By Brian Bohl
A Bush administration plan that would force colleges to use standardized tests to measure student aptitude was met with opposition.
The Commission on the Future of Higher Education, appointed in the fall by secretary of education Margaret Spellings, will create a report on the issue in August. Meanwhile, many University students and administrators feel a single, SAT-like test would not improve accountability or the quality of education.
“There is an over-testing problem in the country,” said University professor Maureen Milltta. “To think that we would extend it to higher education is ludicrous.”
Liora Schmelkin, the University’s vice provost for academic affairs, said Bush’s proposed plan was flawed because it is a “one-size-fits-all” approach to testing.
“That won’t work,” Schmelkin said. “At the college level, not like the K-12 level, you have people in all different majors and different disciplines. So to think that one standardized test will serve everybody is not the solution.”
Should the commission suggest a testing program, the University could potentially feel pressure from the government even though it is a private college.
Charles Miller, the former business executive who is chairman of the commission, told The New York Times earlier this month that federal grants and financial aid could be decreased or withheld entirely to ensure compliance.
“What we call public universities are under the most pressure,” Miller said. “How public are some of the private universities? They depend a lot on public funding, too.”
Many students echoed the sentiments of Schmelkin, saying that mandated tests would stifle creativity in the classroom and potentially discourage professors from teaching to their strengths.
“Mandating federal standardized testing would restrict the uniqueness of each institution and also constrain professors in their ability to direct curriculum,” Drew Bennett, a sophomore political science major, said. “The ability of higher education to teach specialized skills is one of the many great assets of the United States economy, and it would only serve as counter-productive and unnecessary government interference.”
Though the University does not plan to institute one single test to all students, there are certain majors that require students to take an exam before they can graduate.
The psychology and political science departments are two of the fields that require majors to take a comprehensive exam, according to Schmelkin. Law school and other graduate programs also have tests that are weighed heavily during the admissions process.
“Standardized testing is probably not something most universities look at as solutions,” she said. “But we really [feel] that each discipline needs to develop their own sense of outcomes assessment and how they measure how much their graduates have learned. That’s a different way of looking at it.”