No Undergraduate Left Behind

Say the phrase “standardized testing,” to practically any one of the millions of students on college campuses across the nation and you will surely get a look of contempt and irritation. After all of the PSAT, SAT, ACT, AP and IB exams that students must take just to gain admission to college, most students have had enough. And it would seem that continuing to test students in such a manner once they entered an institution of higher learning would be pointless; students would likely be inundated with generic general education requirements whose sole aim would be to prepare them for upcoming standardized tests. It seems obvious that this would be nothing but a tremendous waste of time. Unfortunately, Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings and her Commission on the Future of Higher Education are of a different opinion, as shown by a recent report issued by the Commission.

Secretary Spellings created the Commission on the Future of Higher Education in September 2005 to study the current state of higher education in America and to “develop a comprehensive national strategy for postsecondary education.” After a year of nationwide public hearings with students, their families, university officials, business leaders, and education policymakers, the Commission issued its final report in October.    

In this report, the Commission laments the current state of American postsecondary education, citing, among other studies, the 2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacy findings, which suggest that more than two-thirds of the college graduates surveyed were unable to read and comprehend complex English texts and that only 34% of students graduating in 2003 had completed their degrees in the standard four years. In addition, the United States is now ninth worldwide in attainment of postsecondary degrees. The Commission also discovered that students are finding it more difficult than ever to gain admission to and pay for college and are less prepared for life after college than previous generations.    

In an effort to remedy this bleak situation, the Commission is advocating the introduction of standardized testing to colleges and universities along with the creation of a national database that would contain the results of these tests in addition to graduation statistics, tuition costs, and admissions information, so that it would be easy to directly compare institutions of higher learning and determine their effectiveness. 

While it cannot be denied that the current state of American postsecondary education is teetering on the brink of complete disaster, the introduction of a nationally-uniform standardized test to all institutions of higher learning is not the solution to this problem.

First, it would be infeasible to devise a single exam that could test students from a wide variety of majors on the skills required for their future careers. As New York Times columnist Karen W. Arenson points out, it would also be difficult to create a single test that would accurately determine the effectiveness of large public universities, small liberal arts colleges, and religiously affiliated institutions, as they all typically serve different purposes and interests.   

Secondly, the institution of standardized testing at the college level would merely rob students of the opportunity to take classes that would be valuable to them in their future careers, as they would be forced to take more large survey classes to prepare them for these exams. Isn’t one of the primary goals of higher education to prime students for their futures in whatever field they might choose?   

Standardization is not the answer. Instead, postsecondary institutions across the nation should focus on securing and retaining credentialed faculty members, who should be required to teach a certain number of undergraduate courses to ensure that undergraduate education is not forgotten in the midst of research and graduate instruction. In addition, courses such as the History of Comic Book Art, Whitewater Skills, Golf Course Management, and Circus Stunts, which serve no real educational value, should be eliminated and a strong core of academic requirements for graduation should be developed and instituted instead. Finally, each institution should develop its own mission statement and work on fulfilling it. Colleges and universities are created to serve different purposes and should be judged according to their progress towards meeting the goals that they believe they were created to achieve.   

Quick action must be taken if America hopes to salvage its higher education system. However, why should the government direct it when the actual postsecondary institutions can and probably would do it better? After all, as Ronald Reagan once said, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’”