Links for 1/13/10

Katherine Mangan

Law schools would be required to identify key skills and competencies and develop ways to test how well their graduates are learning them under controversial revisions to accreditation standards being proposed by the American Bar Association…

Instead of judging law schools primarily on "input" measures, such as faculty size and library holdings, the proposed revisions would look more at "outcome" measures, such as what students are actually learning…

Some law deans question whether the kinds of skills that make a good lawyer can be measured through traditional assessment techniques… [they’re unique after all)

Jane S. Shaw

William Patrick Leonard is at war with himself. As a teacher of economics, he instructs his students to look for examples of waste and inefficiency and to come up with alternatives. But as an administrator, he knowingly participates in wasteful practices, because—well, because he is a university administrator.

James Guthrie

Philanthropic foundations have distributed billions of dollars in incentives for school reform. The number of school personnel has doubled over the past forty years. The answer is clear. An effort has been made.

Diane Auer Jones

Instead of just complaining about regulatory burden, colleges and universities should take the time to calculate actual cost of compliance -- including the cost of personnel, information systems, specialized facilities, and programmatic changes that are required to meet regulatory standards -- and then disclose this information to students and the public on the institution’s homepage as well as on each student’s bill.

Moreover, instead of burying compliance costs in the overall tuition rate, I urge institutions to start billing students separately for their portion of the compliance costs through a line-item Federal Regulatory Compliance Fee. Utilities have used this sort of billing practice for years...