Inside Higher Ed highlights a recent report that examines college course structure and equity gaps in student grades. The study suggests that slight changes to course structure can close or remove equity gaps without altering the level of expertise expected, and that changing the order in which course content is introduced and altering how tests are given can result in narrower achievement gaps. Experts argue that professors should stop approaching instruction from a “student deficit” perspective and start thinking about a “course deficit,” advocating for a move toward interactive learning over traditional lecture-style courses and for a “concepts first” education model.
The Chronicle reports on controversy at Washington College, a small Maryland liberal-arts institution, following a speech on “campus illiberalism” by conservative legal scholar and director of Princeton University’s Program in American Ideals and Institutions Robert P. George. George gave a campus talk about growing intolerance of certain viewpoints in higher education, eliciting a student protest over what they perceived to be anti-LGBTQ+ and anti-abortion views. The protest lasted for about 15 minutes. Some colleges and universities do not issue speaking invitations to dissenters from campus orthodoxies, and those who are invited can be disinvited or pressured to withdraw. The circumstances of the event highlight the contentious nature of campus-speech issues in the current political climate.
The Chronicle published a deep-dive into the Classic Learning Test (CLT), a college entrance exam introduced in 2015 and now accepted by public colleges and universities in the state of Florida. Florida is the first state-university system to accept the CLT, which is primarily taken by home-schooled students and those at private or charter schools. The CLT was previously widely accepted by small private religious institutions. The test is based on a classical education model and assesses verbal reasoning, quantitative reasoning, and grammar and writing with an emphasis on classical Western and Christian texts. From 2016 to 2023, approximately 21,000 juniors and seniors took the CLT, compared to millions of students who took the SAT and ACT.