<body><div><ul><li>Many colleges and universities aspire to grand visions of the transformation of students.</li><li>College life has the potential to help students flourish academically and in life.</li><li>Assessing flourishing has the potential to change our discussions and focus.</li></ul><h2>Vision and Mission </h2><p>Many of our colleges and universities put forward admirable mission and vision statements. Harvard University states on its website, “The mission of Harvard College is to educate the citizens and citizen-leaders for our society. We do this through our commitment to the transformative power of a liberal arts and sciences education.” As part of its mission, William and Mary states, “Through close mentoring and collaboration, we inspire lifelong learning, generate new knowledge, and expand understanding. We cultivate creative thinkers, principled leaders, and compassionate global citizens equipped for lives of meaning and distinction.” </p><p>What many of these colleges and universities are aspiring to is the transformation of students, the enabling of their flourishing, and the empowering of them to help society flourish. For many students, these institutions may well succeed at accomplishing this. For others, college life may be a struggle. Sometimes this struggle itself results in growth, but at other times it may not. </p><p>Colleges and universities of course carefully track graduation rates, along with the employment and income of their graduates. During university life, surveys are often administered on mental health and on instances of bias and discrimination. Prior to students’ arrival on campus, considerable attention may be given to standardized test scores and grade point averages. All of these things are undoubtedly important, and many of them form the basis of college rankings. However, the aggregation of these various matters still seems to miss the grander visions of flourishing and transformation often embedded in the mission statements of our institutions of higher education. </p><p>One way to broaden the focus and aims of our colleges and universities is to also broaden the assessments being used. We can better assess whether students are flourishing. We can better assess whether our colleges and universities are flourishing as communities. We can better assess whether university life is helping students to grow in wisdom and in justice, and whether students are being prepared for leadership and citizenship so as to bring about a more flourishing world. </p><figure><img src="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?type=thumbnail_580x000&amp;url=4QVYzF_0vt47apS00" alt="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?url=4QVYzF_0vt47apS00" width="320" height="214" ></figure><h2>Academic Flourishing </h2><p>At the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard, we are making efforts to bring about such expanded assessments to college and university campuses. Our own flourishing measure, focused around the six domains of happiness, health, meaning, character, relationships, and financial security has been used now on numerous campuses, including University of Michigan, Johns Hopkins, West Point, Yale University, Harvard University, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, and several others. We have, more recently, also been carrying out assessments on whether colleges and universities are flourishing as a community, and we’ve adapted our community well-being measure to college and university contexts. Such assessments include evaluating whether there are good relationships within the community; proficient leadership to provide vision and direction; healthy structures and practices to sustain the life of the community and to resolve conflict; a sense of belonging, welcome, and satisfaction; and a shared common mission. </p><p>Most recently, we have further developed a series of questions for students on “academic flourishing,” evaluating their perceptions on the extent to which university life has helped them to find meaning and purpose, to grow in character, to develop the capacity for critical thought and for leadership, and to flourish as a person. The questions cover a broad range of matters, but matters concerning which many colleges and universities rightly aim at transformation. The 24 questions we currently are using in this regard—questions we think students and university staff alike would benefit from reflecting on—are as follows (each is self-rated from 0=“Has not helped” to 10=“Has helped a lot”): </p><ul><li>To what extent has university life helped you to increase your knowledge? </li></ul><ul><li>To what extent has university life helped you to think clearly? </li></ul><ul><li>To what extent has university life helped you to pursue truth? </li></ul><ul><li>To what extent has university life helped you to recognize when you are in error so as to be able to change your understanding? </li></ul><ul><li>To what extent has university life helped you understand perspectives different from your own? </li></ul><ul><li>To what extent has university life helped you learn how to express yourself well? </li></ul><ul><li>To what extent has university life helped you to find meaning in life? </li></ul><ul><li>To what extent has university life helped you to appreciate beauty? </li></ul><ul><li>To what extent has university life helped you to flourish as a person? </li></ul><ul><li>To what extent has university life helped you to pursue your goals? </li></ul><ul><li>To what extent has university life helped you learn how to have good relationships with others? </li></ul><ul><li>To what extent has university life helped you learn how to live your life in a healthy way? </li></ul><ul><li>To what extent has university life helped you develop character strengths in order to make meaningful contributions to society? </li></ul><ul><li>To what extent has university life helped you understand what you can contribute to your country? </li></ul><ul><li>To what extent has university life helped equip you to positively change the world? </li></ul><ul><li>To what extent has university life helped you to treat everyone respectfully? </li></ul><ul><li>To what extent has university life helped you in creative problem-solving when working with others? </li></ul><ul><li>To what extent has university life helped you to work with people with diverse political and religious beliefs? </li></ul><ul><li>To what extent has university life helped you to become more honest? </li></ul><ul><li>To what extent has university life helped you to develop courage? </li></ul><ul><li>To what extent has university life helped you to have a love of learning? </li></ul><ul><li>To what extent has university life helped you to become more wise? </li></ul><ul><li>To what extent has university life helped you to become more just? </li></ul><ul><li>To what extent has university life helped you to better lead a moral life? </li></ul><p>We are piloting the use of these questions with a number of colleges and universities this academic year to help understand in what ways students perceive university life as having contributed to their own personal and character development, and how this might vary across students and institutions. In fact, through our collaboration with the Oxford Character Project, several of these questions were embedded in the <i>Wall Street Journal</i>’s Annual College Rankings this year so as to better take these matters of character into account. </p><h2>Broadening Our Focus </h2><p>We will be broadening this work on student flourishing, community flourishing, and academic flourishing to other institutions in the months ahead. These academic flourishing assessments are intended to supplement, not replace, more traditional metrics. Our conventional college assessments of graduation and income, of mental health and discrimination, and of academic test scores are all critical, and should not be neglected, but we should also broaden our focus. We should consider flourishing both academically and in life more generally. What we measure shapes what we discuss, what we know, what we aim for, and the policies put in place to improve it. We hope that this work will help enable the flourishing of students and perhaps also help restore a focus to the beautiful mission and vision statements of so many of our colleges and universities around the world. </p></div></body>

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Assessing Academic Flourishing

Many colleges and universities aspire to grand visions of the transformation of students. College life has the potential to help students flourish academically and in life. Assessing flourishing has the potential to change our discussions and focus. Vision and Mission. Many of our colleges and universities put forward admirable mission...

Assessing Academic Flourishing

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