Standardized Testing: Does It Have a Place In College?
The U.S. government would like to begin testing what a college student learns during the course of their education. The secretary of education, Margaret Spellings, will be meeting with college leaders later this month to “discuss the findings of Commission on the Future of Higher Education and it’s plan to assess learning through one or a number of standardized tests.” (US News – March 12th, 2007)
American students are becoming notorious for their failure to keep up with foreign students in the academic arena. The federal government is trying to discover the factors causing this phenomenon and believe that by assessing what students know when the enter college , then comparing it to what they know when they leave, will enable them to get an authentic picture of the quality of higher education in the United States. This data would then be compared to other colleges across the nation and used to rate and rank universities, much like primary and secondary schools do in the case of No Child Left Behind.
This idea of standardized testing at the college level is absurd. It is a waste of taxpayer money and students time. Instead of testing students once they are in college we should do a better job of filtering out people who do not belong there in the first place. This would prevent many of the problems we currently have. (See my previous post, Not Everyone Should go to College) American students aren’t necessarily getting dumber; the requirements for admission to college are just becoming less and less. This, in turn, is lowering the ability of a college or university to properly and affectively educate students. A bachelors degree may still get you a job but it is quickly becoming as worthless as a high school diploma in the job market. To attain any position that demands a high level of pay and has staying power, a masters degree is becoming a must-have.
You can discuss this in the forums or leave a comment.
