The Facts
* Thirty-six percent of college students nationally demonstrate little to no increase in fundamental academic skills after four years in college.
* College grading standards have become so lax that, today, an A is the most common grade awarded.
* Texas students gain only 2.9% of their civic knowledge during college.
* Undergraduates at Texas universities are below the national average in the number of history, government, and economics courses taken during college.
Recommendations
* Institute reforms that tie university funding to student success results such as learning outcomes (as measured by, e.g., the Collegiate Learning Assessment or the Collegiate Assessment of Academic Proficiency), and employment outcomes five years after graduation.
* Simultaneous with the above, encourage university regents to institute measurements of learning outcomes at the freshman and senior years.
* Pass legislation requiring “Honest Transcripts,” which provide, alongside the grade each student received for his/her class, the average grade given by the professor for the entire class.
* Encourage university regents and other administrators to institute reforms that place more focus on teaching students basic American history, government, economics, and Western Civilization.
* Building on the foundation laid last year by HB 1296, improve information systems by giving accessible data on student academic performance, graduation rates, post-graduate earnings, percentage of classes taught by part-time faculty, and evidence of post-graduate earnings (from sites like PayScale.com, etc.).