Here’s the real landscape, Jim. There are huge incentive compatibility problems in higher ed, but they’re not the ones you talk about here. Leaving aside top tier universities, where the students come in well-prepared and resources are plentiful, higher ed has to pick up where the K-12 system leaves off, and often fails. Many, many students (the vast majority at some places) come in unable to write a coherent essay or do algebra. Making up those deficits and graduating with a college degree that honestly certifies an advanced level of education would require years of hard mental labor. But do students do that kind of work in college. Absolutely not. The National Survey of Student Engagement consistently reports that full-time students do about twelve hours per week of work on academics, not including time spent in class. With time in class (12 or 15 hours a week, depending on the institution), that’s an average of 24-27 hours per week on schoolwork. Not enough. Not close to enough, given the accumulated K-12 deficit.

Why don’t the institutions demand better work of their students? Serious incentive incompatibilities. Student evaluations now form a major part of tenure and promotion files at non-research universities. Most professors are convinced that heavy workloads and low grades are the route to poor evaluations (though the evidence supports only the correlation between low grades and low evaluations). For higher ed teachers on term contracts (some 2/3 of college teachers, responsible for roughly half of the courses being taught), bad evaluations can lead to an immediate contract termination. So the incentives are to demand little of one’s students.

There are ways to turn this around, by the way. I direct a program where we’ve been collecting data on student effort for the past decade, and we push our students hard. Sixty percent of the students in my program’s courses meet or exceed the norm of two hours of work outside of the classroom for every hour spent inside the classroom. Getting my colleagues on board was easy, and the students in my program take pride in working harder than their peers. The people who really don’t like me are other chairs and directors, who take offense when I point out that most of our students aren’t working hard enough (and, by implication, that their programs aren’t making students work hard enough).

If you want to have a serious conversation and learn something, let’s talk.

Say no to taxes and fight this pestilence. SEIU is a plague and a pox on the people of Illinois.

We SHOULD be using this 500 million towards underfunded programs and scholarships for these underbudgeted schools and wait until the economy upturns to waste federal tax dollars on reforms that aren’t even tested yet. I voted for Obama, but this is a gross misuse of federal money. We’re wasting 500 million in an economic downturn. Please speak up & write to your local conressman or this money will be wasted and go towards eduation administrators pockets for all their pet projects.

http://www.americansforprosperity.org/122408-joe-calomino-apears-myfox-chicago-discussing-seius-relationship-blagojevich