Students who thought their standardized testing careers ended with the SAT may be in for a rude awakening.
The Commission on the Future of Higher Education -- led by Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings -- is considering standardized testing for colleges and universities.
The commission has not yet come out with a specific proposal, however.
Commission members said they believe such tests would hold schools more accountable for education, provide more information for potential students and demonstrate the returns for tuition and federal funding, according to a public Jan. 24 memo from committee chairman Charles Miller to the task force's other members.
"There is gathering momentum for measuring through testing what students learn or what skills they acquire in college beyond a traditional certificate or degree," he wrote, adding that tests seem to be becoming more effective in measuring how students are learning.
However, National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities spokesman Tony Pals called uniform testing "a very dangerous idea" with many unforeseen consequences.
It may, for instance, pose a threat to institutional and curricular diversity between schools and programs "that has made American higher education the best in the world," Pals said. He added that testing could necessitate a standard curriculum across higher education.
However, Graduate School of Education professor Rebecca Maynard said such testing would not likely cause substantial curricular changes. Rather, she said, one of its greatest drawbacks may simply be "the nuisance value of having to take the test."
Wharton junior Sissi Chen said that standardized tests could distract students from coursework and entrance exams for graduate school.
Engineering sophomore Jeremy Rosenman agreed that tests might "distract students from what they're doing in their classrooms and make them think about 'Where am I compared to everyone else [taking] the standardized test?'"
In response to the commission's suggestion that testing could inform potential students and their families about the quality of a school, Pals said accreditation agencies and higher-education guides and Web sites already provide more information than standardized tests would.
Pals added that career-specific standardized testing in colleges and universities would defy the point of a college education.
"What higher education does is to provide those graduates with the skills that they will need over their lifetime in order to pick up new skills quickly and to be able to think critically and to be able to communicate," he said.
But Maynard said that while standardized testing may seem irrelevant at a competitive school like Penn, it would hold community colleges and ineffective schools accountable for preparing students for jobs. She added that students at such schools often did not receive sufficient education in high school.
If community colleges are "not worrying if [students] are employable at their exit, you're just taking money without adding value," Maynard said.
University President Amy Gutmann said that such testing would only establish a "bare minimum of competency" -- not necessarily pushing universities to challenge their students.
"The debate here is really about wanting to be sure that students who graduate college can calculate what 15 percent of a restaurant bill is. It's a least common denominator to higher education, rather than what higher education in this country aspires to be," Gutmann said.
