[1] Advocates of systematic assessment in higher education promoted it as a process that would use empirical data to improve student learning.
[1][4] Advocates of assessment insisted that colleges should be able to distill their intended student learning outcomes into statements and related data at the level of the course, each program or major, and for the institution overall.
[6] In a 2018 New York Times opinion piece titled "The Misguided Drive to Measure Learning Outcomes," Molly Worthen criticized the assessment profession for creating an elaborate, expensive, "bureaucratic behemoth" lacking an empirical foundation.
[13] In July 2020, the National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Improvement established a subcommittee, chaired by David Eubanks, to examine how accrediting agencies approach the assessment of student success.
Instead, the subcommittee pointed to peer reviewers with inflexible expectations as creating an impression that has sometimes steered colleges in unproductive directions.