The president of St. John’s (the “Great Books” college) has written a column pointing out that not just professors but students should be held accountable for what they learn.
In an Inside Higher Education essay on assessments, Christopher B. Nelson writes that “obsessing about the responsibility of the teacher without paying at least as much attention to the responsibility of the student is hardly going to produce helpful assessments.”
And:
True learning is not about having the right answer, so measuring whether students have the right answers is at best incidental to the essential aims of education. True learning is about mastering the art of asking questions and seeking answers, and applying that mastery to your own life.
Nelson is, of course, pushing back against what he calls a “whirlwind” of interest in assessment by accreditors, government, and institutions themselves. Like others in the humanities, he is rebelling against “check the box” assessment, but he does not consider assessment impossible. In fact, he cites the new Gallup/Purdue “well-being” survey of college graduates as suggesting ways to assess student success over the long run.