Lindsey Arceci
Equinox Staff
An in-depth assessment of student learning and external pressures on higher education has begun at Keene State College. Topics such as class time, credit hours, graduation rates, and financial strains on students are all key components the KSC review teams are looking at.
KSC Provost Emile Netzhammer said the reason behind investigating these things is to determine how KSC compares with other schools, at the state level, the federal level, and the way the faculty particularly do their jobs.
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During this evaluation process, a lot of questions are looking to be answered. “How many students complete a college degree? How quickly do they complete a college degree? What is happening around student learning? What are the expectations for what students will know broadly and in their discipline at the time that they graduate? How do we measure whether they know that or not?” Netzhammer said.
The topics all surround the subject of making sure students make the most out of their college education process, as well as the student graduating on time and not suffering too much financially.
“How do we deal with the cost of higher education? That’s a very big issue for the federal government,” Netzhammer said. “There’s the decrease in state aid, the price of tuition goes up, but that’s the cost that gets past on to students as PELL goes down, and as students’ loans go up; it creates all kinds of economic issues and affects our ability to serve a student.”
One aspect of costs for students Netzhammer mentioned was textbook prices. “I think the Obama administration is very interested in looking at certain things related to higher education, like textbook cost,” he added.
Some questions around this topic ask how the school can get students the best information about textbooks and whether they will make it possible for students looking at alternative means of textbooks.
One thing Netzhammer and the rest of the faculty involved know is what constitutes a credit hour. For a student to earn a credit in a course, they must spend an hour in class and two hours outside of class doing work, for every credit a class offers. So for a four-credit course, students should be in class for a minimum of four hours and should be given enough outside work that they are working a minimum of eight hours on the content relating to that course.
Knowing what is required for a credit hour can help the individuals involved figure out if KSC classes are giving enough work, and if not, those courses could need some adjusting in the way they are run. It’s also important, Netzhammer said, that the professors are following the constitution of a credit hour
“If they [faculty members] are not giving that amount of work to students or creating those expectations, they are not in compliance with federal regulations on this particular issue,” he said.
There are things the state is particularly asking the school to look at over the next several months, like the number of credits KSC requires for a particular program.
“This is to ensure that students not only can get out in four years, but that they can make choices that allow them to get out in four years,” Netzhammer said. “It’s not sufficient to say that they can get out in four years as long as you take 20 credits every semester, don’t fail a class, and don’t change your major.”
According to Netzhammer, the graduation rate right now is 50 percent. What the review committees hope to find out is what the lowest enrollment in a program is that allows that program to remain viable, and does the school have enough majors or graduates in a program to financially support that program.
“We’ve got programs with really high demand and not enough faculty,” he added. This process is also a continuation of the program assessment the school has been working on over the last four years. To help with making sure students are spending enough time working outside of class, KSC has incorporated blended classes. These classes have a scheduled time they meet in a classroom, but the majority of the class is handled online.
“We have gone from no blended courses to 35 in the current year. We’ve already got 45 scheduled for next year, and I think it will be closer to 100,” Netzhammer said. “The idea is that you contract the amount of time the physical class meets and expand the expectation of technology to provide instruction. What we’re learning from the research is that in a blended experience, students will learn more than a course that is only online or only classroom based.”
A lot of programs have already been reviewed, Netzhammer said, but over the next few months they will be comparing major requirements in programs to other programs.
“We’re still in the process of policies we have in place that make it difficult for students to graduate in four years,” Netzhammer said. “There is another federal regulation that requires students [who are receiving financial aid] to declare their major by 60 credits. Many of our students don’t. So we’re looking at whether we need to implement a policy that would force students to decide by that year, so that they have more time.”
The other side of the matter is that there are policies in place, like too many prerequisites for one course, so that means that if a student misses the cycle then they miss the opportunity to take the follow up course for a whole year.
The people that make up the assessment team are the executive committee of the senate: the chair of the senate, the vice president, the secretary, a faculty member at large, the student representative, and the three senate committee chairs.
“We’re looking at what data we need to collect and what we need to collect from other institutions. We also have an academic policy committee that is looking at policies generally that are not related to the curriculum but are related to other kinds of institutional policies, as well as the academic affairs council, which is all the people that report directly to me,” Netzhammer said. This academic affairs council consists of the deans and a slightly larger group of people.
Lindsey Arceci can be contacted at larceci@keeneequinox.com
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