Inside Higher Ed: New Harvard prez questions focus on assessment
In her inaugural address as president of Harvard University Friday, Drew Faust questioned the emphasis of many in Washington on assessment — at least as currently being practiced. “We are asked to report graduation rates, graduate school admission statistics, scores on standardized tests intended to assess the ‘value added’ of years in college, research dollars, numbers of faculty publications. But such measures cannot themselves capture the achievements, let alone the aspirations of universities. Many of these metrics are important to know, and they shed light on particular parts of our undertaking. But our purposes are far more ambitious and our accountability thus far more difficult to explain,” Faust said. She added: “A university is not about results in the next quarter; it is not even about who a student has become by graduation. It is about learning that molds a lifetime, learning that transmits the heritage of millennia; learning that shapes the future.” Faust also noted the criticism that higher education is slow to change. “In the past half century, American colleges and universities have shared in a revolution, serving as both the emblem and the engine of the expansion of citizenship, equality and opportunity — to blacks, women, Jews, immigrants, and others who would have been subjected to quotas or excluded altogether in an earlier era. My presence here today — and indeed that of many others on this platform — would have been unimaginable even a few short years ago. Those who charge that universities are unable to change should take note of this transformation, of how different we are from universities even of the mid 20th century.”
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