Members of the Board of Visitors discussed gathering student outcomes data and the University’s rankings in publications like the U.S. News & World Report in Thursday’s meeting of the Academic and Student Life Committee.
During the open portion of the meeting, the committee heard from Carl Zeithaml, dean of the McIntire School of Commerce, and Bob Pianta, dean of the Curry School of Education.
The University’s rankings potentially impact the Commerce School and Curry School admissions, as both programs pull their undergraduate population from a pool of University students. Therefore the quality of the undergraduate population determines the quality of the individual schools’ student bodies, Pianta said.
“At the Curry School, outcomes is an area we pay an extraordinary amount of attention to with respect to rankings,” Pianta said. “It’s a sign of the larger competitiveness of the University and our positioning as a school within the University.”
Both deans said, however, that the incentive to raise rankings does not dictate the educational experiences they provide.
“Rankings are important, but certainly in the McIntire School, we think about them in the sense at the end of the value chain,” Zeithaml said. “We really think about three important guiding values of excellence, innovation and community.”
Some board members — including Bobbie Kilberg, the co-chair of the committee — were concerned with some of the internal ranking strategies. McIntire graduates working in nonprofit and governmental organizations could have impressive qualitative gains, but may hurt certain rankings due to their salaries.
Raising ranking dependent on graduate salaries may raise the school’s reputation but do not always fulfill the school’s subjective goals, Zeithaml said. He said this aspect of rankings is “the perverse side.”
“Our job is to get students in the jobs that they're really passionate about,” Zeithaml said.
University President Teresa Sullivan raised the question of measuring student outcomes from the Curry school by measuring graduates students’ test scores. The broad range of places where Curry graduates teach, the differences between states’ standardized tests and the risk of error in test score measurement all dissuade the Curry school from using this as a reliable standard, Pianta said.
“The fact that there’s so many different tests makes this, from a logistics and pragmatic standpoint, impossible,” Pianta said.
Another concern is the connection between all the business programs in the Commerce, Darden and Batten schools, Board Member Frank Genovese said. However, the Commerce school has worked with the different curriculum.
“Over the last year we’ve worked primarily with the Batten school and Engineering school to develop a university minor in entrepreneurship,” Zeithaml said. “We give them the basics and the students can specialize depending on their interests.”
The Board of Visitors could help improve student outcomes and research on post-graduate careers — especially within the Commerce school — by investing, Zeithaml said after the meeting.
“What's more important, given a constrained resource environment, would be investment in the faculty, investment in technology and investment in the core quality of the programs,” Zeithaml said. “That would be reflected in the kinds of outcome measures we already have.”
Read this article in Mandarin on The Cavalier Daily translation blog.
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