What is Lumina?

1. Illinois College’s Participation in the Pioneer Cohort for the Lumina Degree ProfileNEASC Annual Meeting and Conference, December 2012

2. What is Lumina? Lumina Foundation for Education, an Indianapolis-based private foundation, is committed to enrolling and graduating more students from college—especially 21st century students: low-income students, students of color, first-generation students and adult learners. (from Lumina’s website)

3. What is Lumina? Lumina’s goal is to increase the percentage of Americans who hold high-quality degrees and credentials to 60 percent by 2025. Lumina pursues this goal in three ways: by identifying and supporting effective practice, through public policy advocacy, and by using our communications and convening power to build public will for change. (from Lumina’s website)

4. What is the Lumina Degree Profile? • Paul Gaston: “Seeking to Improve Student Achievement Through Greater Intentionality” • Avoiding “No College Student Left Behind”: standardization tied to high-stakes tests run by federal government • Set of “low hurdles” for every student at every institution (calibrated by degree level)

5. Why did Lumina sponsor the DP’s creation? • Without broad understanding of what is meant by an associate or baccalaureate degree, students (and faculty?) find it difficult to align courses with intended outcomes • General education may be regarded as something to “get out of the way” prior to major • Accreditation feels more like a burden to be borne than an opportunity to be seized upon

6. Who Wrote the DQP? • Carol Geary Schneider, AAC&U President • Paul Gaston, Trustees Professor, Kent State University (general education reform; Bologna process) • Clifford Adelman, Institute for Higher Education Policy (Toolbox Revisited) • Peter Ewell, VP National Center for Higher Education Management Systems (assessment)

7. The HLC testing the DQP • The Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools • 20 Colleges and Universities Collaborating to Test the Lumina Degree Quality Profile • Feedback for Lumina • Should the HLC adopt the DQP or some version?

8. Our critics • Arum/Roksa: Academically Adrift • Derek Bok, Our Underachieving Colleges • Employer reports

9. Concerns • Indications the public is losing confidence in higher education • Policy makers increasingly critical of accreditation—and inclined to intrude • Public strategies to increase college participation and degree completion meaningless without shared understanding of what degrees mean

10. Lamar Alexander: influential critic

11. Lamar Alexander • February 2009 to college presidents at ACE/2009 Newsweek article • “American higher education could learn from Romney's warning to the Big Three a half century ago.” • “many colleges and universities are stuck in the past”: semester system, tenure stifles innovative thinking, students graduating in six years, rising tuition • Big Three needed to look for innovation; so does higher education

12. HOW CAN WE PROVE THE VALUEOF HIGHER EDUCATION?

13. Why a Degree Profile? • The DP “describes concretely what is meant by each of the degrees addressed.” • The DP “illustrates how students should be expected to perform at progressively more challenging levels.”

14. Organization of the Degree Profile Five areas of learning • Integrative Knowledge • Specialized Knowledge • Intellectual Skills • Applied Learning • Civic Learning shown as interrelated, not discrete

15. Assessment-Ready • Gaston reports that DP uses active verbs everywhere • Created a set of goals with assessment built in

16. Example of AssessibilityEngaging Diverse Perspectives(examples from Paul Gaston)

17. At the associate level, the student describeshow knowledge from different cultural perspectives would affect his or her interpretations of prominent problems in politics, society, the arts and/or global relations.✔A basic informed application

18. At the bachelor’s level, the student constructs a cultural, political, or technological alternative vision of either the natural or human world,embodied in a written project, laboratory report, exhibit, performance, or community service design; defines the distinct patterns in this alternative vision; and explains how they differ from current realities.✔A creative undergraduate project

19. At the master’s level, the student addresses in a project, paper or performance a core issue in the field from the perspective of a different point in time or a different culture, political order or technological context, and elucidates how the perspective contributes to results that depart fromcurrent norms, dominant cultural assumptions or technologies. ✔An analytical graduate project

20. Civic Learning: Civic Identity and Commitment Degree Profile Learning Objective 3: A student can take an active role in the community (work, service, co-curricular activities) and examine civic issues encountered and insights gained.

21. Civic Learning: Analysis of KnowledgeDegree Profile Learning Objective 2: A student can describe historical and contemporary positions on democratic values and practices, and presents his/her position on a related problem.

22. ‘Scottish Credit and Qualifications Framework: Promises, Fears & Realities’Dr Vicky GunnDirectorLearning and Teaching Centre

23. Promises • Raise educational standards across the nation (raise status of nation); • Establish fair quality assurance – parity of standards • Enable transfer and mobility in global context; • Encourage perception by students of progression and development from school into life-long learning contexts.

24. Fears • Infringement on academic freedom • Impossible to differentiate within the sector • Standardize quality down to lowest common denominator • Allow accreditors / quality agencies too much influence (institutional autonomy)

25. Realities - students • If they do read them, students don’t really understand them (transparency is questionable); • Students from Scotland are, as of yet, not opting to go abroad in the numbers that justify such a framework on mobility grounds; • Haven’t been used to help students engage in co-curriculum design.

26. Realities - academics Employers?

27. Research view on SCQF “The framework that emerges from this study [impact of NQF] as the most successful, the SCQF, had relatively limited ambitions....” Difficult to replicate because: • part of very long-term incremental policy reform • relatively strong Scottish educational institutions Allais (2011) 238.

28. Futures? • Differentiation of the sector means NQF good for in-nation quality assurance and we have yet to come up with a better system • Current emerging trend: not meeting differentiated missions’ needs • Need for an enhancement framework that is transnational if mission differentiation continues?