Several obstacles hinder change in the current system. First,
the current connection between the incentives in the system and
student learning is weak at best. Many believe this is so because research universities and their faculty don’t care about teaching
or student learning. I disagree—most instructors do indeed care
a great deal about student learning. The real problem is that we
have almost no authentic assessments of what students actually
learn, so it is impossible to broadly measure that learning and
likewise impossible to connect it to resources and incentives.