Lumina Proposes New Definitions Of College Student Learning Outcomes

From Gay Clyburn at the Carnegie Foundation:

TAKING STOCK OF THE COLLEGE DEGREE
The Lumina Foundation for Education is supporting faculty-led, discipline-specific discussions within several states that seek to articulate what a student should know and be able to do by graduation. The meeting-intensive project is at times clouded with the kinds of bureaucratic buzzwords, like “rubric,” that can turn off educators and obscure the ways it might lead to tangible change. But proponents of the effort say it brings clarity to the work of academe and makes a stronger case for the value of a college education. “Quality in higher education is best represented by what students learn,” says Marcus Kolb, a program officer at Lumina. “We hope this will elevate student learning to the center of the conversation.” Indeed, statewide and national debates about higher education often focus on who gets into college and who gets out but not as much about what happens in between. Lumina is pursuing the question of what a degree means as part of its focus on increasing the number of Americans with college credentials.