A new report from the National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment, a collaborative effort between the University of Illinois and Indiana University, finds that minority serving institutions, including the nation’s historically Black colleges and universities are actively engaged in assessing how well their students are learning.
The authors of the report note that many HBCUs and other minority-serving institutions administer tests to incoming students to determine an academic benchmark for their new students. They then continually assess student achievement and performance in the classroom. One reason cited for an emphasis on student assessment is concern over accreditation. Belle Wheelan, president of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, the accrediting agency for the vast majority of HBCUs, stated that “whether driven by faculty or mandated by external agencies, minority-serving institutions recognize the importance of assessment and are focused on using the results to ensure that all students succeed.”
The report, Focused on What Matters: Assessment of Student Learning Outcomes at Minority-Serving Institutions, may be downloaded by clicking here.
This report contextually, pedagogically, and ideologically reveals what’s inherently wrong within the higher education landscape. Point one: you have scores of White neoliberal, liberal, conservative, and ultraconservative academics who use HBCUs as their scholarly career launch pad all the while situated in their virtually all White environs. Point two: it’s an downright insult to all of the native born Black professors to have White woman(e.g., Dr. Marybeth Gasman) as the so-called expert and talking head concerning HBCUs. In fact, Dr. Gasman has never worked at an HBCU and only have given condescending lectures at HBCUs. Not to mention that Dr. Gasman is nestled at UPENN which is delinked from Black Philadelphia. Point three: Dr. Gasman and other White scholars( as in this article) continue to fiscally enrich themselves in which they should be intellectually be challenged at every opportunity.
When you have a Eurocentric epistemological framework as the primary method for analysis, this generally results in a disjointed and very flawed results. Further, it’s rather amazing how White scholars (and some Black ones as well) situated at HWCUs have the chutzpah to assume they know what’s best for HBCUs. Nothing could be further from the truth.