On the Record » Topic: The University's Reason for Being

On the Record » Topic: The University's Reason for Being http://ontherecord.press-citizen-media.com/topic/the-universitys-reason-for-being Put your name where your mouth is. en-US Thu, 23 Feb 2012 07:21:26 +0000 http://bbpress.org/?v=1.0.2 <![CDATA[Search]]> q http://ontherecord.press-citizen-media.com/search.php Sam Osborne on "The University's Reason for Being" http://ontherecord.press-citizen-media.com/topic/the-universitys-reason-for-being#post-205 Sun, 14 Mar 2010 15:08:33 +0000 Sam Osborne 205@http://ontherecord.press-citizen-media.com/ There are at least as many reasons for there being a University of Iowa as there are students that come to the university. However, if the university does not think it can serve some of those that might come, it should change it recruitment and admission procedures. As a seventeen-year-old kid from a small Iowa town, I wandered into the university after time-clock-punching-in-and-out of employment as a post-high-school factory job of day-after-day of repetitively doing the same thing. Buyt, on one long day between punch in and out, my wandering mind wandered into wondering if there might be a more interesting way to spend my life. So here I come SUI! As a new college student I had no idea what liberal arts might be. But soon the strange things that it was dealing with had me thinking about all sorts of things that I had never before even knew existed. I was certainly off factory-job task, and an idle thinker might say that my far horizon became challenging interesting and from then on I was headed for them thar far hills. And, the trip today is still as interesting as it was when as a young SUI student I took that first step all those many years ago. Dang, I could have never imagined that ideas and human expression could be so interesting, and that one could even make a buck off of ‘em---and serendipitously quite a few of them by thinking outside of the box. In passing, I would like to leave a message for Mr. Columbia and Harvard Educated President Obama.: Mr. President, All of that testing in No Child Left Behind is really a dumb factory-education idea. You might want to know, Mr. President, those folks in China making all of that junk being sold in our box stores, guess what? Many of them can’t even read. Rick Altman on "The University's Reason for Being" http://ontherecord.press-citizen-media.com/topic/the-universitys-reason-for-being#post-198 Tue, 09 Mar 2010 16:21:04 +0000 Rick Altman 198@http://ontherecord.press-citizen-media.com/ THE UNIVERSITY’S REASON FOR BEING In a 5 March Press-Citizen Guest Opinion, University of Iowa Graduate College Dean John C. Keller explains, as his title proclaims, that “Pursuit of excellence comes through assessment.” Taken together with Provost Wallace Loh’s recent oral and published remarks, Keller’s piece provides a clear justification for assessing the quality of the University’s graduate programs. He is right, assessment is necessary. And in these difficult budgetary times, reallocation must be practiced assiduously -- even to the point of closing some programs. The question is not whether to assess the University’s graduate programs, but how to assess them. The procedures adopted by the Provost’s Task Force on Graduate Education leave much to be desired. Here are some important reasons why further -- and a different kind of -- assessment is necessary. Task Force Mission. The Task Force’s published mission statement charges the committee to articulate “a strategic vision and priorities for increased excellence in graduate education at the University of Iowa.” But Provost Loh has devalued the apparently high-minded nature of this charge by repeatedly stating that the Task Force was not asked to evaluate the quality of faculty publications or graduate student work. Why not? Isn’t this what a university is about? How can a committee evaluate the quality of a degree program and make recommendations for increased excellence if it turns its back on the quality of the research produced by that program? Task Force Selection. Of the 176 degree programs assessed by the Task Force, 44 are in the Arts and Humanities area. Yet only 3 out of 19 committee members (21 counting ex officio members) hail from departments in the Arts and Humanities. Is this appropriate representation? Task Force Resources. The Graduate College furnished the Task Force with a variety of statistics: applicant pool, completion rate, time to degree, placement, etc. Professional evaluations by specialists in the fields under scrutiny were not provided. What should the members of the Task Force have done, when faced with the contradictory task of increasing excellence in graduate education without access to an accurate measurement of current faculty and graduate student excellence? They should then and there have responded to the Provost that it is not possible to assess program quality without expert input. They should not have agreed to base their conclusions on Graduate College data alone. Task Force Criteria. Judging from the criticisms leveled at those programs initially judged “Weak” (subsequently relabeled “Requiring Further Evaluation”), qualitative concerns such as the caliber of faculty and student research took a back seat to such quantitative measures as completion rate and time to degree. Dean Keller notes that “The focus of the assessments was on graduate student outcomes.” What he doesn’t say is that the data furnished to the committee defined “student outcomes” in a particularly narrow way. Instead of focusing on the quality of dissertations, the number and quality of student publications, or the type of institution where students found jobs, the Task Force focused instead on easily measurable (but not necessarily pertinent) figures including “time to degree.” The case of the Film Studies PhD program is instructive. The fact that a recent Film Studies student won the national prize for best dissertation was not taken into account. The number of Film Studies dissertations that have been published by prestigious presses was deemed less important than the amount of time it took those students to complete their degrees. No attention was paid to the fact that recent Film Studies graduates are now in tenure-track positions at Catholic University, the University of Chicago (2), Fordham, Michigan State, Notre Dame, Trinity, the University of Iceland, and Yale. Or that earlier Film Studies graduates are now tenured at dozens of major universities, including Brown (2), Chicago, Cornell, Dartmouth, Georgetown, Harvard, Northwestern (2), Notre Dame (2), Texas, and Yale. The fact that Iowa PhDs have been crucial to the development of Film Studies as an academic discipline, and continue to make major contributions to the field, is ignored in favor of time-to-degree data that make no distinction between a diploma mill and a world-class program. Task Force Process. The University of Iowa has a long tradition of recusal: faculty who judge internal competitions do not participate in decisions regarding individuals in their unit. The Task Force report does not say whether the committee practiced recusal, but close analysis of the report raises questions. Of 23 degree programs rated “Exemplary,” 17 are in departments represented by Task Force members. Of 71 programs rated “High Quality,” 40 are in departments with a Task Force member. But of the 26 lowest-rated Arts and Humanities degree programs, not a single one is represented on the Task Force. The French have an expression for it: “Les absents ont toujours tort” -- “Without representation you can expect the worst.” Task Force Consideration of Departmental Responses. Fortunately, as we have been several times reminded during this process, we live in an academic democracy, where our opinions are solicited and considered. The invitation to respond to preliminary Task Force evaluations suggested that these responses would lead to changed Task Force recommendations. Yet not a single evaluation of the 24 degree programs initially rated “Weak” was changed. We were asked to challenge factual errors and to correct committee misunderstandings, but this added information was apparently not considered. Graduate College Use of Task Force Recommendations. Provost Loh has repeatedly stated (e.g., at the 2 February Faculty Senate meeting) that the Task Force recommendations are preliminary, and will not be acted on until appropriate additional evaluation has been carried out. Yet the Graduate College recently announced that it would not consider fellowship nominations made by programs designated as “Weak,” aka “Additional Evaluation Required.” Why this rush to judgment? Is the expression “Additional Evaluation Required” not sufficiently clear? Dean Keller’s 5 March Press-Citizen article says that "it is premature to conclude the fate of any of our programs." Yet this apparent reassurance dodges the crucial fact that the Graduate College has already acted on the findings of the report, sealing rather than defending the fate of the disenfranchised programs. Recognition of Public Commentary. Over the past six weeks the Film Studies program has been showered with letters of support from alumni who define the field and colleagues who are among the world’s most prominent scholars. The hundred or so letters that had arrived by mid-February were addressed via e-mail on 17 February to President Mason, Provost Loh, Dean Keller, and Dean Maxson. Yet, in a 1 March Daily Iowan article, Provost Loh claimed that there had hardly been any response to the Task Force evaluations and recommendations. On 3 March the Provost’s office was still telling alumni and current students that it had received no such letters. The Provost’s refusal to acknowledge substantial dissent is only part of the spin control that occupied the administration throughout the first week of March. In addition to the Provost’s public statements, Dean Keller offered the following proof of Task Force fairness in his 5 March Press-Citizen article: “The task force scrutinized programs in all academic areas equitably. Of the 14 graduate programs identified as requiring additional evaluation, one-half were in the humanities and one-half were in the sciences and social sciences.” It is not fitting for a University administrator to make such spurious arguments. The Task Force evaluated five separate areas (Arts and Humanities; Social Sciences; Mathematical, Physical Sciences, Engineering; Health Sciences; Biological Sciences). The Arts and Humanities constitute not one-half of the programs evaluated, as Dean Keller implies, but only one out of five. Instead of the expected 20 percent of Arts and Humanities programs in the lowest category, there are 50 percent. To present this outcome as equitable is misleading and inappropriate. When challenged about the Task Force’s recommendations, the Provost has regularly insisted that the Task Force on Graduate Education was not created to evaluate faculty and graduate student performance. When contacted by an international network of scholars and alumni, he has consistently claimed ignorance of their letters. When pressed, the Dean of the Graduate College offers inappropriate arguments. This is a sad moment in the history of a great University. It is hard not to feel a profound sense of shame upon hearing this University’s chief academic officers say publicly that it is appropriate to base University restructuring on something other than faculty and graduate student excellence. Many University faculty currently share a sense that the University’s educational leadership has been supplanted by an efficiency expert mentality. In these difficult times, do we need to sail our ship efficiently? Of course we do. But if we lose sight of the University’s reason for being -- its educational mission -- then we will have abandoned the very values on which the University is built. To be sure, the University of Iowa faces an unprecedented financial challenge. But efficiency expert solutions provide only a short-term fix. Provost Loh and Dean Keller are right that we need to evaluate our degree programs, and that we need to make hard decisions based on those evaluations. Unless the evaluations are based on appropriate values, however, the evaluations will damage the University rather than serve it. Rick Altman Professor of Cinema and Comparative Literature Director of Film Studies