Are US students being "overtested" ?

International Students
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<p>I guess one of the most controversial issues is that, despite differences in funding and course offerings between school districts, the American High School system is still based, at least in theory, on a “one-size-fit-all” educational model. In other words, students may take different classes , at different levels of depth/difficulty in different schools, but ultimately they are all supposed to go through the same public High School system for the same number of years (grades 1-12) and receive the same diploma when they graduate. The extreme opposite to the US system would be something like what is done in Germany where, at a fairly young age (10 or 11 years-old), kids are basically segregated into academic-track schools (leading to the Abitur certificate and university studies) or vocational-track schools leading either to non-academic trade apprenticeships or direct entry into the job market at a younger age. </p>

<p>The debate between comprehensive vs. segregated schools is a tough one and I must admit I don’t have a clear opinion about it. The German system for example was, I guess, well-suited for the old industrial societies of the 19th and 20th centuries where there was a clear separation between manual and intellectual labor and a somewhat rigid class structure with little social mobility. I have doubts though if that same kind of model would be appropriate for modern post-industrial, information-based economies with a far more flexible social structure. It is also highly questionable, particularly in the American tradition, that a kid as young as 10 should be destined, based essentially on his/her family background, to become either a blue-collar worker or a college-educated professional. On the other hand, it is true that, as you said, the US system does waste resources on a number of kids who have little interest in a traditional academic-oriented education but are nonetheless mixed together with college-bound classmates. </p>

<p>Perhaps the English model offers a good compromise between the two extremes described above. Basically the idea is to make all kids go through the same comprehensive school system up to, let’s say, age 16 (GCSE level in England) and graduate with the same “lower” school certificate/diploma. Past that point, students would have the option to enter the job market directly, go to a vocational school to learn a trade, or take two additional years (up to age 18) of more advanced classes assessed by standardized national/state exams leading to a “higher” school leaving certificate (like A-levels in England) that would allow them to apply for college admission.</p>

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<p>bruno123: You’re overlooking the fact that some kids don’t WANT to go to school. My point is, why bother wasting money on their education if they aren’t taking it seriously? As a future taxpayer, I’m outraged that I have to spend money on extra teachers/supplies so some druggie can be forced to come to school and do nothing. It’s a waste of time, effort, and money. Why even bother putting these kids in ANY school in a segregated system? Just let them waste away their own life if they choose to do so, but don’t waste my money on them.</p>

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<p>Mikesown,</p>

<p>Are you against the LACs? I’m just asking because I’m seeing your comments as implicitly implying that. You’re right about being pragmatic and all, but the trend is shifting. Investment bankers, for instance, like to see students trained in many disciplines, simply because it just shows they can handle a wide range of subjects and have the flexibility and presence of mind to demonstrate linkages between subject matter. </p>

<p>Now don’t get me wrong. I agree with you 100 percent about the advantage of saving money and time by focusing on a pre-professional program, as long as you’re sure you want it. But surely taking a few general education classes in the first year go a long way in helping an undecided but otherwise motivated student decide what his ambition in life is. Over in countries with the much touted preprofessional slant, many students end up taking something they think is pragmatic and end up being miserable and changing their majors like 1 or 2 years into their college life. Besides, it’s fun being exposed to different subjects. If you don’t like it, then go and enroll in a school that doesn’t require “core” requirements. There’s plenty of very high quality ones like these around.</p>

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<p>Just to add to my previous post, I hope you don’t see this as a challenge, but more of my attempt to understand where you are coming from. </p>

<p>Merely reading a book on literature or history or some other subject I take a fancy in does not provide the kind of intellectual stimulation or instruction that you get when you bring the self same book to class and discuss with 10 other people together with the professor. You see the material differently. When your ideas are challenged and you have to defend them or modify them in the light of evidence for or against, that’s where you truly start to understand and appreciate the subject.</p>

<p>Perhaps what I glean from your comments is that you believe in laissez faire - fine if you want to go study extra things go ahead but you have to pay for it, not me (as a taxpayer) - because I’m sick of paying high taxes for schools with core requirements that end up adding extra years to studies and thus jacking up school costs and me having to shoulder this burden.</p>

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<p>D.T.: Yep, I’m a libertarian :). I think that if you want to take a course, you should pay for it, no more and no less than what everyone else gets. The goal of a school (in my opinion), again, is to educate a person for a professional or academic career in a specific focused field. You should pay x dollars for a degree, and that degree should ONLY represent your mastery in a specific major. </p>

<p>You can extend the taxpayer thought to include yourself as a college student. Consider the taxes to be the tuition which you pay to go to school. It’s unfair to the other students in the school/university to take more courses, and pay the same amount. It means higher costs to the university, which is distributed amongst all of the students. Thus, a student who decides that he wants to take just enough classes to graduate(say 5 per semester), pays the same amount as a kid who decides to load up and take 7. Over the course of 8 semesters, the kid who loads up has taken 16! additional classes. Now think about that in terms of money. Per class, you figure the kid is costing maybe $300 let’s say. Then, the kid is costing almost $5000 and putting the burden on the kid who only wants to take the five classes per year to graduate. At present, colleges take an ‘All-you-can-eat’ perspective to education: you pay for a semester and you get to take as many classes as you can fit into your schedule. A much better idea would be to charge per credit universally and say “Ok, a degree costs $150,000 for all of the credits you’ll need” instead of “Pay $50,000 a year, no matter how many classes you decide to take.” It’s just not fair, especially when you’re dealing what that kind of money which families have to scrounge together and students have to take out loans for.</p>

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<p>Since when is an academic program focusing only on one subject a “pre-professional program”? Would you consider an Oxford history graduate to have taken a “pre-professional program”? Ridiculous.</p>

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<p>mikesown, once you look outside the very top colleges and universities you will notice that most colleges charge tuition based on the number of credits you are attempting. If the American general education approach bothers you that much, there are ways to avoid it; just gather enough AP credits or consider studying abroad.</p>

<p>European universities won’t let you take any course outside your field of study for credit at all; however, the average German high school graduate has taken higher courses than the average American high school graduate (imagine proficiency in two foreign languages, calc, statistics, vector geometry, organic chemistry… being high school graduation requirements). British A level students graduate with less breadth but more depth than German students. At the point of high school graduation, the typical American student (not talking about students with 6+ APs here) seems to be behind academically in a global comparison but makes up for that by taking classes outside his major in college.</p>

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<p>We get tested more because we have to know more overall.</p>

<p>A better University system is what results</p>

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<p>Maybe some of the US Math majors on this forum should attempt a few problems from the examinations for [Part</a> II]( <a href=“http://www.maths.cam.ac.uk/teaching/pastpapers/2006/Part_2/index.html]Part”>http://www.maths.cam.ac.uk/teaching/pastpapers/2006/Part_2/index.html) of the legendary Cambridge [Mathematical Tripos<a href=“note:%20those%20are%20the%20final%20exams%20for%20the%20bachelor’s%20degree%20in%20Math%20at%20Cambridge”>/url</a>.</p>

<p>Once you have had enough fun with the Part II exams, you might want to move then to the more challenging [url=<a href=“http://www.maths.cam.ac.uk/teaching/pastpapers/2006/Part_3/index.html”>http://www.maths.cam.ac.uk/teaching/pastpapers/2006/Part_3/index.html&lt;/a&gt;] Part III](<a href=“Undergraduate Mathematics: Course Information | Undergraduate Mathematics”>http://www.maths.cam.ac.uk/undergrad/course/&lt;/a&gt;) papers, which would be the standard examinations for the equivalent to a master’s degree in Math at Cambridge.</p>

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<p>uman, sorry if you misunderstood. </p>

<p>What I referred to as “preprofessional” was mikesown’s mention of computing science degrees and the like. I did not mean disciplines like history, english or philosophy. Anyway, I was talking about the joys of taking multiple disciplines, not on taking non-preprofessional programs. Hope that clarified.</p>

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<p>Maybe the theoretically ideal solution would be to have both systems implemented at once. Students would have to choose between comprehensive end-of-year exams and more frequent, less comprehensive exams. The reason I think it’s ideal is because different students have different study habits. Some do best when they are regularly kept under pressure and forced to study, so to speak. Others might prefer more freedom over the course of the year and may not mind the cramming that inevitably comes with infrequent exams.</p>

<p>Whether such a system would be practicable is another matter of course.</p>

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<p>I agree, NBZ. I just think constant testing invokes a sense of exhibition over a sense of learning.</p>

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<p>The American high school system is quite terrible although luckily I was at a good high school that offered lots of honors and AP courses, which I took. Putting students into different track schools could work despite the complaining of the “politically correct” who say it makes people feel bad who are in lower schools. But because of how american education works i do not know when people would split into different tracks and how it would be decided. Contrasted with my school, which has the honors/AP track, standard track, and lower track, which allows students to mix and match depending on what they are best at such as math/science or humanities. </p>

<p>As for “core” courses in colleges, I really do not like that. What first comes to mind is Columbia University which has mandatory courses like “Western Civilization” and “Contemporary Music and Arts” or something along those lines. Distribution requirements in and of themselves arent as bad, because they allow you to choose course you want while still giving a broad education. I agree with whoever back there said that many employers, at least in America, like graduates who have taken things outside their majors to be able to make connections btwn different subjects. Plus, I feel like a more humanitarian course would help a science major who may not have the best writing skills and other things along those lines.<br>
I am going to a small liberal arts school with no requirements at all besides a major and a freshman seminar, so I am free to do what I want. I do not know exactly what I want to major in, but it will probably be some natural science, as to which one I am not sure yet. I will be focusing on the math/science side when it comes to my studies despite my advisors who may say, I should be more well rounded, but who cares. Ill probably take a few courses in humanities, but that is not what I am going to do with my life, so who cares.<br>
Also, as for cost at my school, its just one cost, not based on hours or credits. Something that has been annoying me at a lot of these small liberal arts schools is they only need u to take 4 courses per semester, and some call having 5 courses, “overloaded.” it’s such BS. I will only take 4 in my first semester because I will want to adjust to college work but also they would not let me take 5 either, but after that, ill probabyl take 5 almost every semester because, A) I want to be able to take as many classes relating to my major and other classes, and B) if college costs the same either way, I might as well make the most of it.
…i think that’s it for now.</p>

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<p>andyman344, we do have a system of different track schools in Germany but I don’t like it at all. One reason being that students end up in the track that matches their weakest area and another one that it’s quite easy to be downgraded when one’s performance drops (e.g. when one suffers depression or one’s mother dies or…) but it’s virtually impossible to move up again.</p>

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<p>It’s better to know your academic status early on than to discover that you are failing at the end of the semester in your third year in college. I think assessment every end of the semester is better than that of the pre-graduation term assessment. In that way, you can still adjust and work harder on your failing subjects. Not to mention weekly problem sets/homework assignments, lab assignments, <a href=“http://www.super-science-fair-projects.com”>science fair projects</a>, it looks like an over test to students but the chances to pass their degree is quite big.</p>

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<p>Bruno.</p>

<p>You could just as easily say that the average British math student would not be able to pass the Oxford examinations. I could also reply that it is likely that Caltech or MIT students could pass the examination at the same rate as Oxford students. These are theoretical comparisons of the top universities in the UK and the US and are not representative of either educational system.</p>

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<p>I wanted to say that APs in the US system aren’t even equivalents of courses taken at the “grade level” in european countries. Then, the US don’t emphasize written skills (so much of multiple choice questions) in contrast to european education. In France, I have NEVER answered a True/false or multiple choice question during 12 years of schooling. In the US, I may have taken 100 multiple choice tests.</p>

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<p>Well, I find myself disagreeing with so much of what Mikesown says that I feel I need to write. This post jumps around a bit, but there is so much to disagree with.</p>

<p>I have experience with both the UK and the US higher education system, and I can comprehensively say that I do not think that either is necessarily better. They are different, and different students will prosper in each.</p>

<p>The UK system, along with most in Europe, requires you to know exactly what you want to do with your studies, as that is all that you will study. There are some students who have a calling, who have known for some time what they want to do. This system is great for them. They are highly focused and can go deeper into their chosen field than students at almost any American university.</p>

<p>That’s great if you know what you want to do, but most 18 year olds don’t. Nobody decides to major in Nuclear Engineering because of their great high school Nuke E department. The same holds true for Archaeology, Philosophy, and many, many other fields. The American system allows, at a significant cost, the opportunity to explore, and to see if you do find a calling in an unexpected place.</p>

<p>That’s good and bad. It’s particularly bad if the only purpose of university education was to get you a job. Universities are not particularly good at job preparation, most of them do not see that as their function. For example, Mikesown plans to study Computer Science. This is a fascinating field, but of little or no relevance to the computer industry. Its a science. (I write this as a moderately senior manager in the IT industry who studied Computer Science) </p>

<p>Some years back, MIT surveyed some of their alumni about the MIT curriculum to try to ensure that they were providing what the alumni needed. Being MIT, the results are overwhelmingly skewed to Science and Engineering majors, but I think that the results are broadly applicable:
Those recent alumni, say those 5 years out or less, complained that the curriculum should include more hot topics of industry interest so that students could more easily find good jobs.
Those alumni who were out some 20 years or so argued that the curriculum should include more fundamental principles, so that as their chosen fields changed and evolved over the years, it would be easier to change along with them.
Those alumni who were 50 years out and approaching or into retirement wished that they had been exposed to more philosophy.</p>

<p>No university sells an education. That is a myth. What a university sells is the opportunity to get an education. The quality of the education received is largely up to the students. I learned a heck of a lot at university, including a whole bunch of stuff that I use in my professional life every day. Some of it I even learned in classes. </p>

<p>I don’t think that students taking four classes are subsidizing those taking eight. Most of the costs involved are fixed. The professors salaries remain the same regardless of the number of students in the class, the housing costs (if any) are fixed regardless of the number of classes taken. And I think it a myth that 8 classes are of necessity “better” than 4.</p>

<p>Finally, the idea that for a vast minority, education is wasted and should be withdrawn. In almost every society, crimes committed by children are penalised differently than those committed by adults. The developing brain makes mistakes, that they (often) grow out of. Temper tantrums are common in two year olds. A large number of children go through a brief sadistic phase in early childhood. A bunch of early teenagers don’t like school and turn off during it. There are costs to this. But if you think that witholding the “wasted” education is the answer then you really don’t understand the question.</p>

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<p>Sound psychological studies have proven that frequent testing actually improves retention in students. It’s called “elaborative rehearsal”.</p>

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<p>Mikalye:
A few thoughts:</p>

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<li><p>Yes, I completely agree that the US system is geared to people who don’t know what they want to study while the European system is geared to people who know exactly what they want to study. However, if you’re paying that kind of money($100,000-$200,000), wouldn’t it serve you well to read, say, 5 or so books on a major you’re considering? Sure, no high school will have a nuclear engineering department, but students can (and should, in my opinion) read books on the topic to learn what fascinates them. A student who is not informed about possible majors is just dumb, as he/she is just wasting credits taking classes which he/she may not be interested in, whereas if the student came in with a concrete idea of what he/she wanted to study, the student could go deeper into the curriculum(including graduate courses) in the same time frame. Going to college without knowing what you want to major in is like buying a car without test driving it. You sample the car- you see what you like about it, read reviews on it, and find other cars, and only when you know exactly what you want in the car do you purchase it. No one (I hope) goes into a car dealership saying “I’ll take whatever you have,” without looking up some basic information on the car and studying the matter to see if the like the car and the price.</p></li>
<li><p>I do not disagree with the notion that schools don’t consider themselves job prepatory organizations, but the reality is that they are. If you don’t go to college at all, your options are very limited, basically limiting you to flipping burgers at McDonalds. But, if you go to college, suddenly you are eligible to apply for most any job you want. I’m not denying that there are other aspects to college- there certainly are(meeting new people, living on your own for the first time, etc.), but the primary reason MOST people go to college is so that they can get a (reasonably) well paying job that doesn’t involve flipping burgers. </p></li>
<li><p>You make a good point about foundation. However, you are confusing several things. Consider a student who’s interested in Computer Science. Now, foundations for him would likely entail taking programming theory classes, writing compilers, operating systems etc(all very general topics). As you define them, job preparation courses would be something like “Designing Databases in MySQL” (a very specific thing). I’m not arguing against either. In fact, I believe the foundations to be essential and most important to an education. Things that I am arguing against include required History and English classes. I’m not saying that a school shouldn’t have a writing requirement, but if you’re becoming an engineering major, you don’t need to write eloquently; as long as you are able to communicate your ideas effectively and fully, you are well enough prepared for your job. Foundations should be designed to prepare you for your field in the long term, while the job preparation classes should be designed to get you a job right out of college.</p></li>
<li><p>Also, for these ‘misfortunate’ kids, I’m not saying keep them out of school forever. I’m saying that the school needs to send a message like “Clean up your act, and come back when you have.” If a kid is going through a hard time and doesn’t care about school- fine, but don’t waste our tax dollars forcing him to sit at a desk when he’s not learning anything. Let him learn for himself why he needs to go to school and do well. Then, let him/her back in on the provision that the student does all of his/her homework and studies for tests etc.</p></li>
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