Panel urges shakeup of higher education Proficiency testing, quality checks, aid changes proposed
04:00 PDT Washington -- A federal commission approved a final report on Thursday that urges a broad shakeup of American higher education, calling for public universities to measure student learning with standardized tests, for federal monitoring of colleges' quality, and for sweeping changes to the financial aid system.
Is this a "shakeup" or a "shakedown?"
I've attended 3 colleges. Two used a lot of what you could call "standardized" type testing, which is mostly multiple choice. The third college, McGill University in Quebec Canada, had very little multiple choice type testing. Most tests required short paragraph type answers. Also, the course work required more research papers and with quite specific requirements.
I got easy A's at the universities which used multiple choice type testing and few research papers. I almost "sweated blood" to get a B+ average at McGill. I never guessed how uneducated I truly was until I attended McGill. They expected the students not only to know the information, but to be able to articulate it well in written form.
I should add that I'm a pretty good writer when I want to be. When I wrote a 10 page paper for the easier two universities, I focused on how can a fill 10 pages. When I wrote a 10 page paper at McGill, my focus was how could I meet all the requirements for this paper in only 10 pages.
That type of education is not easily measured by standardize testing.
A push for standardize testing on the college level is another step towards "dumbing down." It is also an attempt to manipulate content. Most universities have a liberal bias anyway. This would be an attempt to push more conservative institutions to conform to politically correct ideology.
(Hat tip: Spunky Homeschool)
---------------------------------
Related Tags: Commission on the Future of Higher Education, Spellings Report, Education, Higher Education, Home schooling, home education
No comments:
Post a Comment