The Randall proposal

This is a long-delayed sequel to "The Randall Scandal."

On June 18, 2004, John Randall submitted to the Commission on Higher Education a proposal entitled "Quality Assurance of Higher Education in the Philippines." Although CHED’s Commissioners have assured me that they are not going to implement the proposal in full but will remove impractical and inapplicable components, Randall’s final report to CHED (and to ADB and the British Council, which brought him to the country) remains the key document being used today to compel universities to toe his line.

As in any other government or consultant’s report, there are good and bad points in Randall’s proposal.

The best point in the proposal is Randall’s insistence on an "outcomes-based" assessment of universities. The jargon may be confusing, but Randall’s point may be illustrated by an example he does not use. When teachers apply for employment in a university, they are usually asked what their degrees are, how many years they have been teaching, and what research they have undertaken. In Randall’s terms, these data would be "inputs."

"There is an assumption," says Randall, "that, if adequate resources are present, quality will be guaranteed. This, of course, is not true, as much will depend on the effectiveness with which resources are deployed." In our example, degrees, years of teaching experience, and publications may be irrelevant to teachers that face, let us say, a class of basketball players accepted primarily on the basis of their height.

Randall points out that universities are also evaluated in terms of their "processes (particularly the processes of teaching and learning)." In our example, teachers are usually judged by what their syllabi contain, what teaching strategies they use, how they fare in student evaluations, how they look to other teachers that observe their classes. Randall argues that evaluating inputs and processes is an immature act.

"Mature evaluation systems," he writes, "are based upon outcomes, and in particular the learning outcomes that it is intended that students should achieve." In our example, teachers applying for employment should be asked what percentage of their former students passed board examinations or found jobs. I myself often provoke literature teachers by telling them that they are bad teachers if their students do not, after high school or college, go on their own to a bookstore or library to read a new novel. As that often-misquoted Biblical verse puts it, by their fruits you shall know them. (Of course, during the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus was referring only to false prophets and not necessarily to everyone else; see Matthew 5:15-20.)

The problem occurs when Randall tries to apply the principle of outcomes-based assessment to the Philippine situation. Although he admits that "CHED, as the regulator of higher education, should be less prescriptive," he actually ends up urging CHED to be more prescriptive. Randall submits, together with his general statements about the Philippine educational system, a very detailed "Operating Handbook" that is about as prescriptive as you can get. An example: "Formal meetings should always involve at least two members of the [visiting] team."

In fact, it is not just the prescriptive portions, but the whole Randall proposal that is wrong, because it falls into the trap of self-contradiction. He starts off by saying, in effect, that Filipinos are doing the wrong thing when it comes to quality assessment. Then, when asked what we should be doing instead, he ends up saying that we should be doing exactly what we have been doing all along.

Since I belong to PAASCU, as well as to a CHED Technical Panel, I may be accused of bias when it comes to the Randall proposal. But I still have to find in his proposal anything that either PAASCU or CHED is not yet doing. In simpler terms, what Randall is saying is this: you are doing everything wrong, but everything you are doing is right.

In more intellectual terms, what Randall has done is to assume that he has a monopoly of wisdom. When asked what wisdom that is, he has done nothing else but to point to the wisdom that we already had decades before he arrived in the Philippines.

I am reminded of a similar argument I used to have with Americans not too long ago. They would tease me about always having a cellphone, saying that in the United States, since everybody had a landline at home and there was a pay phone everywhere you looked, Americans would never buy cellphones. Today, there are affluent homes in the United States without landlines and practically everybody there now has a cellphone. In short, we were (and still are) much more advanced than Americans when it comes to telecommunications. (If you don’t believe that we are more advanced than them, go to any cellphone shop in New York and see how primitive their units there are.) No American can teach us anything when it comes to cellphones.

Randall came into our country thinking that he knew better than we did about higher education. When he realized that we knew a lot more than he did, he had no choice but to recommend back to us everything that we had already been doing. In effect, he was a false prophet, and the fruit of his labor — his proposal — proves that that both the ADB and the British Council wasted their money on him.

"WORD OF THE DAY" for next week’s elementary school classes: The numbers after the dates indicate grade level. June 20 Monday: 1. bed, 2. hour, 3. chief, 4. kiss, 5. self, 6. sex; June 21 Tuesday: 1. far, 2. mine, 3. cheap, 4. crack, 5. brick, 6. brake; June 22 Wednesday: 1. bad, 2. heat, 3. chance, 4. burn, 5. brass, 6. shame; June 23 Thursday: 1. sad, 2. pipe, 3. art, 4. flame, 5. mass, 6. tax; June 24 Friday: 1. boy, 2. male, 3. knot, 4. grain, 5. hate, 6. crush. The dates refer to the official calendar for public elementary schools. (Full list available at www.isaganicruz.net.)