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100% Failure Rate On University of Liberia's Admission Exam
slew writes "Apparently none of the 24K+ students who sat for the 2013 Liberia University entrance exam got a passing mark, and fewer than a hundred managed to pass either the english (pass level 70%) or math (pass level 50%) sections required to qualify to be part of the normal class of 2k-3k students admitted every year... Historically, the pass rate has been about 20-30% and in recent years, the test has been in multiple-guess format to facilitate grading. The mathematics exam generally focuses on arithmetic, geometry, algebra, analytical geometry and elementary statistic and probability; while the English exam generally focuses on grammar, sentence completion, reading comprehension and logical reasoning. However, as a testament to the over-hang of a civil war, university over-crowding, corruption, social promotion, the admission criteria was apparently temporarily dropped to 40% math and 50% English to allow the provisional admission of about 1.6K students. And people are calling foul."
"fewer than a hundred managed to pass the either the english"
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
If you have to have an admissions exam for a university, access to any university, or to secondary level education, something is wrong with the education system. Doubly so if it gives rise to the faulty concept of educational streaming(the concept of shaping people's entire lives through test scores and controls on education acccess).
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Sounds like somebody didn't make it into a good college.
If you have to have an admissions exam for a university, access to any university, or to secondary level education, something is wrong with the education system. Doubly so if it gives rise to the faulty concept of educational streaming(the concept of shaping people's entire lives through test scores and controls on education access).
What's the alternative? Let anyone study anything?
In countries where universities are heavily subsidized, it's too expensive to pay several more years (and the most expensive ones, due to labs, equipment and higher paid teachers) for people who have a proven an inability or unwillingness to study.
And the alternative, let anyone in and raise the price to control the excess of population, is much less fair than exams.
Eventually it will be possible to receive the entire university education online and almost free. At that point I will advocate for free access. Until that happens, if you want my taxes to pay for 9/10 of a kid's university, I'm going to ask for proof he is capable and willing to study.
The test isn't the goal, selecting students for admission is the goal.
Really? Selecting candidates that don't have the prerequisite knowledge to understand what's being taught? Wouldn't this be a waste of time/money?
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
"multiple-guess"
Maybe no one can pass because they're taking a multiple guess test rather than a multiple choice test.
If nobody passes the test, then it seems to me that the problem is with the test, not the people. What are they going to do? Close the university? The test isn't the goal, selecting students for admission is the goal.
This is just another story that should not even have been posted here.
1 - There are people in the other courses even if no one gets in this year.
2 - The objective is not to select the least incompetent but to select people who posses the knowledge required to adequately receive the teachings given in the first year.
So you think that someone that can't even begin to comprehend the course material should be allowed in just because they want to go there?
When there are more qualified applicants than available slots, you need to limit the number you admit to supportable levels.
On the other hand, you shouldn't let unqualified people that just don't have the requirements because they can't succeed, and will just be wasting resources, especially when there aren't enough slots for the qualified ones.
In this case, there were no qualified applicants. Do you expect them to repeat grade school & high school math and teach remedial English just so they could admit new 'students'? That's a waste the colleges resources. Colleges and Universities are Advanced or Higher education. If you don't have the lesser ones yet, you can't be taught the next level. It's like trying to build a skyscraper without a foundation. It will fail and topple, wasting a lot of time, effort, and other resources.
So no, I can't agree with your opinion that it's a failure of a university to have an entrance exam. Rather, if it's any ones fault, it's a failure of the prior education system or students that makes an exam necessary.
It does make sense. If you can't demonstrate that you're ready for higher education, then it's just a waste of time going to university (or even college).
And what's that about educational streaming? I didn't do too well in highschool (was more interested in computers and playing the guitar). After "gratuating" I spent a year or two doing silly jobs, then I got tired of i and a few exam for the subjects i had ignored in highschool, but needed to get admitted to the universities. Also, I took something which I think is might be a bit like the US SAT (and got high scores) to make sure I would be admitted, while other people had extra going-to-uni-points due to work experience. No streamlining there.
It's much worse in countries where you have to pay to get an education, which means that there are young people who can't afford going to university (or college) even though they might be better suited for it than their dumb but rich neighbours,
'US colleges increasingly view anything published before 1990 as 'inaccessible' for students. So much for timeless themes` ..
"For American college students, 1990 appears to be a historical cliff beyond which it is rumored some books were once written, though no one is quite sure what. Why have US colleges decided that the best way to introduce their students to higher learning is through comic books, lite lit, and memoirs?" link
AccountKiller
Liberia is a failed state, ranking 174 (of 187 countries) in the Human Development Index. Probably, somebody has manipulated the admission exam for his own profit. Reminds me a bit of Robert Mugabe winning the lottery.
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WTF?
What sample group? What does "keep the results of the sample group above within a 95% confidence interval" mean? There is no result. There is no sample group above -- you gave a population, despite calling it a sample group.
"Let event A be a randomly selected student." A student cannot be an event. You haven't given the set of possible values for "a student" to take, and you haven't specified which proper subset of the values of "a student" constitute the event.
Do you mean "24,000 students sit an exam, and all of them fail. Let A be the event that an exam result selected from this population of exam results is a pass"?
What you wrote uses statistics words, but it's ... incoherent, shall we say. Well trolled.
Liberia is in Africa, so it must be the former colonial power's fault.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
What he probably means, but does not express fully, is that the filtering should happen at the end of secondary school (high school, whatever the name is in the country of your preference) instead of at the beginning of university. If you manage to pass the exams of the highest level of secondary school; shouldn't that indicate that you are ready for university? In the Netherlands we only have exit exams in secondary school and if you manage to pass the highest level (called VWO or liberally translated: preparation for scientific education) you can go to any university within the Netherlands (ok; there's three different tracks and if you want to go to say the technical university to study computer science, you need the track with math, physics, etc.). All schools 'train' their students for the same exit exam and as a university you know what the level is of your incoming students and what they know and don't know. Having an admission exam basically says: we don't trust the exit exam of your school or we think it tests for the wrong things.
Letting anyone study anything is what we do here in France: public universities do not have admission exams nor selection process, their only limit enforced is their total capacity. The result is that the selection process is simply post-poned.
For example in medical universities, the real admission exam is at the end of first year instead of being at the start (if you've seen the movie The Adversary, the protagonist is noted for having redone the first year of medical university twelve times in a row, and never bothered attending the exam, until he simply faked being a MD).
A sick side effect is that for many studies (liberal arts ?) the selection is post-poned until after graduation, when those people enter the job market for the first time. We have lots and lots of students in litterary, artistic, sports and historical studies, lots more than jobs in those domains, while sectors like restaurants, tourism and construction have a hard time finding workforce. Tuition fees are heavily subsidised so universities benefit from keeping students as long as they can, students don't face any real test beyond what is enough to maintain the school's reputation, so all too often they pursue studies not as a step into a lifetime project, but rather as a passing interest, intellectual endeavours are highly regarded while anything to do with manual labor, entrepreneurship or commercial operations is dismissed as being much less prestigious ; and then the students are left on their own to face the hard cold reality of the marketplace.
Another consequence is that there are many people who are overqualified but inexperienced competing for jobs that require no specific qualifications, which often means having no diploma = no job at all, further inciting young people to get into college - any college that will have room left. As a result we spend less per student compared to neighbouring countries, and we may well have the most over-diplomed unemployed people on Earth, and the most professionally miserable employed people of the planet - doctors in all kinds of subjects, people with university baggage worthy of a college teacher, even engineers with high technical skills, and whose best career prospects are flipping burgers, managing office menial paperwork or, for the lucky few, teaching in junior high school.
Maybe we deserve this world ?
mod parent up (where are the mod points when you need them)
I think this exactly what OP meant. Secondary school should have an exit exam that is the input into your university qualification. In Germany you have three tracks each ending respectively at grade 9, 10 and 12 (used to be 13). If you take the Gymnasium track (12) and finish the exit exam you can go the the university, no questions asked. Few degrees require minimum score, such as medicine, but these are the exception. (To complete the info, the other two tracks are geared towards apprenticeships.)
In the states you can sort of get through high school without too much effort. That is basically why SAT was invented and why you have basic courses for all degrees, such as English 101. The US school system is not very good at fostering high achieving students, they focus on getting most people to average education and the "no kid left behind" policy is not helping either. I am not saying that it is bad per se, but at some point the slow learners are slowing down the bright ones.
Before anybody complains, I saw both systems first hand...
There's different ways to deal with that. The university I studied at allowed anyone to enter the first year. You could however only proceed to the second year if you completed the first year with a minimum score.
IMHO this is more fair than an entrance exam because you get judged on your ability to keep up with the particular program, not on how shitty your previous school/program was.
Agreed. It's similar in Norway, but with the caveat that certain studies weigh the different grades differently.
Most studies just rank students based on average grades, with a bonus for those who've taken more than the required minimum of advanced courses. But a few educations prioritize certain grades higher.
For example, if you apply to become a engineer, they'll consider your grades in math and physics more important than your grades in history and gymnastics.
But they still all computer your score from the exist-exams in secondary school, so there's no entry-exams required.
You're just coming from different viewpoints. Universities in Germany are overwhelmingly financed by the state. As such, it's reasonable to ask that they admit students according to a objective, measurable standard as opposed to "whomever they like".
The latter would open the door wide for corruption, it has to be tempting for a private university to admit the children of well-known rich people, for example, both for the PR, and for the potential funding. That's incompatible with a meritocracy.
A anonymously graded entry-exam would be fine. But in my experience, the admission-process to many private universities is not really anonymous, and it seems to me the scope for corruption and basically choosing the richest kid rather than the best-qualified one, is high. (plenty of mediocre sports-stars seems to get in no problem, for example)
That's fine if you see university as a private institution that exists to do whatever it wants to do, including maximize profit. It's more of a problem if your univiersities are publicly funded and exist in order to educate students, prioritizing the best-qualified ones.
On the other hand, the same overqualified people also make better decisions when voting or keeping in check their government. You have people who understand the world surrounding them (and well beyond their borders) and who aren't prone to democratic apathy (and I guess that's why frequent strikes are a well-known French phenomenon).
The economic/employment viewpoint is certainly a valid one, and I agree with you to a great extent, but it's good to look at the civic one as well. Ideally, maybe a great portion of the people out of high school should go to a vocational school first, then go work, make some money, gain some experience, and only then at some point spend some time at university to gain a better understanding of the world. With MOOCs now, this should be easier hopefully.
"In our tactical decisions, we are operating contrary to our strategic interest."
....if you want my taxes to pay for 9/10 of a kid's university, I'm going to ask for proof he is capable and willing to study.
Until it is your kid trying to get into university. Maybe not yours per se, but millions of other parents whose attitude is, "I pay taxes for this, let my spoiled brat in."
Silence is a state of mime.
"Me fail english? That's unpossible."
For all the overqualification we get "on paper", we french still have the poorest understanding of economics in the entire OECD, and it shows in the polls and election results. Where else in the western world can there be overtly authoritarian communist candidates to the presidency or representative elections raking in a two-digit percentage of voters ? Defiance towards politicians is on a all-time high in France, yet they are the ones we turn to in order to fix all our problems.
You're right that we are more vindicative and aren't prone to political apathy, but it's clearly not helping when it's radical politicians who stand to be the only beneficiaries. If I were to summarize the mainstream french political sentiment, it would seem completely schizophrenic:
- we want more money individually, but do not want prices to inflate nor income discrepancies to increase,
- we want to determine our lives and be free of bureaucracy yet clamor for more government regulation with every bad news,
- we want more public expenses but do not want to deprive the private sector of the funds it needs to create jobs and wealth.
I'm pretty sure some of it will sound familiar to Americans.
Maybe we deserve this world ?
Here in the UK Oxford and Cambridge have entrance exams, .... certainly in the case of Oxford and Cambridge, owe more to tradition than to any serious requirement for additional assessment.
No it is a serious assessment. If Oxbridge were satisfied with top grades at A-level, they would be vastly over-filled, and there is nothing to differntiate the applicants, so they can and do set a higher standard for admission. It has become too easy to get a top grade at A-level (thanks to teacher assessment, league tables, and the exams simple getting easier).
When my son was taking A-levels I showed him my old A-level maths papers. While some new areas of maths had been introduced (and some dropped), he commented that where comparable my papers were harder than his. Some of the maths I did at A-level he did not do until the university first or second years. I took the Cambridge entrance exam back then and it was much harder than A-levels - we did two terms of futher study after A-levels just for that exam.
In the states you can sort of get through high school without too much effort.
In my case, almost 0 effort. I never did homework. I rarely worked on anything school related outside of school, and only if it was on a topic that interested me. I started skipping school in 5th grade (I have older brothers who I can thank for teaching me those tricks), and missed hundreds of days of high school. And yet I graduated and went on to university. The problem is definitely the slow kids. I had no interest in honors or AP classes that gave you homework throughout the summer. I didn't want more homework, I wanted to learn more during the school year. In university, I was much more motivated.
It was more challenging, most professors refused to coddle the slow or lazy students. I went from barely graduating high school to being in the top 1% of the #1 Community College in the US (at that time), to a regular university, where I graduated with honors. All because I felt like there was a purpose in showing up every day. Its amazing what a little trial and tribulation can do to make you rise up and succeed.
For all the overqualification we get "on paper", we french still have the poorest understanding of economics in the entire OECD, and it shows in the polls and election results.
Except the US, who expects the free market to solve all problems.
Where else in the western world can there be overtly authoritarian communist candidates to the presidency or representative elections raking in a two-digit percentage of voters ?
Somewhere where they're informed enough to realize authoritarian capitalism isn't any better.
Defiance towards politicians is on a all-time high in France, yet they are the ones we turn to in order to fix all our problems.
And who else is going to do it? If we're going to work together to solve our problems, government is how we do that. The only other alternative is to surrender to the rapacious greed of the rich.
- we want more money individually, but do not want prices to inflate nor income discrepancies to increase,
Nothing wrong with that. When there is such vast income disparity like that in the US, bringing everyone closer to the average would increase almost everyone's economic status. For those whos status would decrease, boo fucking hoo.
- we want to determine our lives and be free of bureaucracy yet clamor for more government regulation with every bad news,
What we really want is regulation that works and is enforced. That corporate owned cronies in government have passed regulations designed to not work, and deliberately fail to enforce the ones that do doesn't mean regulation is bad.
- we want more public expenses but do not want to deprive the private sector of the funds it needs to create jobs and wealth.
Providing services to those who need them will increase the funds available to the private sector. When you give aid to the poor, they spend it. That money goes directly to the bottom line of businesses, allowing them to create jobs. Give aid to the rich like the US does, and they just sit on it.
In other words, France only has the "poorest understanding of economics in the entire OECD" if you're a free market fundamentalist. That's like a creationist saying that France has the "poorest understanding of evolution".
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