100% Failure Rate On University of Liberia's Admission Exam 308
slew writes "Apparently none of the 24K+ students who sat for the 2013 Liberia University entrance exam got a passing mark, and fewer than a hundred managed to pass either the english (pass level 70%) or math (pass level 50%) sections required to qualify to be part of the normal class of 2k-3k students admitted every year... Historically, the pass rate has been about 20-30% and in recent years, the test has been in multiple-guess format to facilitate grading. The mathematics exam generally focuses on arithmetic, geometry, algebra, analytical geometry and elementary statistic and probability; while the English exam generally focuses on grammar, sentence completion, reading comprehension and logical reasoning. However, as a testament to the over-hang of a civil war, university over-crowding, corruption, social promotion, the admission criteria was apparently temporarily dropped to 40% math and 50% English to allow the provisional admission of about 1.6K students. And people are calling foul."
One more reason that such systems make no sense. (Score:3, Insightful)
If you have to have an admissions exam for a university, access to any university, or to secondary level education, something is wrong with the education system. Doubly so if it gives rise to the faulty concept of educational streaming(the concept of shaping people's entire lives through test scores and controls on education acccess).
Re:One more reason that such systems make no sense (Score:3, Insightful)
Sounds like somebody didn't make it into a good college.
Re:One more reason that such systems make no sense (Score:5, Insightful)
If you have to have an admissions exam for a university, access to any university, or to secondary level education, something is wrong with the education system. Doubly so if it gives rise to the faulty concept of educational streaming(the concept of shaping people's entire lives through test scores and controls on education access).
What's the alternative? Let anyone study anything?
In countries where universities are heavily subsidized, it's too expensive to pay several more years (and the most expensive ones, due to labs, equipment and higher paid teachers) for people who have a proven an inability or unwillingness to study.
And the alternative, let anyone in and raise the price to control the excess of population, is much less fair than exams.
Eventually it will be possible to receive the entire university education online and almost free. At that point I will advocate for free access. Until that happens, if you want my taxes to pay for 9/10 of a kid's university, I'm going to ask for proof he is capable and willing to study.
Re:What is the real problem here? (Score:5, Insightful)
If nobody passes the test, then it seems to me that the problem is with the test, not the people. What are they going to do? Close the university? The test isn't the goal, selecting students for admission is the goal.
This is just another story that should not even have been posted here.
1 - There are people in the other courses even if no one gets in this year.
2 - The objective is not to select the least incompetent but to select people who posses the knowledge required to adequately receive the teachings given in the first year.
Re:One more reason that such systems make no sense (Score:5, Insightful)
When there are more qualified applicants than available slots, you need to limit the number you admit to supportable levels.
On the other hand, you shouldn't let unqualified people that just don't have the requirements because they can't succeed, and will just be wasting resources, especially when there aren't enough slots for the qualified ones.
In this case, there were no qualified applicants. Do you expect them to repeat grade school & high school math and teach remedial English just so they could admit new 'students'? That's a waste the colleges resources. Colleges and Universities are Advanced or Higher education. If you don't have the lesser ones yet, you can't be taught the next level. It's like trying to build a skyscraper without a foundation. It will fail and topple, wasting a lot of time, effort, and other resources.
So no, I can't agree with your opinion that it's a failure of a university to have an entrance exam. Rather, if it's any ones fault, it's a failure of the prior education system or students that makes an exam necessary.
Re:One more reason that such systems make no sense (Score:5, Insightful)
And what's that about educational streaming? I didn't do too well in highschool (was more interested in computers and playing the guitar). After "gratuating" I spent a year or two doing silly jobs, then I got tired of i and a few exam for the subjects i had ignored in highschool, but needed to get admitted to the universities. Also, I took something which I think is might be a bit like the US SAT (and got high scores) to make sure I would be admitted, while other people had extra going-to-uni-points due to work experience. No streamlining there.
It's much worse in countries where you have to pay to get an education, which means that there are young people who can't afford going to university (or college) even though they might be better suited for it than their dumb but rich neighbours,
Someone else is bad at math, too (Score:3, Insightful)
For those of you who know something about statistics, consider this math problem:
A sample group of 24,000 students who think they have what it takes to go to a university take the entrance exam. Out of those 24,000, none of them pass the exam.
Let event A be a randomly selected student from this population passing the exam. Find the maximum value of P(A) that would keep the results of the sample group above within a 95% confidence interval.
Then, once you've done that, think long and hard about the reasons why nobody passed the test.
Re:One more reason that such systems make no sense (Score:2, Insightful)
All the uni has to do is only accept the top nn% of students, taking the rep of each student's alma mater and the student's other accomplishments (including having the persistence & drive to have overcome major obstacles to their education) into account -- basically what the top American universities do, as many no longer require SAT scores.
That method tends to work much better for identifying which students are bright, willing to study and work hard than relying on standardized testing. A lot of this is simply that being talented at taking standardized tests, studying how to perform well on them, certain disabilities affecting performance with a question type (like essay or multiple-choice), and so forth can have a *huge* impact on the test results. That's why so many major universities have stopped requiring SAT scores and rely more on the student's history.
Also, don't forget that a college education wasn't intended to be vocational or a matter of fact memorization as in high school, which is what online classes are good for -- and a student is missing out on the main purpose if he/she is handling college that way. College is best for giving the student the personal experience & knowledge that they'd otherwise have to travel the world for a few years to achieve, and that we can't truly learn just through reading, watching videos, or communicating remotely -- it takes dealing with different kinds of people on a daily basis when still young enough to have malleable beliefs, reacting to ideas they'd never considered, seeing others react and discussing it at length... The person returns home a much wiser, more knowledgeable citizen that is harder for politicians or charismatic authority figures to manipulate, better-equipped to handle personal or societal crises, more able to see the most likely long-term results if a politician is elected or law is passed, far more capable of grasping why people do things or act in ways they'd never consider & knowing how to help or deal with them...
Or, as someone I saw put it once: it's the training-wheels period for being a great adult citizen likely to improve their society, not just live in it.
Maybe it would be better for you to say that you'll be willing to help foot the bill for *vocational* education, as that's more the kind of "college" you're thinking of -- it's remotely not as beneficial for society as a genuine education is (IF done right via having students take a wide variety of classes they might otherwise overlook), but it'll churn out more obedient, good employees.
Re:One more reason that such systems make no sense (Score:5, Insightful)
mod parent up (where are the mod points when you need them)
I think this exactly what OP meant. Secondary school should have an exit exam that is the input into your university qualification. In Germany you have three tracks each ending respectively at grade 9, 10 and 12 (used to be 13). If you take the Gymnasium track (12) and finish the exit exam you can go the the university, no questions asked. Few degrees require minimum score, such as medicine, but these are the exception. (To complete the info, the other two tracks are geared towards apprenticeships.)
In the states you can sort of get through high school without too much effort. That is basically why SAT was invented and why you have basic courses for all degrees, such as English 101. The US school system is not very good at fostering high achieving students, they focus on getting most people to average education and the "no kid left behind" policy is not helping either. I am not saying that it is bad per se, but at some point the slow learners are slowing down the bright ones.
Before anybody complains, I saw both systems first hand...
Re:One more reason that such systems make no sense (Score:5, Insightful)
You're just coming from different viewpoints. Universities in Germany are overwhelmingly financed by the state. As such, it's reasonable to ask that they admit students according to a objective, measurable standard as opposed to "whomever they like".
The latter would open the door wide for corruption, it has to be tempting for a private university to admit the children of well-known rich people, for example, both for the PR, and for the potential funding. That's incompatible with a meritocracy.
A anonymously graded entry-exam would be fine. But in my experience, the admission-process to many private universities is not really anonymous, and it seems to me the scope for corruption and basically choosing the richest kid rather than the best-qualified one, is high. (plenty of mediocre sports-stars seems to get in no problem, for example)
That's fine if you see university as a private institution that exists to do whatever it wants to do, including maximize profit. It's more of a problem if your univiersities are publicly funded and exist in order to educate students, prioritizing the best-qualified ones.
Re:One more reason that such systems make no sense (Score:4, Insightful)
The economic/employment viewpoint is certainly a valid one, and I agree with you to a great extent, but it's good to look at the civic one as well. Ideally, maybe a great portion of the people out of high school should go to a vocational school first, then go work, make some money, gain some experience, and only then at some point spend some time at university to gain a better understanding of the world. With MOOCs now, this should be easier hopefully.
Re:One more reason that such systems make no sense (Score:5, Insightful)
....if you want my taxes to pay for 9/10 of a kid's university, I'm going to ask for proof he is capable and willing to study.
Until it is your kid trying to get into university. Maybe not yours per se, but millions of other parents whose attitude is, "I pay taxes for this, let my spoiled brat in."
Re:FP (Score:4, Insightful)
No, you're reading another white man accusing the black Africans of blaming white men, even though nobody has blamed white men, so would the pair of you stop being so bloody racist, please? The university is blaming the Liberian school system and the government, who presumably haven't been quick enough to rebuild bombed-out schools, train replacements for murdered teachers etc.
The university isn't willing to let a war that ended a decade ago be an excuse -- this is exactly the opposite of what you accuse them of, you pair of small-minded, patronising bigots.
Re:One more reason that such systems make no sense (Score:4, Insightful)
Here in the UK Oxford and Cambridge have entrance exams, .... certainly in the case of Oxford and Cambridge, owe more to tradition than to any serious requirement for additional assessment.
No it is a serious assessment. If Oxbridge were satisfied with top grades at A-level, they would be vastly over-filled, and there is nothing to differntiate the applicants, so they can and do set a higher standard for admission. It has become too easy to get a top grade at A-level (thanks to teacher assessment, league tables, and the exams simple getting easier).
When my son was taking A-levels I showed him my old A-level maths papers. While some new areas of maths had been introduced (and some dropped), he commented that where comparable my papers were harder than his. Some of the maths I did at A-level he did not do until the university first or second years. I took the Cambridge entrance exam back then and it was much harder than A-levels - we did two terms of futher study after A-levels just for that exam.