LiberalArtsOnline Volume 3, Number 9
November 2003
With this issue of LiberalArtsOnline we begin a process of adding new types of essays to the mix. There is important research on higher education in general, and on liberal arts education in particular, that few of us will read in its original form. Yet we should know about it and have access to it. Our managing editor summarizes the significance of just such a piece of research in the short essay that we offer today. Interested readers will find the full research report at http://www.wabash.edu/cila/home.cfm?news_id=1365. We look forward to receiving your suggestions on other well-grounded scholarly research that you would like to see us distill down to its essence in a similar fashion.
—The Editors
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If It’s Hard to Get In, It Must Be Good?
by Frederik Ohles
Senior Research Fellow
Center of Inquiry in the Liberal Arts
Wabash College
What makes a college good? Rejecting lots of applicants? Using best practices in the classroom? You might think that colleges that are pickiest about the students they accept could be relied on to use the best classroom practices, but you would be wrong.
A new study by two of higher education’s leading researchers shows no meaningful link between selective admissions and the quality of college teaching.
Ernest T. Pascarella of the University of Iowa and Indiana University's George D. Kuh have led a research team that has taken a hard look at what is being claimed in the college ratings game. What they have found should change how prospective students and their families make college choices. The research, sponsored by the Center of Inquiry in the Liberal Arts, has led to the publication of "Institutional Selectivity and Good Practices in Undergraduate Education: How Strong is the Link?" To read the full report, go to http://www.wabash.edu/cila/home.cfm?news_id=1365 on the Center of Inquiry website.
For high school seniors and their parents, the most important lesson from this research is that all of the college guidebooks and rankings sources get an "F" on one of the most important points about a college education. According to Pascarella and Kuh, the only reliable way to find the best learning is to look for the best teaching. Finding the best teaching means looking at what professors do in and out of class, and looking at what everyone in the college does to promote learning. Most college guidebooks tell prospective students very little about any of that. Ratings say nothing about it.
But surely it is reasonable to think that there are advantages to having a carefully selected group of other young people around you in college. The odds must be better for having deep, meaningful classroom discussions. Maybe those late night bull sessions in the residence hall lounge will include more references to Immanuel Kant and fewer to the Simpsons. And when students peer-review each other’s papers, it stands to reason that they should have more chances to deal with meaningful content and fewer encounters with bad spelling. Yet the data analyzed by Pascarella and Kuh debunk all of these standard assumptions about better learning automatically going on—in and out of class—at America’s most sought-after colleges.
What really matters for getting a good liberal arts education is encountering "good practices" everywhere on campus. That's what Pascarella and Kuh have shown in their latest study, with help from Iowa graduate students Ty Cruce and Gregory C. Wolniak and Indiana research analysts Paul D. Umbach, John C. Hayek, Robert M. Carini, Robert M. Gonyea, and Chun-Mei Zhao. In summary, the study suggests, "Good practices in undergraduate education are essentially independent of institutional selectivity," even though "college academic selectivity plays a dominant role in the public’s understanding of what constitutes 'institutional excellence' in undergraduate education."
Good practices in college teaching include:
a) the quality of student-faculty contact;
b) learning through teamwork with other students;
c) teaching that fosters active learning and increases the time students spend on meaningful learning exercises;
d) prompt feedback;
e) high expectations;
f) teaching that is clear, well-organized, and well-prepared;
g) positive interaction with other students outside of class; and
h) an overall environment on campus that supports learning.
Good practices frame a good college education, no matter who the other students are, no matter how hard or easy it is to be admitted.
For those of us at less selective colleges, is this news oddly good yet inconsequential—because we will go on yearning to be choosier, whether that would benefit our students or not? For those of us at more selective colleges, is this news just as oddly bad yet inconsequential—because we have the luxury to persist with habitual practices, whether they benefit our students or not? What Pascarella and Kuh have uncovered should put these and other awkward questions in all of our minds. And if we take our responsibilities seriously, the questions we give the greatest weight will be the ones that are about our students, not about us.
Direct personal responses to Fred Ohles at Ohlesf@wabash.edu
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LiberalArtsOnline is an occasional email essay on the liberal arts, provided as a public service of the Center of Inquiry in the Liberal Arts.
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The comments published in LiberalArtsOnline reflect the opinions of the author(s) and not necessarily those of the Center of Inquiry or Wabash College. Comments may be quoted or republished in full, with attribution to the author(s), LiberalArtsOnline, and the Center of Inquiry in the Liberal Arts at Wabash College.