Subscribers to PBL,

Richard Hersh, in his November 2005 Atlantic Monthly article "What 
Does College Teach?" [Hersh (2005)] has argued that "It's time to put 
an end to 'faith-based' acceptance of higher education's quality."

Hersh is a former president of Hobart & William Smith Colleges and 
Trinity College, co-director of the "Collegiate Learning Assessment"
<http://www.cae.org/content/pro_collegiate.htm>], and co-editor of 
"Declining by Degrees: Higher Education at Risk" [Hersh & Merrow 
(2005)].

Hersh (2005) wrote in part [bracketed by lines "HHHHHHHHH. . ."; my CAPS]:

HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
". . . robust measurements. . .  [of differences in student learning 
from one campus to another]. . . . don't exist in part because 
colleges don't want them - because developing and testing them would 
be expensive; because faculty members would disagree on what to 
measure; and because they're wary of anything that calls into 
question the long-running perception of American higher education as 
"world class."
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
VALUE-ADDED ASSESSMENT OFFERS AN EXCELLENT PLACE TO START, AND A 
CHANCE FOR HIGHER EDUCATION TO DEMONSTRATE THAT "FAITH-BASED" ANSWERS 
ABOUT QUALITY ARE NO LONGER ACCEPTABLE. This country has always 
looked to higher education to take the lead in innovation, and to 
define, seek, and demand excellence from its students. TODAY'S 
ACADEMY SHOULD BE SATISFIED WITH NOTHING LESS.
HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Because:

(a) university faculty and administrators may be interested in 
Hersh's provocative essay, and

(b) Hersh's reservations regarding *indirect* assessments of student 
learning and his advocacy of *direct* value-added assessment are 
consistent with my own generally ignored views [Hake (2005)],

(c) PBL might become more popular if a larger number of *direct* 
value-added assessments were to show its superiority to traditional 
pedagogy,

I have taken the liberty of inserting hot-linked academic references 
and copying Hersh's article into the archives of AERA-L 
<http://lists.asu.edu/archives/aera-l.html> where it will be 
available to educators.

Richard Hake, Emeritus Professor of Physics, Indiana University
24245 Hatteras Street, Woodland Hills, CA 91367
<[log in to unmask]>
<http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~hake>
<http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~sdi>


REFERENCES [Tiny URL's are courtesy of <http://tinyurl.com/create.php>.]
Hake, R.R. 2005. "Re: How do you gauge how you're doing?" online at
<http://listserv.nd.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0509&L=pod&O=D&P=7968>. Post 
of 10 Sep 2005 17:27:47-0700 to AERA-D, AERA-GSL, AERA-J, AERA-L, 
ASSESS, EvalTalk, PhysLrnR, POD, PsychTeacher (rejected), TIPS, & 
TeachingEdPsych.

Hirsh, R.H. 2005. "What Does College Teach? It's time to put an end 
to 'faith-based' acceptance of higher education's quality," Atlantic 
Monthly 296(4): 140-143, November; freely online to (a) subscribers 
of the Atlantic Monthly at 
<http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200511/measuring-college-quality>, 
and (b) (with hot-linked academic references) to educators at 
<http://tinyurl.com/9nqon> (scroll to the APPENDIX).

Hersh R.H. ed. & J. Merrow, ed. (forward by T. Wolfe). 2005. 
"Declining by Degrees: Higher Education at Risk." Palgrave Macmillan. 
Amazon.com information at <http://tinyurl.com/bvcf4>.