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[phil_ne]

So what if the CLA test shows that Podunk College does whatever the CLA test measures as well as, or even better than, Prestige University? People will still want to go to Prestige. The fact is that P.U. will offer something that P.C. can't, even though Podunk does have a legitimate place in the collegiate firmament.
There was a time that a college education meant you went to college and took the courses. Companies determined management caliber this way, the military found its officers, the churches their pastors. It worked. For some reason higher ed is losing faith in itself and acceding to those who want anything, from government to education to medicine, to be packaged in a cheap brown wrapper with a government certified label on it.

[fiona]

Warts.

The Fiona

[namazu]

Why do you say that, Fiona?

I was not familiar with the CLA (Collegiate Learning Assessment) test.  Is it being promoted widely now?  I have not heard it discussed at my institution, though a discipline-specific professional certification exam is being developed.

[fiona]

Perhaps I misspoke. I think assessments deserve Warts, but the proper term would probably be bollocks.

Sigh.

The Fiona

[bacardiandlime]

Oh, is that what that is? I assumed from the subject line that CLA must be some social disease.

I was not familiar with the CLA (Collegiate Learning Assessment) test.

[mended_drum]

The CLA is a test that measures changes in student ability over the course of their time at an institution.  It tests to see whether or not students obtain or improve skills in reasoning, analysis, interpretation and composition (among other things).  We're using it at my school right now.  It's designed to have no maximum score.  That is, even the very brightest students can score higher as a senior than as a freshman if, in fact, their skills improve.  It's supposed to measure the effectiveness of an institution in educating (improving student performance/skills) its students.

From what I've seen, schools that concentrate most heavily on attention to undergraduate education perform the best, with a few exceptions.  Thus, it makes a strong argument for SLACs and their often higher tuition.  "Podunk" is a way of insulting those institutions for daring to score higher on one assessment test than their more famous peers.  There are plenty of reasons to choose large universities or prestigious schools, of course, and other measures to guide students in that direction.

Personally, I found some of the questions in the humanities so badly written and filled with cliches that I'm glad I never had to take the test.  As long as it's used intelligently, as simply one way of comparing institutions (among many others), I think it can be useful.  Personally, I prefer it to regional or national exit exams that test mostly the acquisition of data.