Tuning USA

Sponsors:

Lumina Foundation for Education initiated this project.

Lumina Foundation for Education

Principal advisers are Tim Birtwistle, a Bologna expert and emeritus professor at Leeds Metropolitan University in the United Kingdom; Clifford Adelman, senior associate, Institute for Higher Education Policy; William Evenson, an emeritus physics professor, former university administrator and consultant to the Utah State Board of Regents; Robert Wagenaar, a professor at the University of Groningen in The Netherlands, and co-coordinator of the projects Tuning Educational Structures in Europe, Tuning South-East and Eastern Europe, Tuning Latin America, Tuning Russia, and Tuning Georgia; and Tim Birtwistle, a Bologna expert and professor at Leeds Metropolitan University in the United Kingdom. Foundation contacts for the project are Kevin Corcoran, program director; and Marcus Kolb, program officer.

Tuning USA is a faculty-led pilot project designed to define what students must know, understand, and be able to demonstrate after completing a degree in a specific field. Tuning USA methodology is based on similar work to increase the transparency around what a degree represents under Europe's Bologna Process.

Tuning involves creating a framework that sets forth clear responsibilities for institutions and establishes clear learning expectations for students in each subject area, while balancing the need among programs to retain their academic autonomy and flexibility. The objective is not to standardize programs offered by different institutions, but to better establish the quality and relevance of degrees in various academic disciplines. Lumina enumerates the following benefits arising from the Tuning process:

• Making higher education more responsive to changes in knowledge and its application.
  
• Establishing the relevance of postsecondary programs to societal needs and workforce demands.
  
• Aligning the roles of higher education institutions.
  
• Facilitating retention, especially among students from underserved groups, by creating clear pathways to degree completion.
  
• Simplifying the process for students transferring credits between institutions.
  
• Increasing the emphases on lifelong learning and important-but-often undervalued transferable skills.
  
• Increasing student engagement in the learning process.
  
  

Lumina Foundation for Education initiated Tuning USA in December 2008. Following a planning session, attended by higher education officials from several states, the foundation sought proposals. Lumina asked states to recruit at least two subject-area teams that included both faculty members and students. Each team includes representatives from several institutions, including a flagship campus. Public and private not-for-profit institutions are participating. In March 2009, Lumina awarded Indiana, Minnesota, and Utah grants to offset project costs. The three state teams have met repeatedly during the course of the project.  In November 2009, Lumina awarded the state of Texas additional money to join the Tuning USA effort.

The state teams function as study groups that explore the design, phases and outcomes of Tuning in Europe and elsewhere. While assessing the potential of the Tuning approach, state teams may make reasonable modifications in consultation with Lumina or its consultants to make the process more worthwhile in their respective settings.

The project has support from the Utah State Board of Regents; the Indiana Commission for Higher Education; the Minnesota Office of Higher Education; and the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board. The states have selected the academic disciplines on which they are focusing during the project and have recruited or are in the process of recruiting faculty from those disciplines to participate.

Lumina Foundation for Education expects the Tuning process to include input via surveys from students, recent graduates and employers. State teams also will map graduates' employability in each Tuning subject area to positions in the labor market.

Texas is expected to begin work by mid-2010. By the end of 2010, state teams in Indiana, Minnesota and Utah will provide Lumina with:

• Final reports that describe the results of surveying to determine relevant general competencies in each field.
• A map of the employability of students who major in the subject areas.
  
• A set of agreed-upon degree-level descriptors and general and subject-specific learning outcomes for each subject area.
  
• Draft degree profiles of each participating institution’s academic programs grounded in explicit learning outcomes.
  
• An overview and assessment of the process, and recommendations for further work.
  
  

www.luminafoundation.org/our_work/tuning/

03/30/2010