When I was looking for a job more than four decades ago, there were certain positions I would not apply for. Normally, recruitment ads ask for the CV, sample publications, and letters of recommendation. Occasionally, an ad would pop up asking for my official undergraduate and graduate grade transcripts. Those jobs I would scratch off my list, even though positions were scarce and competition stiff. Aside from the nuisance involved, I was a little insulted by the demand. I’d worked hard for my degree, I had run a competitive gauntlet that not everyone cleared, and I had publications to my name. Would I really be judged by my grade in a sophomore English literature class? Surely, my PhD was a sufficient qualification?

This is why I reacted with some trepidation when I learned about the Faculty Merit Act (FMA), model legislation proposed recently by the Civics Alliance as part of its Model Higher Education Code. The Civics Alliance is an affiliate of the National Association of Scholars (NAS), where I work alongside David Randall, the alliance’s executive director and the NAS director of research.

The FMA is intended to make the qualifications of all university faculty, both established and aspiring, open to the public. This includes disclosure of faculty members’ standardized test scores. As the Civics Alliance explains:

Our model Faculty Merit Act promotes academic transparency by requiring all parts of a state university system to publish every higher-education standardized test score (SAT, ACT, CRT, GRE, LSAT, MCAT, etc.) of every faculty member, as well as the standardized test score of every applicant for the faculty member’s position, of every applicant selected for a first interview, and every applicant selected for a final interview. The Act also requires the university to post the average standardized test score of the faculty in every department. It finally requires everyone in the hiring process, both applicant and administrators, to affirm under penalty of perjury that they have provided every standardized test score.

Just as requiring college transcripts did forty years ago, doesn’t the FMA diminish the hard-won credential of the PhD?

Shortly after I finally landed a faculty position, I had occasion to visit one of the places that had required those transcripts. I asked one of my hosts why their college had done that. Apparently, the college had been burned by applicants who had misrepresented their qualifications. They could present a PhD, a respectable CV, and letters of recommendation. But in a few cases, they turned out to be academic rhinestone cowboys—all hat and no cattle. Contrary to my assumption, asking for transcripts was not evidence of institutional mediocrity; it was due diligence. It might have been counterproductive due diligence, but at least it was motivated by a respectable desire to maintain standards.

Fast forward to the present: Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? The natural custodians of academic excellence—faculty—seem to be doing rather a poor job of it lately. The degradation of American higher education is well documented and on display for all to see. Costs are soaring. Academic performance is slumping. Grade inflation is rampant. Frivolous majors proliferate like kudzu. Multiple generations of students are burdened by crushing student debt, with diminishing prospects for satisfying lives and well-remunerated careers. What may not be so evident is that colleges have brought this on themselves, deliberately and enthusiastically. In an inversion of the old aphorism that victory has many fathers while defeat is an orphan, decline has found no shortage of patrons, while the defense of integrity has been left parentless.

I witnessed this decline over my own academic career. I eventually landed at a technical college that had built a reputation for academic rigor, discipline, and accountability. Students were expected to take responsibility for poor performance. A student could repeat a failed course in hopes of improving his or her grade, but the original grade of F would remain on the transcript and be included in the calculation of the grade point average. In some courses, such as organic chemistry, failure rates were substantial. This was considered normal: students either mastered the material, or they didn’t. When they didn’t, their grade reflected that.

At every college, my own included, there will be a faction that considers it unfair to insist students take responsibility for their grades. That faction had typically been in the minority, but over time, it began to gain traction as our administration grew concerned about retention. It was important to keep all students in tuition-paying harness, and failing students pay as much as excellent students do.

At first, the change was small. If a student repeated a failed course and earned a higher grade, the original F on the transcript was replaced with an R (repeated), and the credit hours from the failed attempt were not included in the GPA calculation. As a safeguard, the student could only invoke this option once.

That small concession opened the door to ever more “fairness” creeping in. Over the course of about a decade, the R exclusion was expanded first to include the D grade and eventually to include the C-minus grade. The one-time repeat rule was also abandoned. A student could have an infinite number of do-overs in a course, with no effect on his or her GPA. A debasement of the degree, moved along by the jiggery-pokery of the GPA, was the inevitable result.

All this was done with the participation of the faculty, who were reluctant at first but became enthusiastic as it unfolded. There was opposition at every step to the new rules, but those who spoke in favor of maintaining standards were at first outvoted, then marginalized, and eventually labeled “institutional terrorists” by consultants brought in (at great expense) to bring the opponents into line.

My little story has been repeated many times and in many forms throughout higher education. The details may differ from institution to institution, but the trajectory has been uniformly downward. Worse, this has not been imposed on anyone or on any institution. Decline has been a deliberate choice, even an enthusiastic choice, by the natural custodians of the academy: the faculty. The natural custodians have failed, across the board and everywhere. This should trouble everyone. It certainly troubles me.

So, I changed my mind about the FMA. Higher education needs to be brought under custodianship. The kind that was imposed on Britney Spears when she was shaving her head and making bad relationship choices. There, the wealth at stake was Spears’ own. With higher education, it is the public’s wealth that cries out for guardianship, and this applies equally to both public and private colleges and universities.

As difficult a pill to swallow as this is, this compels government, both state and local, to take custody of higher education until trust can be restored. The Faculty Merit Act is one of the instruments of the custodianship.

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