richard Schrock
So you took a class at a college and now the university won't accept your transfer credits — bummer! Someone ought to do something about that. And they are.
Long a pet issue with some legislators, this difficulty in transferring college credit has led to various plans for "seamless articulation."
First there were articulation agreements. Then there were discipline committees to discuss core concepts. Now community colleges are meeting to discuss uniform objectives for undergraduate college courses. so all courses will transfer seamlessly.—Wil this lead to common course numbers? Identical syllabi? Standardized tests?
Some other states went down this path a decade ago—and their experiences indicate that seamless articulation measures can be disastrous. But simpleminded attempts to solve the credit transfer "problem" have often lead instead to a severe erosion of course and program quality.
Kansas universities have good reasons to not always accept transfer credit from another institution, and it is not a matter of trying to extract more tuition. Schools vary in faculty, facilities, and rigor of coursework.
It does not take many years of teaching in Kansas before you recognize that students coming from College A are well-prepared in Course A, but similar students from College B haven't exceeded high school level work although they also took a course with this same title.
The biggest factor is the quality of the teaching; some schools have gathered excellent faculty and some have not. Programs, facilities, and leadership also vary.
Requiring common syllabi, uniform course numbers, or asserting they achieve the same course objectives does not touch the faculty-quality problem.
Outreach programs offered away from campus in local community centers raise another quality issue. Some instructors may be well qualified. In other cases it appears that any warm body is hired to teach, and future demand for their course may depend on a teacher giving high grades. This is further exacerbated by concurrent—enrollment courses,—where—high—school juniors and seniors take courses for college credit. The textbooks used, the site of instruction, and the lack of rigor can all blur the distinction between secondary and college coursework. Full time college faculty recognize
how off campus courses can erode the reputation of their home institution and one solution has been to designate at least a portion of the questions that have to be on the tests for each course. This in turn forces the instructor to teach to the test, eliminating much of their academic freedom and reducing the class to memorizing content.—The most interesting, creative, and innovative of instructors leave. The assembly line teachers remain.
Kansas is not a leader in the seamless articulation movement. Several other states have long since moved to standardize course numbers, course syllabi, and tests. In Colorado, the first two years of college courses are standardized; unique programs do not begin until the
third—year—of college.------Outsourcing—is—another
"advantage" of this system readily adopted by those who—see themselves as CEOs who want to run education as a business rather than a public good.—In Florida, adjuncts are hired to teach standardized classes on a per course basis, and adjuncts can make up half of the faculty.—Adjuncts come, teach their class, and go home.----In hard financial times, such non tenured instructors can be released immediately providing tremendous flexibility.—Of course, these hire a profs are not available for committeework, advising, and supporting the outside of class intellectual activities of a campus. The genuine full time faculty therefore have to work double time and this has a major impact on their research and teaching.
The best colleges and universities of Kansas have continued their internal review of faculty and course quality using faculty review procedures that ensure good-but-unique teaching and good-but-unique courses. Some others may have substituted bean counting of student enrollments, and allowed market mentality to drive down faculty and course rigor.
Further standardizing of courses, syllabi, and testing will only serve to drag the best programs down to the lowest level. To paraphrase Nietszche, education in standardized educational enterprises is bad for the same reason that food in large restaurants is usually bad.
-30-
John Richard Schrock trains biology teachers and lives in Emporia.
