VDH's Private Papers::Sensible Solutions

Let’s admit it: we all can think of books that we have not read, and we will we never find the time to read them all, even if they come highly recommended or as gifts. There are only 24 hours in a day here on Earth, and we need our sleep.

It is this recognition of limits on time and other resources that I would like to address in this column, as a follow-up to my previous one reflecting on the tenth anniversary of the publication of Who Killed Homer? by Victor Davis Hanson and John Heath. In their book, these two classicists called for radical changes regarding graduate training and the professoriate. As an offshoot of this very Greek drive towards self-examination and criticism, this column is training its eye on undergraduate education, specifically the one provided in the California State University system. I am offering my suggestions based upon my experience as a professor at CSU, Fresno for the past six years, as well as the wisdom gathered from my friends who also teach here.

We are once again facing draconian budget cuts because of a downturn in the economy, just as back in the early 1990s (and to a lesser degree earlier this decade). In response to this current crisis, I am not asking that we “break the social contract” as delineated in a study back in 1997. Instead, given this recessionary reality and the prospect of more serious shortfalls in public funding of higher education in the future, perhaps it is time that we rethink how students gain admission to the CSU system, how we might streamline and improve the quality of the work done for a bachelor’s degree, and how we might assess improvement between the beginning and the end of a student’s undergraduate career.

Earning a CSU bachelor’s degree opens the door to innumerable socioeconomic opportunities for the almost half a million students enrolled each year, many of whom are first-generation college attendees. It is our responsibility as citizens to see that this largest university system in the country work at its highest effectiveness and efficiency, balanced by the needs of the particular communities in which the twenty-three campuses are located. Overall, this system provides the majority of the educated workforce here in California, which has an economy that ranks among the top ten nations in the world. In order to maximize the potential of each student and to spend the state’s funds for higher education most wisely, we need to look at admissions policies, degree requirements, and exit standards.

Admissions

Students normally come into the CSU system either after completing high school or as transfer students from community colleges. Barring considerations of impacted majors or campuses and the necessity to complete a certain number and type of high school courses, the eligibility index for graduates of California high schools allows entrance to a CSU to anyone with a 3.0 GPA or higher. Should the student have below a 3.0, then the chart determines eligibility based on a sliding scale corresponding GPAs with ACT or SAT test scores. (See CSUMentor).

For instance, for admission to a CSU with a 2.9 GPA, the student must score a 10 on the ACT or 510 combined total on the math and critical reading sections of the SAT, which is a very low standard, since one gets 400 combined points for signing one’s name. (This combined score does not include the new writing section score.) A student with only a 2.0 GPA, however, must have a 30 on the ACT or a 1300 on the SAT, and standards are higher for non-resident applicants. (The average scores on the SAT for 2007 college-bound seniors, according to the College Board, were: critical reading 502, mathematics 515, and writing 492.)

Many students simply do not take these tests and enroll in one of California’s community colleges (CCC) for numerous reasons, including the much lower cost of higher education in the CCC system. With a 2.0 GPA and the proper number and type of units from a CCC, they can then transfer to a CSU, barring extra considerations of impacted majors and campuses; this also, however, avoids the complication of qualifying via an ACT or SAT score.

According to a June 2008 California Legislative Analyst’s Office report, “Back to Basics: Improving College Readiness of Community College Students,” “[m]ost students who enter California Community Colleges (CCC) lack sufficient reading, writing, and mathematical skills to undertake college-level work.” Furthermore, “a large percentage of students do not overcome their basic skills deficiencies during their time at CCC.” The LAO report makes a variety of suggestions for how to address this problem, including an increase in academic counseling at the expense of the mandated budget allocation of 50% of funds to classroom instruction. No amount of counseling, however, can ameliorate the fact that a student has not acquired the necessary skills for doing work at the college level, and the LAO should be asking hard questions about the quality of California’s K-12 instruction before blowing money on counselors who can’t simply wave a magic wand to make years of educational malpractice and academic deficiencies disappear overnight.

A recommendation: perhaps it is time that we require minimum ACT or SAT scores from the CCC students transferring to the CSU system, also. We could change the necessary minimum for all (non-athlete) applicants to a CSU (whether applying as freshmen or as transfer students) to a minimum of 17 on the ACT or 780 on the SAT. It is important to note that CCC transfer students have higher first-year retention and graduation rates than students who enter CSU, Fresno as freshmen, according to our Institutional Research, Assessment, and Planning office. This makes sense, given that time spent at a CCC allows a student to gain skills and maturity, which increase success at a CSU.

780 is the combined minimum SAT score currently required of a freshman applicant to a CSU with a 2.65 high school GPA and of a student with a 2.6 GPA to become eligible for NCAA Division I athletics; NCAA Division II (10 CSUs belong to this category) schools require a flat 2.0 GPA and 820 on the SAT, with no sliding scale (See the NCAA freshman-eligibility standards).

Currently at CSU, Fresno, which has a very diverse student population, the 25th percentile score for first-time freshmen (who submitted scores) in Fall 2007 was a 390 in the SAT verbal and a 410 in the SAT math, for a combined score of 800 (which is exactly half of a perfect 1600, without the writing score). 780, therefore, is a reasonable baseline requirement for everyone entering the university. (It would be 1170 if the writing score were included.) If at least a 2.0 GPA on a four-point scale is expected of entering students, then just under half on the test score scale seems fair. Those students who cannot meet this requirement could attend a community college in order to improve basic skills.

This proposed new standard for admission for non-athlete students to a CSU would require at least a 780 on the SAT or a 17 on the ACT for students between a 2.99 and a 2.65 GPA, with a sliding scale (as is currently used by the CSU) dictating gradually higher test scores for those with GPAs from 2.64 down to 2.0. Athlete-applicants would be admitted to a CSU based upon the appropriate NCAA guidelines (which in Division I allow for lower standardized test scores on a sliding scale, but in Division II demand an 820 on the SAT regardless of GPA).

The CCCs would continue not to have a test-score requirement for their own admissions, and any student who could not meet the CSU system’s new admissions standard could attend a CCC, or if done with the CCC, accept the associate’s degree as a terminal degree until meeting the CSU’s standard.

The California Code of Regulations, Title 5, Section 40802 allows for requiring ACT or SAT scores as an option for admission to a CSU, and if it were mandated across the board with this differently formulated level of expectation, it might prevent the regrettable phenomenon of a student coming into a CSU without the skills necessary for success at this higher level. The scale runs from 200 to 800 for each SAT test subject, and it seems very reasonable to expect all CSU students to be prepared to read, write, and do math at the university, not high school, level. A CSU should not be another high school after high school.

One could argue that the SAT and ACT tests are racist, elitist tests that limit the access of low-income and educationally deprived students to higher education. The tests may be flawed, but they do represent a norm in society, one that reflects the values of many future employers (who are also the taxpayers funding the CSUs) about the quality of one’s written English, the ability to comprehend written English, and the skill to perform mathematical tasks required in the workplace. To deny that these things matter is to cripple the students’ future success. I would argue that it is prejudicial to lower our expectations of entering (and exiting) students, because it only harms the students who have been misled about the real-world consequences of not being able meet the expectations of most employers.

Wake Forest University and Smith College recently dropped the SAT requirement for admission; they are doing so with the stated intention of making their campuses “more diverse” (http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/05/27/wake). But a spokesperson for the College Board, Alana Klein, has “said that the best way to predict college success is to use the SAT and high school grades in college preparatory courses. With ‘rampant grade inflation,’ she added, the SAT is ‘a very important measure’” (See Inside Higher Education).

There is no doubt about grade inflation at all levels, and though the College Board has a vested interest in seeing its test used, there does need to be some kind of broadly recognized and standardized way of measuring language and mathematical skills in a huge pool of applicants. The CSU and CCC systems are already at an ideal level of diversity, since they truly reflect a cross-section of the residents of this very diverse state. We must now ensure that the students who are admitted to the CSU system are adequately prepared to perform at the university level.

Degree Requirements

Title 5, Section 40500 of the California Code of Regulations covers the required curriculum for a BA degree, and Section 40501 covers the BS degree. Though both types require General Education Breadth requirements, the BS requires a minimum of 36 semester units in one’s major, whereas the BA requires only 24; both require 120 semester units to graduate, which averages out to 30 per year in the ideal 4-year timetable (which is now provided to students as an on-line roadmap to success).

Some recommendations: the BA major should be raised to a minimum of 40 semester units in order to ensure a modicum of mastery in a given discipline, because any less is inadequate. Furthermore, most BA and BS degrees (except engineering) should take only 100 units to complete, with 40 of these units in upper division courses, as is done currently. Students could also still minor in a second field with 12 units, the minimum used now. These changes, consequently, would bring transfer students to a CSU campus sooner, after earning (perhaps 33 — see below) lower division GE units at a CCC.

Why such a reduction in the number of total units for the degree? In brief, the General Education requirements are too burdensome for the average student, and more importantly, they are costing the state much more money in overhead than they are worth. I speak from experience because three-quarters of my four-course teaching load every semester is in GE, as lower division Greek and/or Latin courses and as lower and/or upper division Humanities courses. Most of my tenured and tenure-track colleagues shudder when I describe this load to them; some have no GE courses, and others teach their one or two GE classes per semester with gritted teeth, praying that their possibly lower teaching evaluations won’t harm their chances for promotion (and raises). Some departments give the majority GE courses to lecturers, which saves money and reduces stress for tenure-track and tenured professors.

GE classes are a bane for many professors because the students in general do not take them seriously enough, sometimes failing them, in many cases because they have very little interest whatsoever in what is being crammed down their throats. Now, I used to think that this GE medicine was good for them, that they really needed all of this to be well-rounded citizens. But medicine, too, can be poisonous if taken in too large a dose.

Specifics: I would not touch Title 5’s Section 40404, which requires “United States History, Constitution, and American Ideals”; this is absolutely essential for an educated citizenry. But I would reduce most of Section 40405’s GE requirements, thus enabling the student to graduate within three (or three and a half) years with 36, instead of 48, semester units of GE, distributed proportionately as currently mandated. Only 3 of these GE units should be upper division (best spent in an upper division writing course), leaving enough time for pursuit of upper division courses in one’s major at the university.

Any GE category currently mandated at 12 semester units should be reduced to 9. The language and communication category at 9 units should be reduced to 6, while “critical thinking” should be removed altogether as a course category, since all university courses should involve such cogitation — if they don’t, they are by definition not university courses. The 9 units of science/math should be apportioned as one course each of natural science, math, and applied science/technology. The final 3 units of “equip[ping] human beings for lifelong understanding and development of themselves as integrated physiological, social, and psychological entities” should stay — after all, I thought that was the intent of this entire enterprise of higher education (and life in general), but drawing the students’ attention to this can’t hurt, especially in an age of increased childhood obesity and eight-year-olds being prescribed medication to combat high cholesterol.

The most unit-intensive majors, such as the ones in engineering, could continue to require a comparatively high number of units, and their GE requirements (which are usually different) could be reduced proportionately as well. If a particular field requires more than 100 units when combined with GE, the students in it should be educated beyond 100 units (up to 120 units) in order to ensure mastery.

But won’t the students be even less educated than they already are? Yes, to a certain extent this is true. Like Aurelian in the quote above, they will not have read all the books on the shelf before graduating. But then again, no one does. The key is to help them develop the skills that enable them to pursue lifelong learning — and a love for doing so. This requires passionate, engaged teaching in all classes — so inspiring that a student who works a full-time job and raises children will want to open the books for a GE class when s/he gets home after a long day, or the engineer who tries to avoid humanities will actually enjoy the class. I have seen this happen, and it is wonderful — and it is far more possible when the student does not feel quite so put-upon by a list of GE requirements that surpasses what I endured going through Stanford as an undergrad (31% of my degree was spent in GE vs. 42.5% under the current CSU rules). By reducing the GE burden to 36% of a 100-unit bachelor’s degree, the students would concentrate more effectively on their majors, which would become more important under this new system.

If instructors, especially in lower-division courses, try to inspire passion, and students find their passion (i.e., the subjects they really should be studying and mastering), this breeds student achievement, which then gives students the courage to make brave choices about a major, overseas study, and future career; in turn, the person who follows his/her passion will then become far more engaged in her/his community in the long run than someone who pursues a half-hearted venture — and takes too long to do so.

Also, every student should graduate with some kind of capstone paper, lab experiment, performance, or other experience that shows some level of advanced accomplishment in her/his chosen field of study. A major should be far more than simply a way to pass the time checking off boxes on a form until getting the degree.

Finally, all students should graduate knowing that the state’s taxpayers have heavily subsidized their educational experiences — and they should be encouraged at graduation time to thank the state’s citizens by helping to make this state a better place to live in whatever way possible.

Two things have inspired me to write this: a) I am on sabbatical and have had time to think about how tired I am of seeing students struggle through college in six or seven years instead of taking three or four, and b) I recently read Wick Sloane’s nicely named pamphlet Common Sense, and it resurrected my dormant desire to see the bachelor’s degree better focused and shortened. I cannot do justice to it here — please read it as a download of Common Sense.

Exit Standards

My final point pertains to exit standards for graduation, a topic that Sloane addresses in Common Sense; he calls for the use of Advanced Placement exams to test all graduates in writing and statistics. For the sake of employing a useful and consistent benchmark, however, I would like to see the ACT or SAT administered again to all students (including athletes) in the last semester of this proposed 100-unit degree program. Receiving a degree would depend upon scoring a 20 on the ACT or a 900 on the SAT (the third writing category is now mandatory, but not reflected here in the SAT numbers on the current CSU charts — this could be included as well); these are the numbers currently expected of a first-time freshman resident applicant with a 2.5 GPA.

Like the high school exit exam in California, this provides a final moment of gatekeeping at a reasonable (and fairly minimal) level of expectation. Should the student not pass the minimum ACT or SAT score (or simply wish to pursue more units of instruction in preparation for graduate work or in order to complete an engineering degree), s/he could continue to enroll as an undergraduate in coursework up to 120 units. If s/he cannot pass this test-score level after 120 units, the degree is a moot point, and the professors in this student’s major would have to argue to the dean and provost for the degree to be granted to this individual based upon extenuating circumstances or proof of other excellence not reflected in these tests.

This kind of exit requirement would ensure a certain measure of accountability on the part of departments that have passed a student through courses in a major, and it would provide the university with assessment numbers via comparable ACT and SAT scores in order to show academic improvement made in the time spent at the university. Wouldn’t it be nice to show that three years at a CSU (perhaps combined with a CCC beforehand) really do improve a student’s verbal and mathematical skills? After teaching courses at three universities in California for the past twenty years, I know that a university education does, in fact, improve students’ intellectual skills, but it would be great to have the tested proof. This would hardly preclude departments from having their own special and more stringent graduation requirements, such as theses, portfolios, etc.

No assessment tools are perfect, but this seems by far the easiest (and possibly cheapest) way to achieve some measure from start to finish using readily available tests reflecting commonly accepted standards. Developing a new and different college exit exam would be a waste of time and money and would not provide an accurate benchmark with which to measure improvement from the beginning to the end of a student’s university education, unless this new test were also administered when the student entered the university.

All of these proposed changes require that professors and administrators put aside their fear about degree programs becoming weaker; instead, they would become stronger and more purposeful. 100 units are plenty for earning a bachelor’s degree in most disciplines (with notable exceptions, such as engineering), while fulfilling 36 GE units. The time-to-degree will be reduced by at least one semester, which will save families and the state a tremendous amount of money, an especially attractive idea in these strained economic times. Graduate school would be open to those who qualify and wish to attend, while the rest can enter the workforce less burdened with debt.

Can we do this? ¡Sí, se puede!

Dr. Chapman is Assoc. Prof. of Classics and Humanities, CSU, Fresno.