A guest post titled “Higher education’s $64,000 question” by Professor of Government David Paris ’71 appeared on The Washington Post College Inc. blog on Feb. 2. Paris, who is currently serving as executive director of the New Leadership Alliance for Student Learning and Accountability, expressed his support for establishing evidence-based improvement of student learning as a central focus of higher education.

He began his essay by asking, “Are students learning?” As a possible solution, he directed readers to the New Leadership Alliance for Student Learning and Accountability’s recently published “Committing to Quality: Guidelines for Assessment and Accountability in Higher Education” This publication provides a checklist for colleges to use for assessing and improving student learning: setting clear goals for student achievement, regularly gathering and using evidence that measures performance against those goals, reporting evidence of student learning and continuously working to improve results.