You explained what students actually need: to learn. But your reasons for why we aren’t giving it to them are different from your solutions. External metrics of quality are superficial and distal: satisfaction, graduation rates, ROI, employment. But you pointed out the real problem without addressing it in your solutions: “Faculty are rewarded for research, not transformative teaching.”

Simply demanding that we return to old models of volume-based reading and writing, high standards for grading, and required attendance doesn’t address the root of the problem: “Students don’t need easier classes. They need better classes—classes that demand and develop capacities they’ll use for life.” But how will they develop these capacities except through transformative teaching, as you laid out in a recent article outlining active learning strategies? Simply demanding students do work and expecting learning isn’t rigor. Designing courses thoughtfully with transparency, scaffolding, formative assessment, and clear standards for evaluation is rigor. There’s a whole body of research I know you’re familiar with (TILT); please don’t blame everyone else for what is ultimately a faculty-created problem: teaching effectively is harder than what we used to call rigor, so faculty need to work harder (or differently) than they used to if they want students to actually learn.