Posted on 08/14/2020 4:32:47 AM PDT by karpov
As higher education undergoes dramatic changes thanks to the coronavirus, reformers should aim higher than expanding online education.
Now is a propitious time to end the dominance of accreditation agencies in higher ed and create a GED-like equivalency exam for a college degree.
Many students want a traditional college life: living on campus for four years, attending classes, and socializing. But for the majority of students, what matters most is learning and getting a credential for a good job or ready for graduate education. These students genuinely desire knowledge but don’t always need other aspects of the traditional college experience. What they need is the paper to prove they’ve done the hard work without the debt that two-thirds of graduates currently take on.
For students who do not complete high school, there is the General Educational Development (GED) exam. Passing the GED (or a similar certificate of high school equivalency) equates to earning a high school diploma. We need something similar for a bachelor’s degree.
The first step to creating a bachelor’s equivalency is to co-opt—or make irrelevant—the national Council for Higher Education Accreditation and regional accrediting agencies such as the Higher Learning Commission.
Those agencies judge whether a college, to which parents pay a king’s ransom to educate their children, is legitimate. Though accreditors will approve the occasional online program, it must be connected to or owned by traditional colleges, which charge correspondingly high tuition. Why? Because the people who judge the legitimacy of educational programs are themselves from other academic institutions. The justification is that only academic experts should judge academic institutions, but the effect is to keep non-traditional competitors outside the moat. The accreditors are insiders guarding the gates to higher education. They are part of a trust or a cartel.
(Excerpt) Read more at jamesgmartin.center ...
It’s called an IQ test.
But you can’t.
Because Racism.
It’s called CLEP exams. Strapped with long hours of military duty in my youth I CLEPPED my AA, with the exception of an elective or two.
Excellent point. A college “education” provides credentials. Most liberal arts courses indoctrinate students, while avoiding teaching critical thinking.
Same. CLEPed almost my entire AA program. While others got whores in Frankfurt, I hung out at the Army Education Centers near Frankfurt (3AD territory). Got g Th he rest through UMUC
The dirty secret is how many taxpayer-funded students acquire four-year degrees with average 8th grade or lower skills.
If you were granting modern college equivalency degrees, you could basically just give them to our top quarter of students in junior high—and top 5-10% of students in elementary school.
The high schools in my county also offer trade schools during High School, and I know several young students who over the course of their high school education were able to get an AA during the summer month programs so when they graduated they went right into upper level classes.
At one time Newport News shipyards touted the world’s largest trade school which works in conjunction with local community colleges to round out to the formal educational credits.
There is a whole set of CLEP tests for that. You can practically graduate with the credits you can earn. Originally designed for smart veterans with lots of knowledge but spent time defending the American way of life instead of living the care free life of a student.
So did I. College degrees today are worthless.
We don’t need all the extra classes to get to 140 college hours. You end up with things like Art Appreciation, etc, just to keep failing departments and teachers in school while generating money. You should be able to get the requirements for Engineering, Computer IT, Business In 60 hours or less. You shouldn’t have to have 12 hours of History , 12 hours of Pol Sci, etc.
If COVID has done one good thing, it’s the beginning of the destruction of methods of learning for this country. K-12 will never be same, now that parents have been forced to consider if there are better alternatives to the day cares called schools where they send their children. Likewise, standardized testing is going to be blown up, since at least two academic years are going to be “non-standard.” Homeschooling, pod learning, and virtual learning will take over. Finally, people will realize that what can be done virtually at the high school level can also be done with the busywork of college (I’ve been there).
The side effect of all this is that those with drive will go much farther than they would have otherwise because those without motivation will sink lower than ever before. It will open the field wider for the go-getters. It will be interesting to see how this all plays out.
My bet is that companies will begin to offer extended training, sort of like boot camp for the military, where they’ll train you if you commit to X years of service with them. This way the person gets training for free, the company gets someone with the skills they need, and the colleges are left with jack.
Whatever happened to the idea of just buying college degrees online? With colleges nowadays, the educations offered are not distinguishable from simple H.S. educations. Most of what’s offered is a piece of paper that says you attended for 4 years and made it to the end.
The biggest reason that liberals want college ‘educated’ people, is so they can be indoctrinated in socialism/communism, if they haven’t been during their k-12 years.
To succeed in college you need to learn only how to succeed in college.
No real education needed.
I consider my art appreciation class as one of the more valuable classes that I took in college. I enjoyed history, French, German and Geography But I think the sociology and psychology classes were completely worthless.
So true. When I’m hiring an engineer, I want someone technically knowledgeable with the ability to apply that knowledge. I don’t care if they know what a sonnet is or about about some unique cultural aspect of Swaziland.
CLEP your way though community college in three days...
You used to actually have to do real college-level work and learn a fair amount.
Now you don’t even need to learn how to succeed in colleges—they pretty much make sure you can’t fail.
How bout a GED for common sense? Very few young kids could pass that these days.
The College Level Examination Program is a group of standardized tests created and administered by the College Board. These tests assess college-level knowledge in thirty-six subject areas and provide a mechanism for earning college credits without taking college courses.
Go to youtube to watch videos on how to do anything : )
It is all free and you will learn more then in most courses in a school room.
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