GENERAL EDUCATION IN AN AGE OF STUDENT MOBILITY

Don't Sacrifice Local Autonomy

by John Nixon

Robert Shoenberg paints a very interesting, if bleak, picture of articulation and transfer among colleges and universities across the nation. However, I believe he misses the mark, both in his indictment of the credit hour and in his proposed remedy, system- or state-wide competency based curriculum and outcomes assessment. While demonizing the credit hour may have a legitimate place in discussions of teaching and learning, such an indictment is unjustified in a critique of articulation and transfer. In fact, I would assert that the inefficiencies associated with articulation and transfer are not problems at all. Rather, they are, in large measure, positive evidence of the health or our democratic, pluralistic system of higher education.

Contrary to Shoenberg's assertion that faculty do not consider learning outcomes when designing courses and programs, I believe faculty do think in terms of educational purposes, as filtered through their particular local, system, and state mission statements. The resulting courses and programs may, indeed, reflect competency-based approaches to teaching and learning, and they may include broad statements of learning outcomes. However, the specific learning outcomes are defined at the college or university, representing the values, cultures and interests of the local institution and its constituencies.

Shoenberg cites work underway in Utah, where faculty have developed broadly defined statements of competency in math, as a first step toward successful reform. He goes on to assert that outcomes assessment, driven by statements of competency, must become part of any successful system-wide reform effort. But when such competency statements are translated into test items for outcomes assessment, the result can easily be a homogenous curriculum, one that excludes local interests and needs. (Recall, for example, the furor over cultural literacy.)

Articulation and transfer among colleges and universities is messy and often inefficient, just as life in a pluralistic democracy is often messy and inefficient. Yet the good derived from democratic systems far outweighs the inconveniences and hard work involved. Shoenberg's approach represents far too great of a sacrifice, I believe. It would trade an ill-defined hegemony of the credit hour for the hegemony of a homogenous curriculum. While the efficacy of competency based approaches to teaching and learning is widely accepted, its application beyond the level of the individual course, program or institution is problematic, putting at risk the values and practices of democracy, diversity, and difference.