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July 7, 2008
Dumbing Down America’s Colleges
The process that began in the 1960s to transform America's elementary, middle and high schools into places where students could literally graduate without being able to read their diploma, where the teaching ofmathematics was reduced to mush without rules, and where it was more important for students to feel really good about themselves than having to measure up scholastically with millions in foreign nations, has now reached the campuses of America's colleges and universities.
In a nation where it now costs thousands of dollars to fire an incompetent teacher, we have the specter of university and college presidents eliminating one of the most respected tools for measuring a prospective student's ability to qualify for admission. The venerable SAT, the gold standard for measuring readiness for college for nearly 80 years, is slowly being eviscerated by colleges and universities.
Wake Forest University, Bates, Bowdoin, and a few other small schools have recently decided to make the SAT optional for students applying for admission. Their argument for getting rid of these tests is that it will fling open the doors to "diversity" among the student body. Wake Forest President Nathan Hatch made the ludicrous claim that jettisoning the SAT would help the school, "move closer to the goals of greater educational quality and opportunity."
Such decisions are less about a selection process intended to serve the best interests of both the student and the school than about marketing intended to put bottoms in classroom seats. It seems the biggest question in college admissions offices today is whether the parents of little Johnny or Jane can afford to pay tuition, even if it includes remedial courses. If the kid has a pulse, he's in!
Disparaging the SATs for helping set high academic standards ignores the fact that more than two million students take the SAT every year and that more than 88% percent of America's colleges require it for admission.
Those that don't require the SAT for admission often use it for course placement and scholarship consideration. The overwhelming majority of colleges use the SAT because it has acquired a well-deserved reputation for its ability to aid the evaluation process.
It is essential to keep in mind that the SAT is a measuring device to help determine which students are best suited for a college-level education. It is rarely, if ever, the sole determining factor; good admissions officers also consider the student's high school GPA, admissions essays, honors courses, and other factors. There are several SATs; the Reasoning Test and the Subject Tests, which measure a student's knowledge in specific areas of study covering everything from physics to languages.
The requirement of SAT Subject Tests will be put to a vote of the University of California's Board of Regents during its July 15th meeting in an effort to eliminate them as a means of determining whether a student is prepared for specific coursework at a higher level.
The stated reason for eliminating the subject tests strains credulity, i.e., that not enough students know they have to take them. So, rather than improving communications with UC applicants, the system's Academic Senate is recommending the regents just do away with these tests altogether.
In reality, the vote has everything to do with Proposition 209, the California Civil Rights Initiative, which pushed for a color-blind admissions process instead of a spurious "diversity" selection system based on race and other non-academic factors. Voters in 51 of the state's 58 counties supported the measure. Does the UC Academic Senate really think it "knows better" than the vast majority of California voters? I think not.
Those who want the UC system to drop subject tests are putting forth the politically correct and totally erroneous claim that the tests are unfair to minorities, but Van Tran, a California legislator of Vietnamese heritage and UC alumnus points out that by eliminating subject tests "the UC system is proposing a move that could diminish opportunities for tens of thousands of UC applicants from minority, immigrant and disadvantaged families."
To the charge that students from minority families cannot afford to take the tests, there are procedures in place to ensure that those without the financial means to pay can take the tests for free. A good student is a good student no matter his family's financial status or where they live. The SATs are a way of measuring that and opening doors that might otherwise be closed to good students who may need financial assistance and whose education would ultimately benefit the nation.
There are suggestions in some academic circles that dropping the SATs will somehow "strengthen" high school curricula and teaching. This too is an utterly bogus notion.The entire education system across the nation is broken.
The goal of public education has morphed from educating youngsters to simply moving students - good, bad and indifferent - through government schools like so much sausage by inflating grades, turning teachers into "facilitators," expecting students to educate each other, and discouraging students who really want to learn by failing to exercise a measure of discipline in the classroom.
There isn't an employer in the nation who will not tell you how increasingly difficult it is to find a new hire, straight out of college, who is prepared to take on real world responsibilities. By removing reliable and fair means of evaluating college applicants and dumbing down America's colleges and universities, the only recourse left to many employers will be to hire foreign graduates.
The best way to prepare for college and the SAT is to work hard in high school and take a well rounded curriculum.Cheating qualified students who have taken the time and effort to prepare for this by devaluing and eliminating the SAT is just wrong.Giving their classroom seat to someone who qualifies primarily on the basis of race or other non-academic factor is just wrong.
© Alan Caruba, July 2008
Family Security Matters Contributing Editor Alan Caruba writes a weekly column posted on the Internet site of The National Anxiety Center. He blogs at Warning Signs.
Reader Comments: Submit Your Comment (1)
I think this website hits the nail straight on the head. We are living in an age which promotes style over substance and discourages learning. Social skills have replaced academics to such an extent now that a student who performs well but is anti-social is treated like a laboratory rat by adults who feel he is abnormal and needs 'help'. The problem with education is not that there is 'too little help'. The problem is that there is way too much. Kids are not given the opportunity to accomplish anything because the assignments provide so little challenge it offers little satisfaction for undoubtedly bright kids. Praise is lumped on them as if it were lumps of sugar into coffee. Being told they are great and special means little if a child does not feel he or she has done anything special. History and math have been 'funned-up' in the schools and assignments have dumbed down to 'games' and 'drawings'. Smart kids and real students want more out of school than this, and are disappointed it feels more like preschool than actual class. A student who has wide interests is not only discouraged but labeled by adults in the faculty office who watch him on the playground, not the classroom, and dictate his future on the jungle-gym, not the math test. Recess has become the instrument of decision teachers and principles use to gauge a student's readiness for the world, not academics. Academics are here merely as a front, as the 'soft-hearts' that have taken over have taken away real learning.
Charles J. Sykes is an inspiration and offers a great critique into this letdown. The biggest crime of all effects the smart kids who really want to learn, but are labeled wrong with problems made up so adults can 'fix them'. But Sykes claims that kids in the school system won't be ready for the 'tough world of work', where bosses will demand results intead of self-esteem postulating.
The work force is being dumbed down, too. Lazy employees now cannot be fired, employers cannot slavedrive workers into effective, efficient employees, and labor jobs often fall on one or two supermen, or superwomen, to carry it out. Excessive effort is even discouraged now, and employees are reprimanded for doing 'too much work'. They must work down their level so as not to make their co-employees 'feel bad about themselves'. How does a smart kid dodge the bullet and find solace in education, a place where he should be at home and should be inspired to learn more, but isn't. Is not the eintention of school to educate and open horizons? Kids want to be educated and want their horizons opened. Does that not seem like the perfect idealistic fit?
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