Collective Goods and Higher Education Research

With this volume, the author demonstrates how a collective goods approach to higher education research can alleviate problems of rising costs, declining resources, and growing concerns about undergraduate learning. In taking this approach, the author presents new tools of analysis-borrowed from cognitive science, economics, data analytics, education technology and measurement science-to investigate higher education's place in society as a public or private good. By showing how these tools can be utilized to re-orient current research, this volume offers scholars and policy makers an argument for the large-scale use of scientific and economic approaches to higher education's most pressing issues.

Roger Benjamin has been president of CAE, an education assessment testing organization since 2005.

Part I The Framework Chapter 1 Introduction Chapter 2 The Framework: Pasteur's Quadrant in Higher Education Part II Evidence-Based Applications to Policy Questions Chapter 3 The Future Higher Education Policy Landscape From the Pasteur's Quadrant Perspective Chapter 4 The Focus on Critical Thinking Skills for the Classroom, the Instructor, and New Sources of Content Chapter 5 Recreating the Faculty Role in University Governance Chapter 6 Leveling the Playing Field From College to Career Chapter 7 The Role of Generic Skills Assessment in Measuring Academic Quality Part III The Rationale for Standardized Assessments in Higher Education Chapter 8 The Case for Comparative Institutional Assessment of Higher-Order Thinking Skills Chapter 9 The Case for Performance-based Assessments and Critical Thinking Tests Chapter 10 Two Questions About Critical Thinking Tests Chapter 11 Conclusion Coda CLA+ Analytics: Making Data Relevant Through Data Mining in Real Time