Quantity, not quality, in higher education

Your Nov. 11 PolitiFact article “Funding model changing how colleges do business” accepts without question Gov. Bill Haslam’s unstated thesis that Tennessee’s institutions of higher education will maintain high qualitative criteria in the face of exclusively quantitative performance standards.

Neither numbers of students graduated nor numbers of semesters they require to complete degree programs are valid indicators of educational quality.

In some disciplines — law and medicine, for example — educational outcomes are validated by licensing examinations. No such system exists, however, for the bulk of university graduates.

Degrees from accredited institutions are assumed to be adequate evidence of individuals’ capabilities. Increasing numbers of employers, however, are challenging that assumption, and with good cause.

The reasons are complex. More and more children enter first grade without skills — the ability to count, for example, and knowledge of the alphabet — that once were expected to be learned at home. Primary schools, as in Memphis, too often promote students regardless of academic performance.

Increasing numbers of high school graduates enroll in college lacking a basic grasp of math and English. Historically, colleges’ remedial efforts have been less than adequate.

The problem has been compounded in Tennessee by changes in degree requirements predating the Haslam administration. Arguably most significant was a change some years ago in the state’s degree requirements. Baccalaureate degrees that then often required 132 semester hours now have to be completed in 120. The change was a precursor of the quantitative requirements in which the governor takes such pride.

Nashville’s economic pressures and lack of preparedness among college freshmen have been accompanied by tuition and textbook costs rising at rates far greater than inflation. Rather than consider a tax hike, the state has shifted more and more of the cost of higher education to students and their parents.

These conditions are not dissimilar from those of other states and the federal government. But that’s no excuse for the continuing degradation of city and county as well as state educational systems in Tennessee. They are part of the vital infrastructure of the U.S. and deserve better treatment from elected officials and voters. And all ultimately will be measured by the knowledge and competencies of their graduates.

JAMES EDWARD BATES/ASSOCIATED PRESS FILES The Ole Miss students who shouted racial epithets during an election-night protest of President Barack Obama’s re- election victory took the nation’s perception of Mississippi back generations, to scenes like this one from the state’s past. Most...