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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."
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.
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...
Correction... English is difficult
An adjective such as 'hard' should be reserved for things that are adamantious. (but does it matter if adamantious is a word or not? you still know what it means....)
And they said that William F. Buckley was dead.
Actually, "adamantious" is a word more applicable to physical objects. "Hard" in the sense of "English is a language that is hard to master" is well within the bounds of acceptable usage according to the dictionaries I have.