These subject tests already exist, they are called CLEP exams and there’s a foundation called ModernStates.org that provides test prep and then vouchers to take the tests for free. My daughter essentially tested out of her first year of college.
The problems really took off 50 years ago when the Supreme Court banned the use of IQ tests for job applicants in both the private and public sectors. Employers started to use credentials in place on smarts. Add in diversity quotas and suddenly everything seems worse, as competency was replaced.
Jun 21, 2022·edited Jun 21, 2022Liked by John Carter
Good ideas. Critics, defenders of status quo, will whine that education is more than assimilating knowledge, it's the immersion in academic culture which makes graduates superior human beings. Anybody with internet can be smart. They want conformity.
Elon is laying off salaried imployees, probably many with impressive credentials. He's not laying off wage employees, those who actually make his cars. We need more Elons. The problem isn't the elite academies, it's those who revere them.
A good set of ideas, well explained. I have see this described in academia as "competency based degrees" as I recall. The idea is that for many topics or courses you can have a standardized test that students must take to get credit, but they don't need to take the attached courses to take the test. In effect it is much like how many graduate exams are done, with a committee of professors drawing up the exam and grading them, and the students taking the exams without having necessarily had all the professors in class.
I have seen some schools doing this for undergraduates typically as a way to draw in former military or other students with work history as a way of limiting their investment. Worked in the army as an electrician? You can just test out of those classes on the way to an electrical engineering degree. I think you could build an entire credentialing system out of this, with competing credentialing groups doing the examinations.
As a side note, the fields where these tests would be most difficult, say philosophy or the other humanities, are exactly the fields there is no reason to have a credential in. You don't need a PhD to be a philosopher, you just need an audience that is willing to read your crap and pay you for it. Whether your philosophy is any good has no relation to credentials, as the entire philosophy profession amply demonstrates. What we need is a credentialing system for coders, engineers, builders, truck drivers... actual jobs doing actual things.
I'm skeptical that most jobs require any sort of generalized education. In fact, maybe no jobs require it. I can't think of a reason that each job that has real educational requirements (i.e. you wouldn't be able to perform the job without the education and learning on the job isn't feasible) wouldn't be better off with an educational pathway specifically tailored to that job. I've been through such a program, and it did a remarkable job preparing me. Everything else, not so much. Maybe some pathways could exclusively consist of passing standardized tests, but not all (as you note). I think the biggest obstacle to your proposal is that fact that the largest employers are very much a part of the cathedral. The current "educational system" serves the cathedral by making it very difficult for ideological dissidents to get that paper. The paper demonstrates loyalty both ideologically, and economically. Those that took on debt to earn the paper can be counted on to serve the system that calls them legitimate. Without the system, they have no marketable skills, just a heaping pile of debt. They can be counted on not to rock the boat. The entire credentialed class will fight this, so what is needed more than anything is dissidents within the ranks. Unfortunately if people like you, the bad cat, eugyppius etc. can all be cowed into remaining anonymous, then what hope is there for lesser men to openly defect? I'm concerned that some of the worlds best and brightest minds have been sequestered and neutered within the halls of academia pursuing projects that have little to no hope of making the world a better place. Searching for knowledge that no one is capable of appreciating fueled by the same debt that corrupts every other industry that has been consumed by the cathedral the dissident voice is caught in the throat and neutralized. Given my libertarian ideological bent, I like to think that if access to printed money was cut off, industry would be forced to make tough decisions as to what education was really required of their employees. The debt that your employees carry has an impact on the cost of their labor, after all. Smaller companies are more likely to pursue such a strategy. Larger organizations put a huge premium on loyalty to the system. For them, the incompetence of their employees makes them easy to control, and often outweighs the cost. It doesn't matter that they're incompetent if your profitability is mostly a reflection of government subsidy and a favorable regulatory environment that stifles competition at your behest.
Forgot to include this, so here goes. One way forward is to secure sustainable financing. At the grassroots level (local and state governments, school boards etc) should steer dollars towards demonstrated educational attainment: success in independently administered competitive exams. Tie funding (at least in part) for education to success in passing competitive exams. The way to do this is to start small and let momentum build. Home-schoolers should lobby to get reimbursement for maths and STEM tutoring, contingent upon success in competitive exams.
Outstanding! An original contribution to a field long ago exhausted by efforts made to pour old wine into new bottles.
It occurred to me that one way to expedite change would be to disseminate and normalise overseas curricular material (especially in STEM). Educational testing firms could use the standards set in Singapore or Russia. They could market their services to home schoolers and pod schools etc. Publishers could translate and publish text-books and old exam papers etc. Freelance tutors could establish a marketing niche y being able to offer services pitched at overseas standards, something of enormous utility for the globally mobile.
Philanthropists and community groups could raise money to send qualified students who are ineligible for affirmative action to countries with affordable and high quality higher education.
Employer groups and chambers of commerce could sponsor competitive exams in core disciplines.
Readers interested in pursuing educational issues might be interested in this 34 minute video by Andrei Martyanov discussing the extraordinary lack of rigour in US education (especially physics and mathematics). Martyanov points out that things were bad in the 50s and have gotten way, way, worse since then. No one who likes POSTCARDS FROM BARSOOM will be disappointed by Martyanov.
To the question of hard to measure studies; perhaps a board of evaluators in the field chosen by a combination of popular voting of students and executive input based on interviews of candidates , changing on some kind of regular interval( 1 year?). I don’t see a way to guarantee consistency in “ soft” fields, but the need to avoid entrenched cadres is paramount.
Government's 100% back universities with the threat of lawsuits if they try to hire on any other basis.
If you refuse to hire anyone who doesn't have a university degree or didn't go to Harvard... that's 100% legal and the government supports it... you cannot be sued for the disparate racial impact of only hiring university graduates
However, If you refuse to hire anyone who doesn't score a 115 on an IQ test or rigourous skills examination, you will be sued into oblivion because black people and women will not pass the examination at a rate proportionate to the percentage of the population.
Hiring based on shitty classist university degrees is presumed non-discriminatory, hiring based on anything else is presumed discriminatory.
You think the universities have been able to stay in business this long based on what is in essense an IQ test... because Corporations couldn't figure out how to administer IQ tests!?
They're in business because the government will deploy armed men to take all your property if you hire on the basis of anything else.
Kulak's Axiom: For everything in society that doesn't make sense, there is an obscure government program enforcing it with lethal violence
You should really read "The Big Test: The Secret History of the American Meritocracy". The makers of the SATs had very similar ideas. One of the big things they wanted was to bring in smarter kids who had not grown up rich to try and positivity influence the rich kids. They also wanted to make standardized testing much more pervasive. Being in a field with lots of standardized testing, it's not the paradise you'd think it would be. You open up testing to off shore people who sometimes value rote memorization at the expense of understanding. Also, questions are often as badly worded as legal contracts. I lot of thought would need to be put in to make it work.
Pete P is right, what you suggest is probably illegal. The supreme court banned use of tests for employment unless the test was highly specific to the job. e.g. having an electrician demonstrate wiring a breaker box. a general algebra test couldn't be required.
As an employer you'd be put in the position of saying I only like to hire people who have completed subject tests x, y and z, how would that be different than requiring a nonspecific test
This is already in the process of happening with stuff like Kahn academy. You are correct that a standard metric for cross evaluation outside of the idealogical capture of the state and academia would be useful.
These subject tests already exist, they are called CLEP exams and there’s a foundation called ModernStates.org that provides test prep and then vouchers to take the tests for free. My daughter essentially tested out of her first year of college.
The problems really took off 50 years ago when the Supreme Court banned the use of IQ tests for job applicants in both the private and public sectors. Employers started to use credentials in place on smarts. Add in diversity quotas and suddenly everything seems worse, as competency was replaced.
Testing is incompatible with affirmative action.
Good ideas. Critics, defenders of status quo, will whine that education is more than assimilating knowledge, it's the immersion in academic culture which makes graduates superior human beings. Anybody with internet can be smart. They want conformity.
Elon is laying off salaried imployees, probably many with impressive credentials. He's not laying off wage employees, those who actually make his cars. We need more Elons. The problem isn't the elite academies, it's those who revere them.
Mike Rowe for President!
A good set of ideas, well explained. I have see this described in academia as "competency based degrees" as I recall. The idea is that for many topics or courses you can have a standardized test that students must take to get credit, but they don't need to take the attached courses to take the test. In effect it is much like how many graduate exams are done, with a committee of professors drawing up the exam and grading them, and the students taking the exams without having necessarily had all the professors in class.
I have seen some schools doing this for undergraduates typically as a way to draw in former military or other students with work history as a way of limiting their investment. Worked in the army as an electrician? You can just test out of those classes on the way to an electrical engineering degree. I think you could build an entire credentialing system out of this, with competing credentialing groups doing the examinations.
As a side note, the fields where these tests would be most difficult, say philosophy or the other humanities, are exactly the fields there is no reason to have a credential in. You don't need a PhD to be a philosopher, you just need an audience that is willing to read your crap and pay you for it. Whether your philosophy is any good has no relation to credentials, as the entire philosophy profession amply demonstrates. What we need is a credentialing system for coders, engineers, builders, truck drivers... actual jobs doing actual things.
I'm skeptical that most jobs require any sort of generalized education. In fact, maybe no jobs require it. I can't think of a reason that each job that has real educational requirements (i.e. you wouldn't be able to perform the job without the education and learning on the job isn't feasible) wouldn't be better off with an educational pathway specifically tailored to that job. I've been through such a program, and it did a remarkable job preparing me. Everything else, not so much. Maybe some pathways could exclusively consist of passing standardized tests, but not all (as you note). I think the biggest obstacle to your proposal is that fact that the largest employers are very much a part of the cathedral. The current "educational system" serves the cathedral by making it very difficult for ideological dissidents to get that paper. The paper demonstrates loyalty both ideologically, and economically. Those that took on debt to earn the paper can be counted on to serve the system that calls them legitimate. Without the system, they have no marketable skills, just a heaping pile of debt. They can be counted on not to rock the boat. The entire credentialed class will fight this, so what is needed more than anything is dissidents within the ranks. Unfortunately if people like you, the bad cat, eugyppius etc. can all be cowed into remaining anonymous, then what hope is there for lesser men to openly defect? I'm concerned that some of the worlds best and brightest minds have been sequestered and neutered within the halls of academia pursuing projects that have little to no hope of making the world a better place. Searching for knowledge that no one is capable of appreciating fueled by the same debt that corrupts every other industry that has been consumed by the cathedral the dissident voice is caught in the throat and neutralized. Given my libertarian ideological bent, I like to think that if access to printed money was cut off, industry would be forced to make tough decisions as to what education was really required of their employees. The debt that your employees carry has an impact on the cost of their labor, after all. Smaller companies are more likely to pursue such a strategy. Larger organizations put a huge premium on loyalty to the system. For them, the incompetence of their employees makes them easy to control, and often outweighs the cost. It doesn't matter that they're incompetent if your profitability is mostly a reflection of government subsidy and a favorable regulatory environment that stifles competition at your behest.
"There’s no reason that such a system should require an expensive, unwieldy government bureaucracy to support."
Think of what you're saying, man!
Do you have a vest? Preferably Rifle Level.
Oh, and not dead raccoon, but dead skunk.
Crossin' the highway late last night
He shoulda looked left and he shoulda looked right
He didn't see the station wagon car
The skunk got squashed and there you are
............................
Take a whiff on me, that ain't no rose
Roll up yer window and hold your nose
You don't have to look and you don't have to see
'Cause you can feel it in your olfactory
...................
Yeah you got your dead cat and you got your dead dog
On a moonlight night you got your dead toad frog
Got your dead rabbit and your dead raccoon
The blood and the guts they're gonna make you swoon
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nssSIKOrSNk
Loudon Wainwright III
Forgot to include this, so here goes. One way forward is to secure sustainable financing. At the grassroots level (local and state governments, school boards etc) should steer dollars towards demonstrated educational attainment: success in independently administered competitive exams. Tie funding (at least in part) for education to success in passing competitive exams. The way to do this is to start small and let momentum build. Home-schoolers should lobby to get reimbursement for maths and STEM tutoring, contingent upon success in competitive exams.
Outstanding! An original contribution to a field long ago exhausted by efforts made to pour old wine into new bottles.
It occurred to me that one way to expedite change would be to disseminate and normalise overseas curricular material (especially in STEM). Educational testing firms could use the standards set in Singapore or Russia. They could market their services to home schoolers and pod schools etc. Publishers could translate and publish text-books and old exam papers etc. Freelance tutors could establish a marketing niche y being able to offer services pitched at overseas standards, something of enormous utility for the globally mobile.
Philanthropists and community groups could raise money to send qualified students who are ineligible for affirmative action to countries with affordable and high quality higher education.
Employer groups and chambers of commerce could sponsor competitive exams in core disciplines.
Readers interested in pursuing educational issues might be interested in this 34 minute video by Andrei Martyanov discussing the extraordinary lack of rigour in US education (especially physics and mathematics). Martyanov points out that things were bad in the 50s and have gotten way, way, worse since then. No one who likes POSTCARDS FROM BARSOOM will be disappointed by Martyanov.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOjWBwPlbTQ&t=668s
To the question of hard to measure studies; perhaps a board of evaluators in the field chosen by a combination of popular voting of students and executive input based on interviews of candidates , changing on some kind of regular interval( 1 year?). I don’t see a way to guarantee consistency in “ soft” fields, but the need to avoid entrenched cadres is paramount.
This is already done with programming jobs. Applicants are often given an online test.
I know I’m coming in to this long after the original article, but this is an incredibly thoughtful take.
DISPARATE IMPACT ASSESSMENT.
Government's 100% back universities with the threat of lawsuits if they try to hire on any other basis.
If you refuse to hire anyone who doesn't have a university degree or didn't go to Harvard... that's 100% legal and the government supports it... you cannot be sued for the disparate racial impact of only hiring university graduates
However, If you refuse to hire anyone who doesn't score a 115 on an IQ test or rigourous skills examination, you will be sued into oblivion because black people and women will not pass the examination at a rate proportionate to the percentage of the population.
Hiring based on shitty classist university degrees is presumed non-discriminatory, hiring based on anything else is presumed discriminatory.
You think the universities have been able to stay in business this long based on what is in essense an IQ test... because Corporations couldn't figure out how to administer IQ tests!?
They're in business because the government will deploy armed men to take all your property if you hire on the basis of anything else.
Kulak's Axiom: For everything in society that doesn't make sense, there is an obscure government program enforcing it with lethal violence
You should really read "The Big Test: The Secret History of the American Meritocracy". The makers of the SATs had very similar ideas. One of the big things they wanted was to bring in smarter kids who had not grown up rich to try and positivity influence the rich kids. They also wanted to make standardized testing much more pervasive. Being in a field with lots of standardized testing, it's not the paradise you'd think it would be. You open up testing to off shore people who sometimes value rote memorization at the expense of understanding. Also, questions are often as badly worded as legal contracts. I lot of thought would need to be put in to make it work.
Pete P is right, what you suggest is probably illegal. The supreme court banned use of tests for employment unless the test was highly specific to the job. e.g. having an electrician demonstrate wiring a breaker box. a general algebra test couldn't be required.
As an employer you'd be put in the position of saying I only like to hire people who have completed subject tests x, y and z, how would that be different than requiring a nonspecific test
" they are naturally the most suited to take society’s reigns"
typo: reins.
This is already in the process of happening with stuff like Kahn academy. You are correct that a standard metric for cross evaluation outside of the idealogical capture of the state and academia would be useful.