This sort of standardised/independent testing would have a much more radical effect than the professor-teacher relationship. From my experience in the UK, plenty of people could get a decent grade at various humanities subjects just by doing a couple of weeks of ‘revising’ the subjects raised in exams and making sure they understood how it was graded. With university increasingly expensive (in the UK fees were introduced about 20 years ago, rose to £3k a year 10 years ago and rose to up to £9k a year a couple of years ago), it would be very interesting to see the effect of someone being able to get a degree in English by demonstrating their ability rather than having to pay the time/money cost of 3 years of studying.
I’m not sure the results would be overall good: you’d get more hothousing and less depth of knowledge etc. etc. But I think it would be quite meritocratic both for first-time students and for people in work who’d like to respecialise in something needing a new degree but find the costs of doing the course prohibitive.
It would also expose a huge difference between degrees that just require a library and a computer, and degrees that require access to labs of various kinds.
This sort of standardised/independent testing would have a much more radical effect than the professor-teacher relationship. From my experience in the UK, plenty of people could get a decent grade at various humanities subjects just by doing a couple of weeks of ‘revising’ the subjects raised in exams and making sure they understood how it was graded.
True. Good point. I remember I did that myself once in high school. I and a few other pupils were dissatisfied with our religions teacher so we had a written and an oral exam with a teacher in another school instead of going to her classes. It worked very well and it seems to me I remember at least as much of that material (that I studied for those exams) as the material that I studied in my other classes.
I’m not sure the results would be overall good: you’d get more hothousing and less depth of knowledge etc. etc. But I think it would be quite meritocratic both for first-time students and for people in work who’d like to respecialise in something needing a new degree but find the costs of doing the course prohibitive.
Its hard to predict what would happen. But by and large I agree with Villiam’s point that if the standardized tests are testing the wrong things, not giving enough depth of knowledge, then the primary solution should be to change the tests rather than to give up the whole idea of standardized testing.
The present system seems to me to be terribly cost-inefficient. The system I’m sketching need not be flawless in order to beat the present system, and we don″t need anything better than that to have a reason to start reforming.
This sort of standardised/independent testing would have a much more radical effect than the professor-teacher relationship. From my experience in the UK, plenty of people could get a decent grade at various humanities subjects just by doing a couple of weeks of ‘revising’ the subjects raised in exams and making sure they understood how it was graded. With university increasingly expensive (in the UK fees were introduced about 20 years ago, rose to £3k a year 10 years ago and rose to up to £9k a year a couple of years ago), it would be very interesting to see the effect of someone being able to get a degree in English by demonstrating their ability rather than having to pay the time/money cost of 3 years of studying.
I’m not sure the results would be overall good: you’d get more hothousing and less depth of knowledge etc. etc. But I think it would be quite meritocratic both for first-time students and for people in work who’d like to respecialise in something needing a new degree but find the costs of doing the course prohibitive.
It would also expose a huge difference between degrees that just require a library and a computer, and degrees that require access to labs of various kinds.
True. Good point. I remember I did that myself once in high school. I and a few other pupils were dissatisfied with our religions teacher so we had a written and an oral exam with a teacher in another school instead of going to her classes. It worked very well and it seems to me I remember at least as much of that material (that I studied for those exams) as the material that I studied in my other classes.
Its hard to predict what would happen. But by and large I agree with Villiam’s point that if the standardized tests are testing the wrong things, not giving enough depth of knowledge, then the primary solution should be to change the tests rather than to give up the whole idea of standardized testing.
The present system seems to me to be terribly cost-inefficient. The system I’m sketching need not be flawless in order to beat the present system, and we don″t need anything better than that to have a reason to start reforming.