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Wednesday, March 25, 2009

More words

I wish to thank the fine folks who are contributing words to my previous post. Anyone who has been in higher education will remember continuous improvement, stakeholders, paradigm shift, and collegial. (Please see the comments on my earlier post for a more complete list.) To this growing list I wish to add assessment. We are now closing in on twenty-five years of this and I have yet to see any great leap forward in the quality of education in this country. I am beginning to believe that instead of calling it assessment we should refer to it as "the perpetual employment act for bureaucrats."

As someone has already noted the A & S meeting accomplished little. The Learning Alliance report doesn't tell us much we don't already know. The benchmarking study is a sham. The good Dr. is still waiting to actually see the entire study. It seems there's a meeting sometime in April where all the round table folks will get to talk to the big pickle and the provost about the results. Those friends taking involuntary furloughs will be asking why we spent 80 grand on something we already knew. Maybe they'll get a complimentary copy of the report on their way out the door.

2 comments:

horns n' fins said...

When I saw the summary comments of the benchmarking study from the Provost's PowerPoint at yesterday's Council meeting, I barely resisted the urge to raise my hand and make the comment that I could have told you all that, and I would have only charged half as much. What a bargain.

Anonymous said...

I hear tell that THE BLADE ran an article on 3/24 on the Provost's presentation to the Board re benchmarking study. If someone would, could you please post it or make a link, as I do not really know how to do this.