Editorial: Standardized tests a poor means of gauging colleges’ quality

Unless they plan to become lawyers, most students believe the SAT or ACT is the last… Unless they plan to become lawyers, most students believe the SAT or ACT is the last standardized exam they’ll have to endure. But if certain proposals gain traction, even freshmen and sophomores might soon find themselves puzzling out critical reasoning questions.

The New Leadership Alliance, an education advocacy group, recently called on colleges to systematically “gather evidence of student learning” and publicize the results. Among other things, this could entail implementing an SAT-like exam designed to assess how much undergraduates learn between the beginning of their enrollment and the end.

Although administering standardized tests at the university level might strike some as impractical, the alliance is hardly the first organization to propose such measures. In 2006, a report by the Department of Education stressed that education should be “measured by institutions on a ‘value added’ basis that takes into account students’ academic baseline.”

Indeed, these suggestions come at a time when many people are questioning the “real” value of a bachelor’s degree, and when a few prominent academics — including Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa, authors of the higher-education exposé “Academically Adrift” — have advocated radical revisions to college curriculums. It’s unsurprising, then, that the idea of “holding institutions accountable” now enjoys widespread support.

Although we agree that recent graduates often seem inadequately prepared for the workforce, we’re not convinced that a standardized test will solve anything. It would be difficult, if not outright impossible, to accurately gauge someone’s intellectual development over a four-year period. Even if the exam focused on general skills such as critical thinking and problem solving, it couldn’t account for variations in abilities and interests.

Furthermore, the notion that colleges impart an easily quantifiable “value” seems reductive at best. Students might not retain everything they learn in their gen ed classes — they might not even become better thinkers — but few would argue that attending a four-year institution didn’t broaden their perspective in some capacity. Becoming president of a club might not boost your test scores, but it will make you a better citizen.

If universities are really interested in improving their curriculum, they should assign more attention to developing effective teaching strategies. And if parents are genuinely concerned about how much their children have improved since high school, they can always encourage them to take that graduate-level equivalent to the SAT, the GRE.

With luck, the standardized exam fervor that’s sweeping the rest of the country won’t engulf academia. Whether or not universities help cultivate a student’s intellect, a simple series of multiple choice questions and essays won’t yield a reliable assessment of progress.