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Improving Measurement of Productivity in Higher Education (2012)

Chapter: Board on Testing and Assessment

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Suggested Citation:"Board on Testing and Assessment." National Research Council. 2012. Improving Measurement of Productivity in Higher Education. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13417.
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BOARD ON TESTING AND ASSESSMENT

The Board on Testing and Assessment (BOTA) assists policy makers and the public by providing scientific expertise around critical issues of testing and assessment in education, the workplace, and the armed services. BOTA’s fundamental role is to raise questions about—and provide guidance for judging—the technical qualities of tests and assessments and the intended and unintended consequences of their use. BOTA consists of experts from a range of disciplines relevant to testing and assessment—psychology, statistics, education, economics, law, business, anthropology, sociology, and politics—as well as practitioners with experience in test use. Among the issues BOTA considers are the uses of tests as policy tools, civil rights implications of tests, and innovative methods of assessment.

Suggested Citation:"Board on Testing and Assessment." National Research Council. 2012. Improving Measurement of Productivity in Higher Education. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13417.
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Suggested Citation:"Board on Testing and Assessment." National Research Council. 2012. Improving Measurement of Productivity in Higher Education. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13417.
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Page 213
Suggested Citation:"Board on Testing and Assessment." National Research Council. 2012. Improving Measurement of Productivity in Higher Education. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13417.
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Page 214
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Higher education is a linchpin of the American economy and society: teaching and research at colleges and universities contribute significantly to the nation's economic activity, both directly and through their impact on future growth; federal and state governments support teaching and research with billions of taxpayers' dollars; and individuals, communities, and the nation gain from the learning and innovation that occur in higher education.

In the current environment of increasing tuition and shrinking public funds, a sense of urgency has emerged to better track the performance of colleges and universities in the hope that their costs can be contained without compromising quality or accessibility. Improving Measurement of Productivity in Higher Education presents an analytically well-defined concept of productivity in higher education and recommends empirically valid and operationally practical guidelines for measuring it. In addition to its obvious policy and research value, improved measures of productivity may generate insights that potentially lead to enhanced departmental, institutional, or system educational processes.

Improving Measurement of Productivity in Higher Education constructs valid productivity measures to supplement the body of information used to guide resource allocation decisions at the system, state, and national levels and to assist policymakers who must assess investments in higher education against other compelling demands on scarce resources. By portraying the productive process in detail, this report will allow stakeholders to better understand the complexities of--and potential approaches to--measuring institution, system and national-level performance in higher education.

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