Thinking Outside the Box Index

Letter to the Editor: Newsweek


The Common Yardsticks of College Evaluation
Seem mis-directed.

With due apologies to Ms. Spelling and the comments of the staff of Newsweek, it would be very nice to be able to put a national index of colleges and a lot of data into the hands of students and parents, but precisely what kind of data should that be? And what would should it mean? Ms. Spelling seems to leave that big blank for others to fill. It seems to this source that there is plenty of data available but not necessarily useful. Therefore, we would like to suggest some other yardstick for consideration. We call it the TOBI and we think it breaks away from conventional thinking to consider other, more useful measures.

In the past, several measures had been tried. Among them, there was count of legitimate PhD’s working at various schools; but it was discovered that that measure meant little since most were encouraged to publish not to teach. Then there was various other indexes tied to the Ivy League schools which centered on prosaic measures of salary and performance judged by the quality of starting jobs. Again, these measures meant little since anyone who could afford to send their children to such schools could also be counted on using their contacts to assure their children of good contacts and promising starting salaries.

So, how do you really judge whether a college is a prime training ground for active minds because shouldn’t that be the measure?

My suggestion is very simple. The Committee for Positive Change calls it the TOBI. It’s a yardstick of not salary or position in life but how well college graduates use their God-given gifts.

It is very simple to measure and its surprising that no one up until now has either suggested or advocated such a measure..

Here’s how it works:

You begin with a compendium of leaders in every industry.

Each leader is asked to submit a list of the industry’s best thinkers/achievers.. It is not salary, position, standing, ranking, etc.; it is totally accomplishment based and involves unique problem solving, thinking or innovation, creativity and/or contribution to the common good through services that are judged to stand alone. The leaders must be able to point to uncommon thinking, leadership skills, creativity, positive accomplishment through innovation, etc. The leaders may tap into other resources to accumulate their names including referring to others in the chain of command within their industries who might have a better working relationship with the candidates and are better able to calculate their contributions…

What the judges will be looking for is THINKING OUTSIDE THE BOX to address needs, solve problems, serve the public good. Out of the total list, the lists provided by the industry and business leaders will be submitted to an empanelled jury of 12 judges who are selected because of heir credentials; they will determine the top 10% and build the Index around them.

If we open the list up to the top 1,000 candidates and pick the top 100 that will be a beginning; other criteria may substitute for this set of determinants but it must be reduced to a representative fraction of the totally qualified list to be meaningful.

The Colleges selected may include selections across the entire field of elegible schools including both highly specialized schools as well as Universities having broad offerings. The only prohibition would be schools that have some qualifying criteria based on race, religion or thinking.

Then we solicit the names of the schools attended and other relevant data, total this data up and develop an Index which is updated annually with changes indicated.

This is a zero based calculation and measure meaning that there is no “carry-over;” the study is conducted fresh yearly and just because someone qualified the previous year does not mean that he or she will automatically requalify for inclusion in the subsequent year..

In the end, we should come up with a list of colleges that will begin to mean something.
Over time, we will begin to see a trend line as for example, such and such college received mentioned 25 out of the last 100 times; therefore, it may be presumed, all other measures being equal, that a graduate of this school, has a far better chance of achieving meaningful recognition and/or success in his field of choice than had he or she attended a school that was never included or considered for the list.

To the best of our recollection, no Index has ever been measured on the basis of the TOBI that measures thinking ability and performance and while we donnot believe it should be the only measure of any school, it would be an extremely useful yardstick over time in eliminating the hype and conjecture that usually surrounds the process and substituting tangible evidence of student accomplishment as a principal criterion for consideration.
Like most other yardsticks, however, we recognize that it should be supplemented by other meaningful criteria to provide a balanced view and perspective.

Respecfully submitted,

Les Aaron- Director
The Committee for Positive Growth