With this volume, the author demonstrates how a collective goods approach to higher education research can alleviate problems of rising costs, declining resources, and growing concerns about undergraduate learning. In taking this approach, the author presents new tools of analysis—borrowed from cognitive science, economics, data analytics, education technology and measurement science—to investigate higher education’s place in society as a public or private good. By showing how these tools can be utilized to re-orient current research, this volume offers scholars and policy makers an argument for the large-scale use of scientific and economic approaches to higher education’s most pressing issues.
Roger Benjamin has been president of CAE, an education assessment testing organization since 2005.
Part I The FrameworkChapter 1 IntroductionChapter 2 The Framework: Pasteur’s Quadrant in Higher EducationPart II Evidence-Based Applications to Policy QuestionsChapter 3 The Future Higher Education Policy Landscape From the Pasteur’s Quadrant PerspectiveChapter 4 The Focus on Critical Thinking Skills for the Classroom, the Instructor, and New Sources of ContentChapter 5 Recreating the Faculty Role in University GovernanceChapter 6 Leveling the Playing Field From College to CareerChapter 7 The Role of Generic Skills Assessment in Measuring Academic QualityPart III The Rationale for Standardized Assessments in Higher EducationChapter 8 The Case for Comparative Institutional Assessment of Higher-Order Thinking SkillsChapter 9 The Case for Performance-based Assessments and Critical Thinking TestsChapter 10 Two Questions About Critical Thinking TestsChapter 11 ConclusionCoda CLA+ Analytics: Making Data Relevant Through Data Mining in Real Time