A recent article in the Economist informed me that the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) is planning a new global comparison of universities. Readers of this blog know my suspicions of national rankings in higher education (see, e.g.Better Rankings-but do we need them? Oct.11, 2006)), and my concerns regarding international rankings are even higher. A recent post on Beerkins’ Blog has an excellent discussion of the problems with both national and international rankings. However, the OECD comparison will look at the issue from an entirely radical perspective - learning outcomes for the different national systems of higher education!
The Spellings Commission report has engendered considerable discussion in the US regarding the desirability of looking at learning outcomes, and/or whether any useful measures of learning outcomes can be developed considering the multiple goals of higher education (see also Spellings and transparency, Oct. 3, 2006). While we in US higher education debate this issue at great length, generally making every argument that will forestall it happening, it looks like the OECD is going to move ahead to come up with some global scorecards on effectiveness of national approaches to higher education!
The OECD has considerable experience comparing primary and secondary education outcomes across national boundaries, and plans to look at tertiary education using similar approaches. In the case of higher education, they plan to sample randomly chosen groups of college students to see what they have learned during their college years. The OECD recognizes that the subject matter covered in higher education is far from uniform, and so plans to focus primarily on transferable skills that will be critical to both students and employers in the 21st century, such as critical thinking and analysis. They may also look at subject matter knowledge in a few fields where core curriculum is relatively common around the globe, such as engineering and business.
As I pointed out in an earlier post How are we doing teaching cognitive skills? research shows that we in the US do not do well in teaching the type skills that OECD proposes to look at. It will be fascinating to see if our global competitors do a better job, or an even poorer job, at teaching these very important skills. This might even prove to be a useful ranking!
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