Test anxiety

On Thursday and Friday, the U.S. Secretary of Education's Commission on the Future of Higher Education met in Nashville, Tenn., to consider ways to make colleges "more efficient, more accessible, and more accountable to parents, students, and taxpayers" (Chronicle of Higher Education, Friday). One proposal floated at the conference was that colleges should be required to conduct standardized testing of their students as a condition of receiving federal student aid or academic accreditation. \nNow, I'm all for accountability, but what will this plan accomplish? Texas has a program called the Collegiate Learning Assessment, and many grad students go through a general standardized test as part of our admission requirements (the Graduate Record Examination) -- but do these evaluate whether you've actually learned anything in college? As a veteran of the GRE, I felt the exam seemed more like a test of whether I'd retained stuff from high school (the verbal and quantitative sections) combined with a form of absurdist punishment (the logic section -- now replaced by the far more relevant analytical writing section).\nThe greatest problem is that unlike primary or secondary education, college deals with in-depth knowledge about a wide variety of subjects. I've lectured on the aesthetics of film, the psychology of terrorism, the German federal system, the economic theories behind international trade, and more -- and I'm just one lowly instructor. How, then, do you design a test for college education in general?\nWell, to be helpful, I thought I'd give it a shot. Here are a few sample questions:\n1. You go to do laundry, but find the dorm washing machine is broken. What do you do?\nA. Call Res Life to come fix it. B. Sniff your clothes to see if you can get another day out of them. C. Take your laundry home to mom. D. Dude, I'd totally take the dishes out.\n2. What's with that weirdo in the single down the hall who's always talking to him or herself? Is he or she most likely a(n):\nA. Religious nut. B. Fantasy role-playing geek. C. Serial killer. D. Indiana Daily Student editor in chief.\n3. What's the equivalent of the Greek letters BKE in English? \nA. Delta Kappa Rho. B. Beta Kappa Epsilon. C. Abra Ka Dabra. D. Free beer.\n4. Spring break is coming up. When should you take off?\nA. Right after your final class. B. The Friday before. C. January. D. The question is not "When should you take off?" but "What?"\n5. If you lose your syllabus, what should you do? \nA. Nothing. B. Try to stay one chapter ahead of the lectures. C. Ask the prof for another copy. D. Thank God for the discovery of penicillin.\n6. What's the best way to pay off your student loans? \nA. Complex pyramid scheme. B. Put them on the credit card. C. Entry-level position with a large company. D. Entry-level position with hands wrapped around ankles.\nSo, study up folks, but not too hard. After all, you only have to meet Washington's intellectual standards.