Like many other colleges and universities, Hofstra University now requires each department to create a "mission statement." Then, on the basis of this statement, a set of more specific curricular goals and objectives have to be created and, finally, a set of quantitative, behavioral criteria by which to assess the department's efforts. This new…

Most universities nowadays are in a middle of a crisis which involves academic freedom, faculty morale, inefficient use of time and resources, and most crucial, the nature of a liberal arts education. This crisis has emerged due to a seemingly innocuous goal: that of finding a way to "assess" how much students are learning. Assessment fails to…

This article decries the heavy use of student evaluations in decisions about faculty retention, tenure, and promotion. It suggests these numerical evaluations are actually consumer satisfaction surveys, have not been validated, encourage dumbed-down education, and are not useful to teachers seeking to improve instruction. (DB)

This article argues that higher education's current preoccupation with student evaluations of teachers encourages student passivity and disregards the importance of the contribution learners must make to learn; students who grade faculty for four years are being taught to blame someone else for their failures. (MSE)

A survey of 63 college provosts and academic vice presidents concerning evaluation of tenured faculty found that, although frequency and form of evaluation vary widely, the large majority of institutions do perform regular reviews of tenured faculty. Most respondents also felt that the tenure system works relatively well. (MSE)