A New College Test

A college education is one of the most expensive items most people will ever buy. And virtually every school can supply reams of reasons why its educational program is superior to all others. But how are parents and students to judge which colleges actually provide a high-quality education?

A variety of guides, like U.S. News & World Report's America's Best Colleges, compare institutions on the basis of reputation and resources. But guidance counselors discourage reliance on such rankings, because they feel the criteria are irrelevant and the impact on students can be demeaning. "I don't see a lot of difference between No. 1 and No. 20," says Bronwyn Rhoades, an English teacher and academic adviser at Mendocino High School in California. "But kids who don't get into the highest-ranked schools feel ashamed. Even if they get into really wonderful schools, they feel as if their education will be second rate--and that they are second rate." Furthermore, experts argue, the value of an institution lies not in its resources but in how it uses them. And about that, there is a dearth of information. Though some institutions try to assess how well they do the job of educating undergraduates, there has been little national data against which to measure themselves.

Now that may change. Backed by a grant from the Pew Charitable Trusts, researchers have designed a questionnaire to probe the frequency with which students engage in activities that studies have shown to be important to learning. Last spring 63,000 freshmen and seniors at 276 colleges and universities filled out the first round of the National Survey of Student Engagement, which included questions about how much time they spent preparing for class and how often they worked with a faculty member on research or wrote papers of 20 pages or more. "The more time and energy individuals spend on any activity--whether it's learning to swim or mastering a body of knowledge, skills and competencies they'll be able to use in the workplace--the more they benefit," explains Indiana University professor George Kuh, who directed the project. "NSSE is an attempt to measure to what extent students use the resources that institutions provide for their learning and development."

Though individual institutional scores are not yet available to the public, this month colleges and universities got a glimpse of how they stack up against national norms in five areas of engagement. In addition to helping schools scrutinize themselves, the study offers a snapshot of contemporary higher education. "We've got a new camera," says Russ Edgerton, director of the Pew Forum on Undergraduate Learning. "It's not the Hubble, but it reveals a [new] dimension of quality." Among the findings:

--Students at smaller colleges are more engaged than their counterparts at larger institutions. Indeed, the only four schools--Beloit, Centre, Sweet Briar and Elon--to score in the top 20% of all five categories of engagement have student populations ranging from 710 to about 4,000.

--Nearly 80% of the respondents say their institution emphasizes spending significant time studying and working on academic projects, but fewer than 15% come close to meeting the standard of two hours of preparation for each hour of class time.

--Nearly 75% of seniors report having an internship, practicum or field placement.

--Overall, most schools perform in the middle third of effective educational practice--leaving ample room for improvement.

By establishing a set of comparative standards, the researchers hope to change the subject of the college conversation from status to quality. So far, they seem to be succeeding. "They're getting closer to the actual kinds of things that go on in a person's undergraduate life, and that's important," says University of Iowa professor Ernest Pascarella. And institutions are eager to take part in the discussion. More schools applied than could be accommodated for both the first round of the survey and the second, which will occur this February.

The ultimate goal is improving education, not just talking. Yet talk has its value. "The indicators we use to look at schools affect what schools focus on," says Nancy Rankin, at the National Parenting Association. "If they know they will get publicity as the top school for professor-student mentoring, maybe they will encourage faculty to be more available to students." Parents and college applicants who want to join the discourse can view the list of participating institutions on the NSSE website www.indiana.edu/~nsse ); if any colleges they're interested in are included, they can ask those schools for their results.