Educational Accountability

wr.2007.04.16.01
ed.2007.11.20.01 (Working Draft)

Students are seemingly content in higher educational institutions reasonably setting high expectations for notable returns through their investments of finances, effort and time. Although, if students were taught to calculate a true return on investment they would wonder why they pay the same amount of money for two different educational programs that might lead to two different professions that earn two completely different salaries.

Sorely, certain expectations are never met. There is very little accountability from educational institutions towards their students. A truth is apparent in modern education; you may get to choose which school you go to; you may even choose your teachers to some extent. But, after you are well into a course or program, you just might realize that what was promised is far from being delivered, you have little freedom to do anything to resolve the issue. Often times, if you wait for even as much as two weeks, it will be far too late to switch strategies without significant cost—in case you wanted to try your luck again.

Educational institutions lord their curriculums, their scholarships, their recommendations and their grade point averages over students binding them to certain conformance. Ask any student you know how they can hold their teachers accountable; is the faculty accountable for poorly structured curriculums, confusing course material, disorganization, subjective grading standards?

If you are lucky, they might make some corrections in the middle of the course. But can you impeach or fire a teacher in the middle of a course? Can students voice objections without irritating teachers so much that they can’t get passing marks? It is ironic how educational institutions claim to prepare students for the “real world” when they don’t even conform to “real world” professional education standards of accountability. But, how could students hold their educational institutions accountable?

A logical first change would be to ensure that both students and teachers share the same perception of actual progress at any given time by communicating what is required by students quantitatively. This would certainly be the first change that would have to occur for students to be empowered. When teachers impose subjective rather than quantitative requirements upon students, students certainly have no foundation to hold the educational system accountable. In this manner subjective issues such as the personal feelings between a teacher and student are clearly separated from the success of a course.

A second strategy would again be to state quantifiable exit criteria that would illustrate earned value that a student should have attained after successful completion of a course. After all, it is the student who hires an instructor who has made a claim that they can impart certain value. If there is no demonstrable or otherwise practical value received from the course and the students conformed to quantifiable requirements, then the faculty has failed—either by requiring a student to engage in a course that they had no need of, or by failing to deliver.