Leveling the playing field

More than 200 colleges will have their graduating seniors take the CLA+ exit exam next year.

Referred to as “the post-college SAT,” the CLA+ seeks to measure “critical thinking, problem solving, scientific and quantitative reasoning, writing and the ability to critique and make arguments.”

While many students cringe at the thought of having to re-live their standardized testing days, the CLA+ truly is a great way for students with less-than-stellar grade-point averages and empty résumés to prove they are actually worth something in the job market.

Just like the ACT and SAT in high school, the CLA+ acts to counterbalance a student’s GPA. Grade-point averages have been on a steady rise since the 1970s, and the only explanation seems to be that universities are actively inflating their students’ numbers. While GPA can be useful in comparing students across a particular major at a specific university, the metric is otherwise useless.

There’s no way to accurately compare two students’ grade-point averages from different schools and different majors, because GPA is a relative measure. That’s like comparing apples and oranges. There needs to be something to bridge the gap, and the CLA+ is the best option at this point in time.

In this day and age, a college degree doesn’t guarantee you anything.
College simply provides an opportunity — a really expensive one. Walking across the stage with a degree in your hand only proves that you were able to show up on exam days and grind graphite into a Scantron for four years straight. And employers are starting to realize this. Too many students skate their way through college without learning any of the skills necessary to succeed at a job.

Skills like writing, critical thinking, and problem solving are sometimes lacking in students who achieve high GPA’s through the rote memorization of meaningless facts.
If you can’t make meaning and analyze what you’ve just spewed out, you really aren’t learning at all.

The CLA+ is something that every student graduating with a hardly marketable degree should plan on taking. If for some reason you decided to squander your family’s money on an art history or anthropology degree, you should be first in line to take this test.

You need to be showing employers that you do actually have some in-demand skills and could be of use in the workplace. In this rough job market, students should be looking for anything to help them gain a competitive edge.

If taking another standardized test gets you upset because you thought you were done after the ACT, then get real. Like it or not, standardized tests are a part of life.

Any sort of credible certification requires submitting to a test. Want your CPA license? Want to go to law school? Medical school? Then you know you still have some tests to pass. The reason law schools and medical schools require applicants to submit test scores is simple: they work to determine if a student has the skillset and knowledge necessary to succeed. Grade-point average does none of this.

The CLA+ test will help to ultimately level the playing field and give employers an additional way to predict a student’s success on the job.

­— lliskey@indiana.edu
Follow columnist Luke Liskey on Twitter @complaint_rouge.