"We can point to lots of changes that have occured from this, like improved interaction between faculty and students, strengthened internships, and new training and supervision for TA's" Banta said.

Newly developed evaluation tools such as the COMP exam and CIRP surveys have largely dispelled fears that assessment is impractical, educators say. Instead, faculties have become embroiled in a debate over what educational outcomes they should persue through assessment--a topic which may be the most controversial addressed by the Harvard Seminar.

Assessment often encourages colleges to reevaluate their educational goals. As a result, many institutions no longer consider absolute levels of knowledge among graduates as important as intellectual "value-added" by the university, said Light, who was chosen to head the seminar because of his expertise in program evaluation.

"The idea is to compare what students can do when they arrive versus what they can do as seniors," Light said. "If a college takes weak students who are terrible writers and makes them pretty good--that's a great job."

By looking at how Harvard students' writing ability changes over their four years--how much "value" a Harvard education adds to prose style--assessors get a better estimation of the University's writing instruction than by simply comparing Harvard seniors' essays with those of seniors elsewhere.

At the same time that Harvard assessors are reshaping measures of educational quality, they are also reconsidering what constitutes a quality education. Many educators, for example, now consider knowledge of specific facts less important than the ability to apply and integrate data.

One leader in the assessment movement, Alverno College in Milwaukee, WI, uses an "ability-based" curriculum to foster such growth. Fields of study are de-emphasized; instead students are tested in eight cross-disciplinary areas such as communication, analysis, and aesthetic response.

Most faculties, however, continue to test students without consciously analyzing what abilities they seek to foster, Adelman said. Advocates of ability-based curriculum feel that these educators force students to learn facts that are not critical in a world of rapidly developing information technology.

"Today it's exceedingly difficult to agree on some narrow body of knowledge a student should learn," said Austin Doherty, Alverno's vice-president for academic affairs. "There's too much information out there."

This view is opposed by those who feel that the liberalized curriculum of the 60s and 70s has adversly affected higher education. Secretary of Education William J. Bennett, for example, has suggested that all college students be required to read the "great books" of Western civilization. This "back-to-basics" version of assessment has found strong support among several state legislatures which have mandated basic-skills tests and specific curricular reforms in public universities. While Harvard is not subject to state mandated reforms, it is closely studying assessment projects at schools that are.

Legislated reforms are not popular among educators. A Florida statute which requires students to write 6000 words per month has been a frequent target. "The law was based on the observation that students don't do much writing," Adelman said. "We can't quarrel with the motivation, but whether or not the right amount is 60, 6000, or 60,000 words we don't know. The decision was arbitrary."

Criticized as too poorly informed to dictate specific reforms, states have been moving away from absolute standards of accountability. At least eight states that mandate assessment now allow university faculties to design the specifics of their self-evaluation program, Adelman said. Following a plan outlined by Missouri Governor John Ashcroft, these states often offer financial rewards to schools that demonstrate improvement over several years of assessment.

But financial incentives to achieve set standards may result in a narrowing of curriculum and homogenization of higher education. "There is widespread recognition that the smorgasboard approach in the 60s and 70s didn't serve students as well as it might," said Banta, who operates under a system of financial incentives. "If we find a middle ground between telling students exactly what to do and the cafe-style approach of before, we will have narrowed the curriculum somewhat. But that's not all bad," she said.

Harvard is, if anything, moving in the other direction, Light said. The Core Curriculum--which has been criticized by Bennett as being too and by students as not directed enough--will not be evaluated by the seminar, Light says, but he adds that Harvard must also make many decisions about its educational breadth and goals.

In the face of rising educational costs, the Secretary of Education has joined the call for greater accountability among the nation's colleges and universities, saying "The Department of Education has an obligation...to suggest better means by which the higher education consumer can be confident he is buying a sound product."

Adelman adds, "We've never picked up the hood on the car of higher education and looked underneath to see what's going on."