Higher Education Commission
Gets Earful On Financial Aid Expansion
By Charles Dervarics

The federal government should increase need-based financial aid for postsecondary education, but reject controversial ideas to introduce standardized testing into colleges and universities, witnesses told a Bush administration review panel at two recent hearings.

U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings’ Commission on the Future of Higher Education has held public forums nationwide after its leaders said they were considering wide-ranging changes in higher education. Among the changes discussed were redesigning the Pell Grant and requiring standardized testing for college students.

The standardized testing idea in particular was met with little enthusiasm at the commission hearing held last month, although the practice has become standard at the K-12 level as a result of the No Child Left Behind Act.

“Unless reduced to considering the most basic levels of knowledge, universitywide testing will not capture advanced learning or measure the value of the university experience,” said Dr. Robert A. Brown, president of Boston University, at the hearing.

Proponents have argued that standardized testing may provide useful information about the base knowledge that students gain by attending college. But each student’s course of study may be so different that it makes such comparisons meaningless, Brown said. Comparing engineering and fine arts students, for example, would yield little information about effective delivery of education. Even comparing employment data of such groups would be counterproductive, he said.

Instead of imposing standardized tests on college students, postsecondary institutions should do more to work with schools in their community to improve K-12 education. “It would seem best to put the emphasis on improving the preparation of our high school graduates for higher education,” Brown said.