We have learned, in the collective opinion of the authors of this work, that “corporatizing” public schools (Giroux, 2002) has largely, if not totally, brought forth a disastrous effect on student learning, initiation of effective teaching practices, and the continuing development of schools as institutions of democratic teaching and learning. All the while, students, particularly students of color, are increasingly dropping-out of secondary schools without hope of attaining a high school diploma. Organizations like the Edison Project (a for-profit venture to organize and administer the daily operation of specifically targeted American schools) are unable to substantially increase the ever-important test scores that so dominate their instructional focus. States continue to invest massive amounts of scarce financial resources in testing programs (and supporting materials for such programs) that have little hope of ever accurately assessing anything more than basic skill development (Emery & Ohanian, 2004; Ohanian, 2002). It is virtually impossible for these tests to assess curiosity, initiative, sensitivity, self-regulation, expressiveness, ability to pose the right problem, and the ability to discriminate (Graves, 2002). Astonishingly, those on the political right continue to boldly state that increased investment of public monies is not the answer to school reform, while senior executives at the Educational Testing Service (ETS) are granted annual bonuses ranging from $150,000 to $366,000 (Monastersky, 2002). Concomitantly, as these bonuses are being offered, research findings document that increased public monies actually do make a difference – not when applied to testing programs or vouchers but when dedicated to class size reduction and general fund augmentation (Hedges, Laine, & Greenwald, 1994; Greenwald, Hedges, & Laine, 1996; Molnar & Achilles, 2000a; Molnar & Achilles, 2000b).

Consequently, there should be little surprise that not only P-12, but postsecondary education, as well, is increasingly becoming a focal point for the many debates on the future success or failure of postindustrial life in United States. The commonalities are obvious: both require large amounts of state financial support; both are designed to serve an egalitarian place in a democratic society; both provide opportunities for student protest and overall emancipation; and, both have strong private counterparts with a history of elitism and, thus, hold places of esteem in modern society.

Understanding Postsecondary Education as an Election Theme

Recent reading and correlated research activities conducted on the part of the authors of this manuscript find that fertile ground does appear to exist with respect to postsecondary education as a vibrant theme for political debate. However, in light of the 2004 elections and the perceived mandate given to those with the most conservative of thoughts/ideologies, this compendium of themes, in all probability, will never see “the light of day”:

Although elements of the above are discussed at forums on educational reform, issues pertaining to institutional accountability and perceived versus real institutional quality appear to be coming to the forefront much more rapidly. Representatives John A. Boehner and Howard “Buck” McKeon have openly lobbied for federal intervention in accreditation and accountability and have authored, as part of H. R. 4283 (the recently proposed College Access and Opportunity Act of 2004), specific guidelines for accreditation activities. This call for “holding colleges more accountable” for academic performance and tuition hikes comes at the same time that many on the political right are crying out for little to no increase in Pell Grant maximums and other like funding vehicles (Burd, 2004). The use of techniques to focus on the analysis of quality or to create methodological procedures to bring forth such nationally recognized quality indicators are tantamount to the myriad activities that have occurred in P-12 education to make schools little more than an amalgamation of sites for test and retest actions. As Peter Sacks notes with respect to this acute desire to weigh and measure virtually all that transpires in P-12 education:

Indeed, if social engineers had set out to invent a virtually perfect inequality machine, designed to perpetuate class and race divisions, and that appeared to abide by all requisite state and federal laws and regulations, those engineers could do no better than the present-day accountability systems already put to use in American schools. (1999, p. 158)

The steps from P-12 accountability to higher education accountability certainly seem short in duration and rapidly moving. Concerns cited with respect to the need for development of a nationally-normed exit test (i.e., for all college graduates) are becoming more commonly articulated (see www.futuresproject.org). The measurement verbiage that once shocked P-12 teachers and administrators (i.e., measurement results equal excellence in employee performance and improvement in the real intellectual worth of students) seems so commonplace today – moreover, application of that same verbiage is now also being targeted toward higher education. The words of Charles Miller, former Chairman of the Board of Regents for the University of Texas System (chairman until June 2, 2004), are offered here with respect to support for this contention:

. . . colleges [universities] should test students in their first two years of college “to measure student learning at the undergraduate level across academic institutions.” While higher education may be filled with a diverse array of institutions and missions, making performance difficult to measure across the industry, he said, “there is or can be broad agreement on core-curriculum content for early college years – what undergraduates should learn in general education courses. (Burd, 2003, p. 3)

Statements regarding the lack of rigor in higher education are, likewise, openly voiced on state and national legislative floors. However, these discussions seem to be fraught with some of the same concerns that authors, like the authors of this work, have repeatedly cited with respect to the banality of accountability activities found in P-12 education. To utilize the thoughts of Patricia Kusimo (1999) here, as we have done in previous works (Smith & Ruhl-Smith, 2002a), seems to be both logical and appropriate. Kusimo has powerfully remarked that it seems a bit more than coincidental that in the 623 counties in eleven Old South states (Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia), where some of the highest percentages of African Americans reside, more than half (54%) of all Black adults, age 25 or older, do not possess a high school diploma. To further expand this line of thought, Hill, Campbell, and Harvey (2000) noted: “in . . . [our] largest cities over 30 percent of all children live in poverty, compared to less than 20 percent elsewhere. Teacher salaries are seldom as high as in wealthier suburbs, so city schools often lose their best teachers. As a result, schools in the lowest-income neighborhoods are often staffed by shifting casts of new and provisionally certified teachers” (p. 10). Is it possible that the intention here is not to expand accountability in order to bring forth increased levels of quality in higher education but rather to use these assessment procedures to further reduce the aforementioned paltry 18% degree attainment for African Americans and the 10% level of attainment for Hispanics?

Testing has become a primary vehicle for this accountability movement. In states like Ohio, where proficiency testing yields differences in failure rates of 20% or more between Caucasian students and those of African American and Hispanic decent (Spencer, 2004), calls for increased utilization of standardized tests are, nonetheless, articulated openly by senior staff of the State Department of Education (S. T. Zelman, personal conversation, December 5, 2003). These calls are made, however, as national reporting errors on such tests have become so prevalent that researchers like Kathleen Rhoades and George Madaus (2003) have developed an entire monograph on significant reporting miscalculations affecting thousands of students in states like Indiana, New York, Nevada, Minnesota, California, and Massachusetts.

Examples of students taking remedial coursework and then being notified of the fact that no such remediation was required are equal in number to those where students themselves determine that a specific question or set of questions could not be scored correctly given the responses offered by the test construction experts. On the heels of these calls for increased accountability, the Educational Testing Service just released data regarding 4,100 would-be teachers taking the Praxis Principles of Learning and Teaching examination. Although this test was administered to more than 40,000 individuals before ETS found persistent errors in scoring, it is now commonly known that the 4,100 individuals in question did, in fact, not fail the test, although they were told precisely that in previous communications with and by ETS (Smith-Richards, 2004). Robert Schaeffer, Education Director for the National Center for Fair and Open Testing, called the ETS failure “a fiasco” that clearly undermines the credibility of ETS as an agency for test preparation or administration (Rucker, 2004). Do issues such as the aforementioned not bring forth beliefs of uncertainty with respect to the prowess of standardized testing as articulated by the political right? Or, are these errors simply the cost of doing business in an attempt to further sort and stratify the intellectual haves from the have nots?

An additional area ripe for comparison, but not yet addressed in this work, is the daunting question of cost and cost containment with regard to higher education. Using the corollary to P-12 is highly instructive here. As states have reduced levels of spending on P-12 (in genuine percentage amounts, as well as in adjusted dollar amounts), school boards have been forced to raise costs locally. Representative Buck McKeon boldly stated in an essay published by the Chronicle of Higher Education (2003) that: “Many colleges, both private and public, are not operating as efficiently as they should, and their prices reflect it” (p. 1). However, it appears that Representative McKeon is not informing the citizenry of the entire “picture” surrounding administrative life on public university campuses. Since 1979 the Ohio state share of instruction has dropped from 69% in that year to a mere 42% today. This decrease in state subsidy is exacerbated by a 46% increase in health care costs to institutions like Bowling Green State University (this 46% represents an increase in cost for the past four years alone). Adding to operational increases of this magnitude are ever-escalating utility costs that have climbed by approximately 32% from 1997 to 2001 (Bowling Green State University, 2003).

Ohio is clearly not alone in this scenario of cost increase and governmental support decrease. Hawaii, between 1993 and 2001, has reported decreases of $35,000,000 in state support to its “flagship” university system; this decrease represents an 11% loss of overall state support for employee raises, technology purchases, library acquisitions, program expansion, building renovation, laboratory upgrades, and the like (Basinger, 2004). Although the final version of H.R. 4283 (i.e., before it died in the House late last year) contained no language pertaining to penalties for institutions that raise tuition greater than that of the current rate of inflation, it is well known that individuals on the political right, like Representative McKeon, continue to hold the concept in the highest of regard.

In keeping with questions posed by P-12 administrators and local elected officials regarding the unfunded elements of the No Child Left Behind Act (Palmer, 2003), is it unfair for colleges and universities to increase tuition in order to meet the demands of decreased state support, increased costs of health care, and rapidly raising energy costs? Do state and national officials, like Representative McKeon, not know or understand that universities operate on a cash-flow basis, much like school districts and municipalities? Or, is it possible that by creating animosity within the voting public, these same state and federal officials will, simultaneously, begin to offer support for charter colleges much like some have already done regarding charter elementary and secondary schools (Hoff, 2004)? If Michael Apple is correct in his belief that P-12 education is the “next health care” with more than $700 billion at stake, is there not the possibility that some similar desires for mining “huge profits” could exist with the political right as applied to higher education (Apple, 2001, p. 7)? Are charter/alternative colleges being created in states like Ohio to produce new pathways for teacher certification or are these pathways being created in order to shift state dollars to private entities? As this debate continues, university personnel must become involved in such deliberations and debates. Just as teacher union leaders have taken a tough stand on the No Child Left Behind Act (see http://www.nea.org/esea), professors and university administrators must unite in providing a full picture of the complex issues pertaining to return on investment in public higher education. The picture is indeed complex and often difficult to explain in a manner that is anything short of nuanced; though, to ignore the debate and accept the ramifications provided by the political right will simply allow for more lies and liars who tell them, as the well-known author and comic Al Franken might say (Franken, 2003). The authors of this essay can only attempt to offer a set of assumptions, albeit rather substantive ones, regarding how critics like Franken might respond to the following:

The whole standards movement, after all, is about restricting learning to what is actually useful; the memorization of information, the streamlining of knowledge to what can be evaluated by a standardized test. By curtailing the excessive autonomy of K-12 teachers and requiring them to teach “to the tests” we are preparing future college students for a brand of higher education designed and administered by the savviest segment of our society: for-profit corporations. (Bromell, 2002, p. 76)

Creating a Case for Understanding Intellectualism and Other Critical College Outcomes

There is virtually no professor of teacher education or educational leadership in the Unites States who has not heard the story of a P-12 educator abandoning a terrific class project, field trip, or integrated activity because he/she can no longer sufficiently align the event with state standards or standardized test protocols. The disappointment expressed by these elementary and secondary school teachers has reached such a crescendo that Fair Test has powerfully documented the loss of such activities, conjoined with the loss from the profession of good teachers who have created them, as key elements of the “top five” most dangerous consequences of high-states standardized testing (Fair Test, 2004). To assume that the negative consequences of high-stakes testing, specifically, and accountability movements, generally, will remain restricted to P-12 education seems, at best, to be wishful thinking on the part of higher education faculty members and university administrators. Even conservative talk radio hosts like Neal Boortz openly admit that Americans have no interest in intellectualism; few can even name the two Senators from their home state and only 20% can tell you who their local U.S. Representative is (Boortz, 2004). Is it a surprise, then, that the key tenet pertaining to the past, present, and future of higher education, that being intellectualism, is truly at risk of becoming nothing more than the presentation of a series of responses provided to a federally-mandated accreditation measure looking incredibly similar to the testing mandates that currently beleaguer all of P-12?

When we think about the purpose of an undergraduate college education, there is, unequivocally, much discussion and debate. Some view college as career preparation. Others have a more holistic view of the purpose of education; one that is more in keeping with the traditional German research institution of the 19th century. However, few, if any, members of the academy would argue with the belief that central features of our work are preparing citizens for life in a complex democracy and creating enhanced levels of intellectualism. Although intellectualism is a topic that could be debated far beyond the scope of this text, an advertisement for Agnes Scott College that appeared in the New York Times several years ago possibly outlines the fundamental elements of this topic best:

The greatest gift of the liberal arts experience is an education that deepens our humanity and develops our capacity to reason and to imagine fully. To explore the world and our lives rationally, passionately, and ethically . . . to have the courage to seek what is right and true apart from what is conventional or standard . . . to have the confidence to take on the most difficult questions and problems and offer responsible, rational and creative answers . . . to immerse oneself in the world, in its cultures, forms, history, and most powerful ideas – such learning is a profound end in itself. (Agnes Scott College, 2000)

The words and thoughts presented here are deep. Any superficial attempt to analyze or assess these as “outcomes” will surely be difficult, if not impossible. But, the essence of the thought as a holistic construct is truly powerful. Add to this construct the importance of logic, attitudes, values, understanding the historical tenets of the natural sciences and social sciences, the ability to create and engage in high-level dialogue, the capacity to assume the role of teacher as well as learner, and the ability to enjoy and understand both simplistic and complex pieces of art, music, and literature and you will then have one, somewhat small, yet significant, portion of that which colleges and university attempt to accomplish in just four years of a student’s life.

In addition to the aforementioned, “perhaps in no other nation is higher education more closely aligned with the democratic principles of social equality and individual achievement than in the United States” (Bowling Green State University, 2003, p. 6). Concepts such as egalitarianism, construction of new knowledge and generation of meaning for that new knowledge, active engagement in political and social processes, self-reflection, and community transformation are all a part of the large-scale view of democratic principles taught and fostered by institutions of higher education. Quite possibly, the following words best capture a full depiction of democracy in action on a college/university campus:

Ultimately, democratic pedagogies seek to [bring forth] . . . the goal of fostering life-long learners prepared for the rigors of citizenship . . . In terms of general education, the desired outcome is developing a culture of teaching and learning that recognizes the importance of egalitarian dialogue, utilizes problem-posing, legitimizes personal experience while fostering self-reflexivity, recognizes that knowledge is socially constructed, and connects the lives of educators and students to broader societal and global issues. Such an approach is more likely to nurture critical and engaged students equipped with the skills and aptitudes necessary to participate meaningfully in the public sphere. (Anderson, Levis-Fitzgerald, & Rhoads, 2003, p. 91)

The focus in the previous paragraphs has been dedicated largely to the academic elements of collegiate life, but another important aspect of overall development in postsecondary environments is “what goes on outside the classroom” (Light, 2001, p. 14). As is commonly heard at college commencements nationwide, student learning is/was enhanced by friendships, extracurricular involvement, internships or co-ops, and service learning experiences. The opportunity to engage in outside activities often has as great an impact on a student’s life as does the acquisition of content knowledge or skill development. Outside-of-class involvement is often credited with making students more professionally astute, leadership savvy, task oriented, networking conscious, environmentally sensitive, multiculturally aware, physically fit, and able to engender life-long friendships (Astin, 1993). Obviously, the convergence of internalized elements of intellectualism, with the social and psychosocial aspects of life beyond the classroom walls, is the essence of a true undergraduate experience – an experience that, in the opinion of these authors, is truly immeasurable.

How then should these critical elements of undergraduate life be measured or quantified? Should students complete a senior capstone experience or perhaps a senior project? Should evidence of learning be incorporated into a service learning project or a portfolio? Should the learning that has occurred in the college or university of attendance be measured in some way? In discussing assessment of learning in P-12 schools, Deborah Meier (1999) stated:

The kinds of learning required of citizens cannot be accomplished by standardized and centrally imposed systems of learning, even if we desired it for other reasons. Human learning, to be efficient, effective, and long-lasting, requires the engagement of learners on their own behalf, and rests on the relationships that develop between schools and their communities, between teachers and their students, and between the individual learner and what is to be learned. (p. 6)

This nexus is even more important in postsecondary environments, where students are demonstrating amalgamations of learning not easily standardized or demonstrated through use of a paper and pencil test. How are postsecondary institutions dealing with the demands for accountability and are these actions seen to be developing in a timely enough fashion?

As state and federal funds decrease, public scrutiny of higher education has, without question, increased. With public demands becoming more vocal, the pressures to demonstrate accountability, as has been noted in earlier sections of this work, become even more intense. Words contained in the text, Crisis in the Academy (1996), vividly portray this type of reasoning: “What the public . . . wants from higher education is educational quality, institutional efficiency, and reinforcement of fundamental societal values, and a fair price tag . . . (Finn, 1989, p. 181). In regard to the notion of producing much of this data, colleges and universities seem, at least to the external eye, to be reacting very slowly. Instead of permitting university faculty and administrators to methodologically develop an effective accountability system (if one can ever be created), politicians are seizing the opportunity to act quickly and hastily. Calls for more public disclosure of accreditation findings are reverberating throughout the walls of Congress. Bills like H. R. 4283 are calling for massive amounts of new reporting and disclosure requirements (Bollag, 2004). Further discussions of this sort can be heard with respect to externally imposed comprehensive examinations for all college juniors (Lucas, 1996) and standardized licensure examinations for all those who wish to teach or provide health care. Are these current calls for accountability nothing more than a diaphanous attempt to recreate the conditions of P-12 in a larger, possibly more complex, way for postsecondary environments? Given the lack of success in reforming P-12 with external force and through measures of suspect standards, is there a genuine belief that higher education can be reformed any more successfully? The evidence appears to indicate that reform via standardization and inappropriate measurement will produce no real reforms but will, rather, stratify and segment the population in ways that can only be deemed as sinister and counterproductive to the democratic way of life (Smith & Ruhl-Smith, 2004). But then, is that not, on the part of some, a plausible reason to so fervently support such actions?

Conclusions

The most simplistic and possibly most direct conclusion that can be drawn from the materials contained within the corpus of this work is that the authors have created nothing more than a complex view of a conspiracy theory that does not, in any way, exist. Certainly, those thoughts were once attributed to nonconformist thinkers like Kozol (1991) and Kohn (1995); however, as Kozol and Kohn have so presciently described the real outcomes of “corporatizing” P-12, few educators would now dare call their thoughts anything but genuine and meaningful.

The stakes at hand have now increased for college and university personnel. A higher education system, once the envy of the developed world, now stands to become nothing more than a place where the “standardistos” (Ohanian, 1999) impose their system of measurement on complex variables that, by their very nature, defy simplistic quantification. While members of the political right yearn for Nike’s slogan “just do it,” members of the professoriate seem to be casually sitting back waiting for all this to pass like a violent Midwestern thunderstorm. Teachers, principals, and superintendents sat waiting for the storm to subside, as well; it did not! In fact, the evidence regarding that passivity seems now to be overpowering – “students, particularly students of color, are increasingly exiting secondary schools without hope of attaining a high school diploma” (Smith & Ruhl-Smith, 2003, p.24).

In closing, should the reader continue to believe that all of this discussion on postsecondary redesign, focused on accountability or proving worth, is nothing more than a tempest in a teapot, the authors urge you to heed the words printed by an anonymous source (from the G. W. Bush administration), in the Washington Times (Burd, 2003): “If you thought that elementary and secondary education lobbyists squealed when we talked about accountability, you ain’t seen nothing yet” (p. 3). Finally, if those words are not chilling enough to support a contention of organized conspiracy, possibly the following will bring about reinforcement of the logic that frames the entirety of this manuscript:

Standard & Poors, the financial rating service, has lately been offering to evaluate and publish the performance, based largely on test scores, of every school district in a given state – a bit of number crunching that Michigan purchased for more than $10 million . . . Well, it turns out that Standard & Poors is owned by McGraw-Hill, one of the largest manufacturers of standardized tests. . . With such pressure to look good by boosting their test results, low-scoring districts may feel compelled to purchase heavily scripted curriculum programs designed to raise scores – programs such as Open Court or Reading Mastery . . . Where do those programs come from? By an astonishing coincidence, both are owned by McGraw Hill . . . [There was also a] strong statement of support for test-based accountability in a Business Week cover story about education published in March 2001. Care to guess what company owns Business Week? (Kohn, 2002, pp. 1-2)

And what actions of this ilk might be on the horizon for higher education? Is the annual institutional report card for postsecondary institutions the next great idea to be purported by the senior editorial staff at Business Week?

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