Weekend August  14 2021

A letter to the editor in the weekend WSJ today advises of an interesting trend in Vermont. One does not have ot attend law school to take the bar exam.

One can study with a practicing attorney by 'reading the law.'  Recall this is how Abe Lincoln studied for his Bar Exam. Then one can sit for the Bar Exam without the cost of law school.  No doubt the existence of on line Bar Review material makes this much easier.

This is the same scenario that existed when I took the CPA exam in  1975. One needed 21 hours of college accounting but not the degree to take the CPA exam.

Recall that the entire undergrad accounting curriculum is now free on the internet via Khan Academy Edspira, Professor Farhat, and Accounting Coach.

The question was asked how to keep up with this, and so I have added a new category to my ProfessorElam weblog, Trends in Higher Education. One can click in the left column to access all those articles only.

John Naisbitt pioneered the idea of Megatrends. He reasoned that the size of newspapers does not change much. But the content does. He tracked his original ten megatrends by surveying newspaper content over time.

My interest in social mood driving social change is much the same. What is trending in terms of social behavior?

https://professorelam.typepad.com/my_weblog/

weekend August  14 2021

National Exit Exam

.AND HEADING FOR A COLLEGE EXIT EXAM

Should students pass a standardized test to graduate? Some think it would help employers assess the value of a degree By Douglas Belkin

How can you tell if a university graduate can think clearly, communicate precisely and solve problems effectively? For years, confidence in higher education has been declining, along with total enrollments. Transcripts and diplomas don’t carry much weight for many employers, as grade inflation has reduced the worth of a cumulative grade point average. Employers can’t be sure that students have gained critical thinking skills over the course of a degree. At the same time, millions of jobs requiring a four-year degree can be done without that level of education, some corporate leaders say. Ohio University economist and professor Richard K. Vedder has wrestled with this dilemma and believes the future of higher education will include a college exit examination that would shine a light onto what graduates know—and what they don’t.

“It would tell prospective employers a lot about what a student has really learned while they were in school,” he says.

Prof. Vedder, the founding director of the Center for College Affordability and Productivity in Washington, D.C., says he came up with the idea around 2004 as he was searching for a way to introduce more transparency and accountability into higher education. He likens the idea to licensing examinations in fields as far-flung as dentistry and plumbing.

The 3½-hour test would measure critical reasoning and writing skills by asking students to analyze information from a variety of sources and write a persuasive essay to build a case. That would be followed by a two-hour, 100-question multiple choice test.

The exam would be certified by a third party. Graduates could list scores on their résumés. Prof. Vedder has even picked out a name: The National Collegiate Exit Examination (NCEE).

The test would benefit high-school students who are trying to compare the quality of education at different schools as well as the schools themselves, which would be able to illustrate how they stack up against their peers, Prof. Vedder says.

“Imagine if the kids at some small, out of the way school scored better than the students at Harvard or Yale,” he says.

Over the years, Mr. Vedder has spoken with lawmakers and business leaders about the idea while making the case that higher education needs to be more accountable and transparent. He says the time may finally be at hand for its adoption though he says he doesn’t believe most schools will embrace it unless a critical mass of employers demand it.

The exam could be particularly useful for employers hiring recent college graduates with little work history. Cheryl A. Oldham, vice president of education policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, says employers rely on college degrees to sort applicants, in part because they are available. They are also a fairly blunt instrument, and hiring managers are anxious for any additional data that would shed light on what a student knows and is capable of doing.

After speaking with Prof. Vedder, the Chamber expanded the idea by putting together a proposal for an employer quality assurance system to be developed by industry so employers would have a better sense of what students knew when they graduated.

“Then you would have this sort of seal of approval that you’ve met with what the employer community needs,” she says. “I think that could be revolutionary in terms of just providing another way to look at education and training.”

The Chamber has not had the time or staff to pursue the ideas laid out in the proposal with employers or other stakeholders, Ms. Oldham says.

Since then, frustration with higher education has only grown as student debt accumulates, the skills gap widens and college tuition continues to rise.

“Consumer frustration could push us more and more toward” standards of some kind, says Ms. Oldham. “You’re going to have the more innovative institutions saying, ‘Yeah I care what the employer community thinks.’” Much like a GED, the NCEE would also create an alternative pathway for students lacking either the time, money or temperament to attend classes and earn a degree at a university, says Prof. Vedder.

After decades of tuition hikes and uneven return on investments, universities are struggling to convince the next generation of Americans that what they are selling is worth buying.

A 2019 Gallup poll of 2,033 U.S. adults found that 51% believed a college education is “very important,” down from 70% in 2013. Just 41% of those ages 18 to 29 believed college is important. College enrollment plummeted

FROM TOP: JOHN W. TOMAC; MATELLI GRAVES FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL (PHOTO); RUTH GWILY

during the pandemic.

“We need to be responsive to those concerns at a time when we are at risk of losing the next generation of college students,” says Lynn Pasquerella, president of the Association of American Colleges and Universities. She doesn’t think an exit exam would accurately measure what a student knows.

“We have to be able to train students to think integratively across disciplines and to apply knowledge in real-world settings that connect curriculum to career. That’s not going to come from any exit exam or standardized test,” Dr. Pasquerella says. It could come from electronic portfolios of students’ work over their college careers or an exam that includes several days of interviews, she says.

Colleges have little incentive to submit to third-party scrutiny of graduation requirements. And established schools are insulated from new competitors by the high bar for accreditation, a condition for federal aid.

With the decline of the SAT and ACT there will be even fewer benchmarked standards by which schools can be compared.

Without that competition and transparency, the quality of education declines and, eventually, so does the value of a degree, says Prof. Vedder.

Most colleges and universities would reject a one-size-fits-all exam because schools emphasize different types of knowledge and learning, says Jorge Gonzalez, president of Kalamazoo College, a private nonprofit liberal arts school in Michigan.

“The decentralized nature of the system makes it so difficult to be able to conceive of a test that is going to be able to assess, fairly, the learning that takes place across different segments,” Dr. Gonzalez says.

Exit exams have been tried before. Wayne State University once mandated students pass both a math and English “competency exam” to graduate, says Laura Woodward, director of testing and assessment at the school.

The English exam was a five-paragraph persuasive essay, and the math exam consisted of a one-hour multiple choice test, she says. The exams were scrapped more than a decade ago after students, who had completed their coursework and were on track to earn their diplomas, failed the tests and couldn't graduate.

“It was causing a little bit of a graduation pileup,” says Dr. Woodward. “It was embarrassing for the university.”

The students complained it wasn’t fair, Dr. Woodward says. The school decided to ditch it.

Still, the idea of testing graduates’ skills hasn’t died—it has just been shouldered by employers. Seth Gershenson, who teaches economics and public policy at American University and has written widely about grade inflation, says he has noticed more prospective employers administering tests to his students when they apply for jobs. In a world where jobs change rapidly, the ability to think critically and learn new skills are fundamental attributes for employees— which universities are, in theory, set up to teach.

Testing for those abilities “has really become a part of the interview process,” he says. “That is proof of concept of this idea.”

41 %

The share of 18- to 29-year-olds who believe that a college education is important, according to a 2019 Gallup poll of 2,033 U.S. adults

Ohio University economist and professor Richard K. Vedder, above, has outlined a 3½-hour college exit exam that he says would help prospective employers evaluate recent graduates and help high-school students compare colleges.

Weekend August 14, 2021

THE CASE FOR BYPASSING THE SAT AND ACT…

The pandemic accelerated a push to scrap decades-old college entrance exams and evaluate applicants in new ways By Melissa Korn R

elying more heavily on high school grades, designing a better standardized test or holding an admissions lottery: These are three ideas for replacing the SAT and ACT in college admissions.

A steady drumbeat of opposition to the tests escalated last year to a deafening call from school counselors— and some admissions officers—for the elimination of SAT and ACT scores from applications.

As test centers closed during the Covid-19 pandemic and students were unable to complete the exam, more than 1,500 schools, including the Ivy League and dozens of flagship public universities, agreed to consider applications without exam results.

The tests have endured for decades, in part because colleges want some uniform way to judge applicants. Yet the pandemic hastened a long-simmering desire for change. Studies have found that strong scores aren’t a better predictor of first-year college success than high school GPA, and have found stark divisions by race and family income.

It has all left admissions officers pondering whether there’s a better way of judging applicants.

“The tenuous grasp we hold on many of our habits and policies has been further loosened [by the pandemic], and we must adapt if we are to continue to fulfill our duty to the public good,” the National Association for College Admission Counseling, made up of admissions officers and high school counselors, wrote in a recent report on testing. Make the GPA Matter More

Most selective colleges use a holistic approach to admissions, looking at grades, extracurricular involvement, recommendations, essays, scores and more. If tests are taken out of the equation, one approach would be to weigh the other things more heavily.

If an admissions office is trying to determine who could succeed academically in a college setting, then focusing on how students fared in high school is the most obvious approach, say proponents, including some college administrators and high school counselors.

“Why are we reaching so hard for other things to try to predict classroom performance, beyond classroom performance?” asks Akil Bello, a longtime test-prep tutor and senior director of advocacy and advancement for FairTest, a nonprofit that urges more limited use of standardized tests.

Scores were redundant at best, he says, and at their worst were misleading and perpetuated inequities— those who could afford private tutoring were able to game the exam and get into top schools, and those who didn’t have access to such support lost out.

Getting strong marks isn’t enough, admissions officers say. They want to see good grades in tough classes, or at least as tough as a particular high school offers. Seeing grades improve throughout high school is also telling, says Bard College President Leon Botstein, whose school has been test-optional for decades.

Still, the focus on grades could disadvantage kids from certain schools, where advanced courses are limited. Today, high schools provide short profiles describing their curricula. But the limitations of a school’s course offerings ought to be considered more seriously, according to groups that push to increase enrollment opportunities for low-income and other underrepresented students. That could include taking into account whether a student took the most challenging classes a school offers, even if it doesn’t have many Advanced Placement or honors options from which to choose. Find Another Test

Several academics and state officials are working to replace the SAT and ACT with tests that attempt to be more equitable or measure different attributes that are important for college success.

A University of California Academic Senate committee is assessing whether it could adapt the Smarter Balanced exam—now given to all California public school 11th graders and students in a range of grades in seven other states—either by modifying the test or the scoring, or using it for admissions as is. The committee is expected to submit its final recommendation this fall. University regents voted last year to scrap the SAT and ACT from consideration in admissions in upcoming application cycles, and a legal settlement in May extended the period during which those tests can’t be used.

The Smarter Balanced test more directly measures English and math skills that students learn in class, rather than the broader material on the SAT and ACT that has motivated specialized and often costly tutoring. The test is already offered free in school, making it more accessible, though students in other parts of the country and world don’t have access. It is also not clear whether that exam is a better predictor of college success than GPAs, and there are still racial disparities.

Those divisions could get worse if the Smarter Balanced test were to become a high-stakes gatekeeper for admission to sought-after schools.

A spokeswoman for the College Board, which administers the SAT, declined to comment on the Smarter Balanced test, but says a nationwide validity study in 2019 showed the SAT is a strong predictor of college performance, and that it remains a valuable way for students, including

those who are underrepresented, to stand out in the admissions process. ACT CEO Janet Godwin says studies confirm the ACT measures college and career readiness, and notes that the University of California’s standardized test task force recommended in its early 2020 report that the Smarter Balanced test not replace existing exams.

Other states may take action.

James Skoufis, a state senator in New York, proposed a bill this spring that would force public universities to stop using the SAT or ACT in admissions decisions and require the State University of New York and City University of New York to create another test instead. Neither the bill nor Mr. Skoufis provided specifics on what a new test would involve.

Mr. Skoufis says an applicant’s high school grades alone “won’t clearly illustrate their capacity for collaboration or critical thinking” or reflect their extracurricular engagement or personal stories.

Robert Sternberg, a Cornell University professor of human development who studies intelligence, would also like to see schools do more to measure traits like creativity.

Decades ago, he created a tool called the Rainbow Project to measure analytical skills, as well as creativity and practical skills. While a dean at Tufts University from 2005 to 2010, Dr. Sternberg got buy-in from the admissions office to use a similar assessment on applicants, which he dubbed the Kaleidoscope Project.

The results from a diverse set of test-takers were far better predictors of first-year college grades than the SAT, according to research Dr. Sternberg published in the journal European Psychologist in 2009.

“We were admitting people who wouldn’t have gotten in, who had skills that were relevant for university success and life success,” Dr. Sternberg says. The Kaleidoscope project also resulted in higher minority enrollment at Tufts, he says. Tufts used the tool for a few years, the school says, and continues to use some elements of it with essay prompts.

Dr. Sternberg brought it to Oklahoma State University under the moniker Panorama when he was an administrator there from 2010 to 2013. The school says after he left it switched to a holistic admission process but has continued to use his research on intelligence and creativity to inform application essay questions. It isn’t being widely considered as a wholesale replacement for the SAT. Play the Lottery

Some college counselors and admissions officers pushing to increase equity in education access argue it is time for a far more radical rethink of admissions.

“What’s the endgame here? We’re raising that question,” says Eddie Comeaux, an associate professor of higher education at the University of California, Riverside, who co-chaired the University of California task force on standardized testing. He is skeptical that a new test will do any better at providing equitable access to higher education, and points to the spike in applications to the University of California this year, when scores were optional, as evidence of tests being a barrier.

Recently, the perennial idea of a lottery has gotten more attention, says Mr. Bello. This would involve choosing applicants randomly from a pool of qualified students, either based on a minimum GPA or GPA and other criteria.

Applications to some of the nation’s most selective schools jumped by 30% or more this year, bringing their acceptance rates to the low single digits. The schools themselves acknowledge that there were far more academically qualified applicants than they had space to admit. At that rate, some parents and college counselors say, why not formalize it as a game of luck?

But a lottery isn’t a panacea, says Dominique Baker, an assistant professor of education policy at Southern Methodist University and former admissions officer at the University of Virginia.

With Michael Bastedo at the University of Michigan, she has run thousands of simulations for a lottery at selective colleges, and says the approach on its own doesn’t create a more diverse entering class.

The admitted classes of a large number of lotteries, averaged together, will reflect the applicant pool, she says. But in a given year, even if 10% of the applicant pool consists of Black candidates, they could still make up just 1% of the class. More than

1,500

Colleges that agreed to consider applications without SAT or ACT results during the pandemic

“Why are we reaching so hard for other things to try to predict classroom performance, beyond classroom performance?”

— Akil Bello, test-prep tutor and senior director of advocacy and advancement for the nonprofit FairTest

Weekend August 14, 2021

I am beginning a new thread for  this blog.  I firmly believe we are in the midst of a sea change in Higher Education. This is a result of multiple factors. but is speeding up with digital education and the realization of what one can do with Webex and Zoom.   Add to that the difficulty that employers have finding adequate employees.  This is resulting in more in company education, coding schools, and independent certifications. Nassim Taleb has popularized the idea of Black Swan events. Like rogue waves such an event is unexpected but upends tradition in a sector. I am suggesting this is happening in Higher Ed. The cost in time and money of a four year degree is also driving this change.

August  13 2021 Interview with Andy Bird CEO Peearson. Notice how he sees education changing and certificates displacing degrees.

Andy Bird joined education-resources company Pearson PLC as chief executive officer at a time when education was undergoing an upheaval — the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic.

With students around the world suddenly learning from home, the company's online business saw big growth: Enrollment at Pearson's online K-12 schooling offering, Connections Academy, grew by 40%, says Mr. Bird, the former chairman of Walt Disney International.

Now that many students are returning to their classrooms, Mr. Bird thinks that growth rate will likely slow. Even so, the CEO is betting that some of the popularity online learning gained during the pandemic is here to stay — and Pearson is betting big on virtual offerings.

The London-based company, which sells a range of products, from reskilling tools to standardized testing, is launching a mobile app for college students called Pearson+ that will offer audio content, note-taking and other study tools.

This offering, the company says, will help Pearson "regain a portion of the textbook sales now lost to the secondary market" and give students learning experiences in a form they are used to. And then, Mr. Bird hopes, those students will return to Pearson down the road for more virtual training during their careers.

The online efforts come during a slump for Pearson. Despite the growth in online learning, the company's sales for 2020 declined 12% to GBP 3.4 billion ($4.7 billion) from a year earlier — the latest in a string of annual drops. Pearson shares closed Friday at about $12 — up 61% over the past year, but down 1.4% over the past five years, according to Dow Jones Market Data.

The Wall Street Journal talked with Mr. Bird about the future of education, online learning and more. Here are edited excerpts of the conversation.

WSJ: Pearson has obviously been known as a publisher of educational content. Is it still going to be that, or is it instead becoming an education-tech company?

1. BIRD: The heart of what is Pearson has been and will remain intellectual property. What form that content used to take was a physical textbook. We will take that intellectual property, create content in many different formats and in a much more interactive and immersive way and then use technology to deliver the most immersive experience we possibly can.

WSJ: And Pearson+ is an app for college kids to access their textbooks?

1. BIRD: It gives U.S. college students — but we'll roll out globally — the ability to access over 1,500 titles from Pearson. It's a very immersive product with audio, note-taking, highlighting, study cards, flashcards, other study tools. It's a lot more than just the written word put in a digital format.

WSJ: What drove the company to create Pearson+, and what do you see as the future of college textbooks?

1. BIRD: It's important that we start to create products designed for this new world and that we start to build consumer relationships, which are going to be very, very important. The data and the consumer insights that we are going to get from Pearson+ are going to help this company enormously.

WSJ: Can you talk about why those consumer relationships are important to Pearson?

1. BIRD: It's about this notion of a lifetime of learning. The need to reskill and upskill throughout our career is becoming more important. With Pearson+, we can understand a student's life over a four-year college horizon, and then help that student migrate into a career, and then help that student as they need to be an employee — help them reskill and upskill. We start to create a more persistent relationship with learners at different key learning stages.

WSJ: What do you see as the future of school, and Pearson's role in that?

1. BIRD: Formal education will be a hybrid of physical and virtual learning, and it will flex as you move through life. Education certainly doesn't end when school ends.

The way that you learn is going to be transformed. You are going to see much more media-rich learning experiences.

There's going to be increased value in the assessments and qualifications and certification side of the business. We certainly see that ourselves, where you don't necessarily need a four-year degree, but you definitely need a handful of certificates. Formal education is very important, but the way that we are taught is going to change dramatically.

Once you're in a digital world, you can deconstruct the textbook. Within Pearson+, one of the most anticipated and requested features was audio. Students want to listen rather than read, and part of that is time management. They will listen to an audiobook at double speed. You can get an hour's worth of reading done in 30 minutes, or you can do it while you're multitasking.

WSJ: What is the future of the college experience, and how is that changing? What is Pearson's role in that?

1. BIRD: There is going to be in certain sectors a question around the value of a four-year degree. You're going to see a lot more people taking shorter courses, modular courses, alternatives to the traditional degree, and so you're going to be able to as a student have a wide array of experiences open to you. A lot of corporations are going to become like colleges, and a lot of people are going to start learning while they earn. And so this notion of learning on the job and big corporations taking in high-school students and training them on the job, giving the opportunity to further their academic careers while they embark upon their professional careers — you're going to see that increase as well.

WSJ: Pearson came up with a line of remote classroom materials. What will the return to normal schooling for a lot of places in the fall look like for that new part of the business?

1. BIRD: Our virtual-learning business through Connections Academy primarily in the U.S. had a 40% increase in enrollment during the pandemic. We have seen a lot of that continue through this current school year and are optimistic that we'll maintain that level of interest going forward. You look at what is happening to the parents' lives with hybrid working, working from home, flexible hours and parents going, "Would it be great if my kids could also have that? So I get to spend more time with my children and they fit into my lifestyle."

It's not as much just about the children, but it's about the whole family unit.

—