Rice ranks first on exit exam

By Kern Vijayvargiya     9/11/08 7:00pm

As part of the new national accreditation process, 844 new freshmen and transfer students will participate in assessments aimed at monitoring the quality of undergraduate education. The new accreditation process began last year with exit-level exams for graduating seniors to demonstrate the quality of learning in colleges and universities. Student performance on these exams determine whether the school gets accreditation.

The mean score of the sample of Rice's graduating seniors on the Collegiate Learning Assessment of Critical Thinking was higher than the mean scores for any of the other 148 institutions participating.

The median score for Rice for information literacy was at the 95 percentile. This means that half of Rice's graduating seniors scored higher than 95% of all graduating seniors.

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Vice President for Institutional Effectiveness, John Cornwell said accreditation serves as a seal of approval for the university. In the job market, accreditation gives respect to a college degree by denoting the university a place of quality education, he said.

Last spring, the Office of Institutional Effectiveness led a study of a random sample of 157 graduating seniors who underwent a series of assessments.

The results of these exams showed how graduating seniors received extremely high proficiency in several areas including critical thinking and research skills. Seniors were also found to have an appreciation of global culture and civic life.

Freshmen and transfers will be contacted later this month via e-mail to participate in a faculty-sponsored assessment. Like last year, graduating seniors will complete an assessment in April.

The exams will be administered at Fondren Library and will last less than two hours. Students will be able to schedule their exams to fit their schedules.

Individual scores will be released to the students but will have no impact on their status at the university or their academic record.

"I think it's important to assess how Rice students are doing, given our prestige," Jones College freshman Sherry Lin said. "I like the fact that it won't reflect on our academic record."

The purpose of the assessment is to measure how effectively students are meeting the "Eleven Goals for the Education of Rice Undergraduates", as outlined in a 2007 report by the Committee on the Rice Undergraduate Program. Among these eleven goals include reasoning, integrating knowledge from multiple perspectives and community and civic life.

Rice University is part of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, which includes over 800 junior colleges and universities found in the Southeast, the Caribbean and Mexico. Schools in SACS come together to collectively establish standards. Cornwell, who is also an adjunct professor in psychology, said people generally think about schools in terms of the input, or the quality of entering students, rather than the output. Therefore, it is important that schools self-police themselves regarding the quality of the output, he said.

Cornwell said the SACS has made changes requiring schools to assess their programs and make plans for improvement.

"Technically, a lot of schools are playing catch-up," Cornwell said.

Peer institutions like Vanderbilt University and Duke University are among those beginning this process. State schools have previously started this process to follow requirements by state legislatures.

"If we lost our accreditation, we'd be in big trouble," Cornwell said.

Cornwell heads the Office of Institutional Effectiveness, which was created in March 2007. His responsibilities include preparing a Monitoring Report to demonstrate the results of University-wide assessments.

According to Cornwell, non-participation in a survey is always a statistical concern. However, Rice students were shown to participate at a higher rate than other schools.

While the Office of Institutional Effectiveness requests that every new student and graduating senior participate, there is no penalty for non-participation. Cornwell said that this is necessary to ensure sound data.

"If you force someone to do a test, the results will generally not be valid," Cornwell said.

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