Time to lift the curtain on the college classroom

But one thing you can't find out: how well its professors teach.

In a recent survey asking respondents what makes the “best” college or university, the most popular answer was “it has professors who are excellent teachers” — far ahead of high graduation rates or good-paying jobs after college. Yet students and their families deciding where to shell out thousands of dollars have no way to determine which schools meet that standard. Their only resort may be anonymous posters on forums like College Confidential or Reddit. That needs to change.

Sure, U.S. News records faculty salaries, student-professor ratios and the average amount of money spent on each student. But none are a good proxy for teaching quality. A high-salaried professor might prioritize research over teaching, which is the best route to getting a raise in academia. Even if that professor’s class size is small, their students aren’t guaranteed to learn very much.

Ditto for dollars spent per student. If the money is going toward fancy new gyms and dormitories — something we call the “Edifice Complex” — it probably won’t affect what happens in the classroom.

U.S. News’s “Best Undergraduate Teaching” list, based entirely on surveys of college presidents, provosts and admission deans, doesn’t offer much help. What do these “top academics” — as the magazine calls them — know about teaching quality in classrooms at different institutions? It’s a popularity contest, plain and simple.

So are student course evaluations, which most colleges use to assess their faculty. These reports can provide important information, such as whether a professor returns work on time or is available outside of class. But they can’t tell you whether the teacher is effective or how much their students have learned.

Indeed, there’s some evidence suggesting that professors with lower expectations get higher evaluations — who doesn’t like an easy A? — and that teachers who assign more work pay the price on student ratings.

If we wanted to get a more meaningful measure of how well professors are teaching, we would send trained observers into their classrooms. That’s what American University education scholar Corbin Campbell did in the most comprehensive study on college teaching to date.

Over a 10-year span, Campbell and her research team watched 732 different instructors at nine different schools to evaluate whether their teaching reflected academic rigor and active learning. Did the professor get students to think in complex ways? And did they engage in debates, role-plays and other hands-on exercises, instead of just sitting inert during a lecture?

Research bears out that rigor and active learning lead to improved student knowledge and understanding. And Campbell found that these practices were more likely to occur at regional state universities than at flagship state institutions or private research universities, which both tend to get higher rankings from U.S. News and World Report.

But we still lack a sustained, nationwide effort to measure and incentivize good teaching.

One place to start is the Postsecondary Student Success Grant program. Aimed at increasing retention, the Education Department program has distributed $100 million to colleges and universities to provide students with transportation, technology, child-care and advising. As the grant program allocates additional funding, it should direct some federal dollars toward teaching evaluations — particularly for institutions most in need of resources.

Wealthier colleges and universities should prioritize regular classroom teaching observations and provide faculty with the tools to improve their pedagogy based on the evaluations’ results. Better instruction raises graduation rates, which could give institutions the rankings boost they so covet.

And perhaps all this would also inspire U.S. News and World Report and other rankings organizations to make their own investments in research about teaching. Yes, it may be an expensive undertaking. But it would go a long way toward fulfilling their commitment to “help students find a college that’s a good fit.”

Clearly, applicants and families identify teaching quality as a central component of that fit. Now, we should raise the curtain on the college classroom, providing the information needed to evaluate which institutions are delivering on it. Anything less leaves applicants in the dark.