Thirty Questions about Achieving Academic Excellence
1) In attempting to measure academic excellence, is it more telling to look at the top third of students or at the lowest third?
2) Do we conceive academic excellence as a guarantee of reliable skills?
3) Do we conceive academic excellence irrespective of any specific level of competency or correctness in written and spoken English? If not, then with what level of correct English do we associate academic excellence?
4) Question 3, above, but with respect to mathematics?
5) Is academic excellence conceived as a description of our graduates? Of our faculty? Of our academic processes? Of how much our students improve?
6) Assuming current admissions standards and work ethics, does achieving academic excellence assume a much higher failure rate among students?
7) Are we willing to fail students who do not achieve excellence? Are we willing to counsel them to leave the University?
8) Should we allow extended leaves of absence, with no penalty, for students who seem able to do excellent work but seem too immature to do it now?
9) Should continued financial aid depend on higher standards of performance?
10) If grade inflation is a reality, as seems to be universally agreed, such that today’s “C” is yesterday’s “D” or “F”, then have we adjusted our other standards accordingly?
11) Should many more courses require more successful completion of pre-requisites? E.g., should a student with a “C” in beginning calculus be allowed to take the next course? Statistically, what is the likely outcome for that student? How about a native speaker of English with a “C” in English 110?
12) Should we publish rank-in-class? If so, for some students or for all? How frequently? Where?
13) What percentage of each College graduates *** laude?
14) Is any guidance on standards offered to teachers of Core classes?
15) Would we accept the financial constraints of raising admissions standards by limiting the freshman class to the top 600 students?
16) Are we willing to diagnose academic deficits and institute remedial courses?
17) Against what external standard should we measure academic excellence? To what audience are we offering this claim? Can our credibility survive the use of a “special” universe of comparison?
18) How does academic excellence relate to employability?
19) How does academic excellence relate to the quality of student life?
20) Realistically, is achieving academic excellence a 3-5 year institutional goal or a 10-20 year goal?
21) How can we generate an ethos of pride in academic abilities and performance?
22) Any school will have a lower half of the class. How can we reward achievement without appearing to devalue half or more of our students?
23) Why should most students want to be academically excellent?
24) What should be our attitude toward the student who could do well but sees no reason for exertion beyond what is needed to pass courses and graduate?
25) Should our goals or our methods or our programs be the same for all students?
26) Is academic excellence a goal that is marketable to our external constituencies? If so, how? To our internal constituencies?
27) If we were academically excellent, what, by 2004 (now 2007!) national standards, would our tuition and discount rate be?
28) What are the implications of academic excellence for the lifestyles of the faculty? What energies and priorities would be needed? What latent energies could be tapped? How? How can the academic excellence of students be made the individual responsibility of professors?
29) Can first-year students be sold a motivating vision of themselves as graduating seniors?
30) Where do academic excellence and academic freedom conflict?
--- arthur fisher, 7/7/04