Beyond the One-Dimensional University: A Marcusean Critique of Outcomes Assessment

In August 2013, US president Barack Obama announced a plan to link federal financial aid to college performance. This plan, it is argued, will allow students, parents, and federal lenders to avoid paying tuition for an ultimately meaningless credential. It identifies relevant educational outcomes as rates of graduation, the earnings of graduates, and the attainment of advanced degrees after graduation. The president's plan is part of a much larger trend toward "accountability" and "transparency" in education, an important feature of which is the proliferation of the language and programs related to assessment of student learning outcomes. In this essay, I show that outcomes assessment is a form of "one-dimensional thought" as this concept is developed in One-Dimensional Man and that it suffers from the defects identified by Marcuse there. Outcomes assessment, therefore, codifies ways of thinking about education that undermine its role in the development of liberated forms of consciousness and emancipatory praxis.