Why don't US universities have common standards?

[jay gw]

This might go into the education section but no one reads that so - why do the early years of kindergarten to 12th year have common standards within states but universities don't? Even the same state university system differs from one school to the next and may not accept your course if you transfer.

I have transferred from one branch of the SAME SYSTEM to another and they would not accept the courses. Extremely disorganized.

How do you know you've learned the same amount in the same course in school 1 versus school 2 versus school 700? Under the current design, you don't. There's no way for you to know, which is exactly how the education establishment wants it. They don't want you to be able to compare because then it would expose the weaker teachers out of the population. They also blocked all standards from K to 12 grades until a federal law passed forcing them to teach according to one system and testing to see if they do.

Does anyone have a good argument as to why there shouldn't be a common standard for curriculum in American universities?

 

[CBL4]

It allows different schools to compete for students by emphasizing different approaches. For a not very good example, one school could offer a more applied mathematics curriculum while another offers a pure math version. Or one school might have a great professor who teaches economics in an unothodox method.

Sometimes there are unavoidable difference. In computer science the programming language used for most classes varies over time. I had a few classes messed up when my school switched from Fortran to Pascal. This type of change is difficult within one school much less across a university system.

CBL

 

[TragicMonkey]

Yeah. My college had a Great Books program rather than going though another high-school-type "core classes". I couldn't have transferred out and gotten much credit for those, but I certainly learned a lot more than I would have with a different approach. It's one of the reasons I went to that school.

 

[slingblade]

Does anyone have a good argument as to why there shouldn't be a common standard for curriculum in American universities?

As a high school teacher just entering my career, I find the one complaint among teachers right now is "teaching to the test" which was brought on by the way standards have been implemented with NCLB. National standards are voluntary, but most, if not all, states have adopted some form of minimum standards of progress based on suggested national standards. School districts within states may have yet another form of standards, as may individual schools within districts. It's not as uniform as you may think.

Which is the argument against standards. Whenever you have rules, or standards, you also have someone who makes the rules. So if you have a common standard for curriculum in higher education, who makes that standard? At the moment, education can't decide anything beyond the concept that it needs standards . . . but what kind? Focusing on what? Do we teach "the basics," the readin', writin' and 'rithmetic? Or do we teach students how to function in the adult world by teaching them critical thinking? Or do we teach both, and if so, with what time, what budget?

Bloom's Taxonomy and Gardiner's Multiple Intelligences, or facts and dates and places and color-in-the-bubble multiple choice tests? Everyone in the 9th grade has to read "Animal Farm," and everyone in college has to learn Aristotelian criticism?

And who decides?

I agree it's not right, in principle, that equivalent schools won't accept each other's credits in transfer. But I don't think standards, the way I think of standards, are the answer.

 

[epepke]

To answer the OP, mostly it's because they don't receive as much Federal, State, County, or School District funding and so aren't as much under the public microscope.

 

[TragicMonkey]

Plus, wouldn't it make all colleges equally easy or equally difficult? We need to have a range to choose from.

 

[LW]

Does anyone have a good argument as to why there shouldn't be a common standard for curriculum in American universities?

You'll lose all the in-depth expertise if a professor can't teach a course on his or her own research topic.

 

[Beerina]

Plus, wouldn't it make all colleges equally easy or equally difficult? We need to have a range to choose from.

How in the he** will "common standards" apply to Central Michigan University and the Massechussettes Institute of Technology?

It'll be like having "common running standards", with everyone who can run at 3 miles per hour passing.

 

[Bob Klase]

I agree it's not right, in principle, that equivalent schools won't accept each other's credits in transfer. But I don't think standards, the way I think of standards, are the answer.

I don't think they're the answer either, but I do think they're better than graduating from high school and not being able to read are a worse answer. Since that was the type of problem that brought standard (and standardized tests) into the picture I think they're the best answer for the moment until someone comes up with a better one and gets it implemented.

 

[Manny]

US Universities do have common minimum standards, enforced by regional accreditation agencies such as the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools. You can find links to the six accreditation associations here. Here are the educational requirements of the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities, chosen because it downloaded quickest.

As others have mentioned, the requirements have a fair amount of latitude to reflect the differing educational missions of colleges, where students do a lot more specialized work than in most high schools.

 

[slingblade]

I don't think they're the answer either, but I do think they're better than graduating from high school and not being able to read are a worse answer. Since that was the type of problem that brought standard (and standardized tests) into the picture I think they're the best answer for the moment until someone comes up with a better one and gets it implemented.

While it may be generally true that "something is better than nothing," I think standards can cause us to concentrate on the wrong things. For one thing, the only ones who are accountable for student learning under the current system are teachers. Teachers must be accountable, don't get me wrong, but we need a system that allows students to be held accountable for what they learn as well. Otherwise, they come to think of themselves as passive receivers of information and not genuine thinkers who know what can be done with all that information.

Standards used in a broad context must be equally broad. Think of all the students we have in the country, from the briliantly gifted to the mentally disabled, and everyone in between. In order to hold the maximum number of them accountable under standards, the standards have to be somewhat low.
A child from an impoverished rural school simply isn't going to get the same education as a child from a posh suburban school system. Do you make the child from the rural school adhere to the high standards of the suburban school, or do you reduce the suburban student to the standards of the rural school? There's such a disparity of education in America right now that trying to hit the middle ground means ignoring too many from either end of the spectrum.

Standards are part of the answer, but they're not the whole answer. And right now, they're equivalent, IMO, to putting a Band-Aid on an amputation. Sure, it's better than nothing, but not much better.

As to reading, in particular, you have to define it: do you mean word recognition or comprehension? Lots of kids can read the words, but haven't a clue what they mean, and can't retain what they read because it has no meaning for them. To fix that, you need more than standards. We need also to look at other things . . . like revamping the Canon (is The Scarlet Letter really still the best way to teach symbolism?) to include more diverse, modern, and pertinent works with which students can connect, for instance.