Initiating an Assessment Plan for a Research University - Assignment Example

The first stage of assessment is to identify the objectives of program and select the goals of higher education that need to be assessed. Several universities which have expressed concerns on the decline of learning in higher education needs to carry out assessment programs to find the areas which have lacked vision and efforts in the educational process and also to undertake appropriate strategies in order to address the fall of higher education and learning among the students. This requires the academic institution to carry out collection programs for gathering useful data and information that are to be further analyzed.

The analysis of the prevailing learning techniques, response of the students, level of interest of the students, efficiency of the teachers and eventual success of learning process would provide useful insight to the academic leaders to bring about necessary changes in the learning process in higher education (OIRA, 2013, p.1). . The decline in higher education could be attributed to a large number of factors which include the rising cost of higher education, the increase in debt of the students as well as the universities and the decline in the quality of pedagogy and the students who participate in the higher education process of learning in various subjects.

The steep rise in the tuition fees of the universities have resulted in the reduction of interest level among the students due to lack of affordability. The cost of the universities for each and every student has risen five times as compared to the inflation rate since 1983. This has resulted in the shortage of funds in the university for which the universities has to incur debt as well as raise the fees for every student. The raised university fees have resulted in the decrease of affordability of the students for pursuing higher education.

Almost 66% of the graduates undertake education loans for pursuing a degree for higher education. The decline in affordability among the students to pursue higher education has resulted into huge section of bright quality students to move away from the learning process of higher education and instead pursue employment opportunities. The fall in the ability of the universities to pay salaries to the high quality professors and teaching faculties as fresh recruits for future have resulted in the fall of pedagogy of the universities.

Apart from this, there have been several issues of lack of accountability and not participating in the learning process in accordance to the roles and responsibilities. These are the several areas of concern that have been faced by the universities which resulted in