PUB DATE 1999-07-00

This paper examines in detail how higher education serves the larger public good, focusing on how higher education assesses and accounts for its service to society. It begins with a brief description of how the civic education of students and institutional service to society are defined for the purposes of this paper. It then discusses assessment and accountability strategies, including the kinds of measures that tend to be the focus of most public reporting strategies. The civic education and service roles of higher education are not usually the focus of public reporting. When civic contributions are assessed, something else, whether service learning, campus, climate, student diversity, or "service " to the community, is measured. To build assessments of the civic contributions of higher education into reports of accountability, there are some obstacles that must be overcome. This paper identifies those obstacles and presents some strategies to build assessment and accountability capacities for the civic roles of higher education. The strategies are drawn from assessment models currently being used to measure specific dimensions of campuses ' civic roles and activities. An appendix lists 14 resources for further information. (Contains 21 references.) (SLD) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document.