Tagged: standardized tests

The Journey vs. the Map

November 1, 2015
Filed under Higher Education, Humanities, Religious Studies, Spirituality, Teaching, The Liberal Arts, Theology

Engaging Diversity in the Humanities Classroom

What does it mean to truly know something? And how can we humanities educators help our undergraduate students grow in their knowledge of themselves, others, and life? Many of us face classrooms embodying a wide range of backgrounds. This is true both in terms of students’ demographics and in terms of their levels of educational preparation. In some fields, the latter might be a liability, but in ours it is a potential asset, due to the nature of knowledge and the power of diversity. Our challenge is to harness that potential.

Read More »

Perverse Incentives

February 15, 2015
Filed under Higher Education, Humanities, Teaching, The Liberal Arts

What College Rankings Actually Do

American colleges and universities rise and fall based on their rising and falling in a handful of rankings. This is true to a significant extent in terms of their finances, reputations, and general welfare. Up and up or down and down, as goes its rank, so goes the university. U.S. News and World Report’s is the most influential. Forbes, The Princeton Review, and others offer alternatives with slightly different methodologies and surprisingly similar results. All purport to demonstrate which colleges and universities have the best academic programs. All of them fail to do so. By virtue of measuring many things unrelated to quality of education, they incentivize the diverting of resources away from educating students.

The established rankings show institutional wealth, both directly and indirectly. They also show an institution’s popularity, both among prospective students, enrolled students, and faculty at peer institutions. Many also emphasize how well their incoming students performed in high school, shown by grades and standardized test scores. The rankings show little else. But by providing the illusion of demonstrating educational quality, the rankings incentivize many things but not support for the actual quality of education at any given institution.

Read More »

How the GMAT May Be Wrecking America

June 10, 2012
Filed under Higher Education

I do not know whether or to what extent the following issues may contribute to the divided state of America, or whether these may be symptomatic of larger problems. A source close to me is applying to business schools. She encountered a series of strategy recommendations for raising her score on the GMAT on. The recommendations of the test preparation service include:

  • In your essay, fabricate factual information to support your case. The test graders will not fact-check. You will score more points by being persuasive and writing well, with no attention to your accuracy.
  • In your essay you must support either a stated position or its opposite. You may not opt for a nuanced compromise position.
  • For your argument analysis, you may always assert that the premises of the argument are not valid. This may be the easiest way for you to make a superior counter-argument and, thus, score points.

To argue without any basis in fact, without compromise, and without considering the validity of one’s opponents – to the extent that this mentality is representative either of our country’s business education or of broader cultural currents, we are in serious trouble. Without the pursuit of truth, without the pursuit of reconciliation, and without considering that the opposition may have some valid claims (notably that some of their premises are correct, if not their ideas about what to do in light of those premises) – without these traits, we have only nay-saying and no hope of forward progress as a society.