Dive Brief:
- Though measuring department outcomes can often cause anxiety and concern among faculty members, the multi-year process undertaken by Bret Danilowicz, the dean of Oklahoma State University's College of Arts and Sciences, has been a relatively trouble-free endeavor, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education.
- Proponents say Danilowicz' program, which began during the 2013-2014 school year, is able to avoid direct comparisons between departments, many of which have different needs and are able to attract divergent levels of philanthropic funding. The school's former chair of microbiology and molecular genetics credited Danilowicz with offering faculty a "clearly stated rubric of what constituted successes versus failures."
- The measure Danilowicz developed over the course of the past few years include diversity in faculty and students, the workload for faculty, the size of the department's programs, as well as the philanthropic giving each department receives and the research that is produced. Danilowicz also looked at how well departments were able to keep students.
Dive Insight:
Administrators at higher ed institutions like Oklahoma State University's College of Arts and Sciences must understand that there is an increased call for more detailed information on student outcomes from many quarters, including U.S. Education Secretaries, to experts calling on Congress to pass legislation offering more transparency on student outcome data, to potential students themselves, who are struggling to discern the value of a liberal arts education to help them as they enter the work force. Administrators at other institutions may benefit from following Oklahoma State's lead in developing measurements that can accurately discern data on outcomes and proficiency at individual departments, especially if they are able to do so in a relatively uncontroversial manner, as Danilowicz seems to have been able to do.
While this process may lessen the potentially negative impacts of direct comparisons between departments, in the long run it still may put certain departments, particularly in the humanities, at a loss, though those are likely being compounded by more profound shifts in student interest. In the story, representatives in the music department at the school note that they are having difficulty attracting first-year students, which will reflect poorly on them in a measurement analysis of their success. Coupled with the fact that many measurement analyses, like this one, reward the departments that are already doing well at the expense of lesser-performing departments, higher ed institutions must be cautious that they do not exacerbate the gaps between the more prominent and prosperous science departments and some of the arts/humanities departments. Some of these gaps are occurring regardless of more robust outcome data, but administrators who want to ensure that their schools still offer these tracts as options must be wary not to exacerbate the issue.