This week my day job has me attending the Microsoft Business Intelligence Conference, and engaging in conversations about how colleges and universities can use data tools to improve performance. In higher education improving performance means more than controlling costs and increasing revenues.  As educators, our most critical performance goal is to maximize student learning. Unfortunately most colleges have trouble systematically measuring student learning, which makes it hard to hold us accountable for improvement over time. This challenge, however, is one we are increaseingly being called upon to meet.  A commission report from the U.S. Department of Education called on colleges to make information about student learning available to prospective students and their parents. An email at work from an admissions counsellor asked me to respond to a question from the parent of a prospective applicant about whether we used data about the success of our graduates to improve our programs. Our regional accrediting organization is asking us to show that we systematically collect data to assess whether are students are achieving the learning goals for each of our degree programs.

Why am I sharing the all these demands for information about what college students are learning?  Two reasons: 1) I want to let visitors to this site know that they should consider asking similar questions of the colleges where they are thinking about applying and 2) I want to suggest that if the colleges aren't doing this work for you (and most of us don't do it as well as we could and should) you should think about doing it yourself. In the last chapter of my book I discuss how to get the most value from college once you enroll.  I encourage you to set learning goals for each course you take, and to make sure you achieve those goals either by doing the work assigned, or if that isn't going to get you to your goal taking the initiative to go beyond those requirements. Knowing how well a college ensures that average students achieve the learning objectives of the college is one measure of academic quality and rigor.  If you can get that information it will help you get a sense of how much the college will demand of you.  If you are serious, however, about winning the college game you don't want to settle for achieving the colleges objectives.  So set your own objectives, decide what the measure of success looks like, then work to achieve your own goals.  Oh, and while you're at it don't be shy about encouraging the colleges where you apply and the one you ultimately attend to do the same.