Thanks to college inflation, Grade Point Averages (GPAs) don’t reveal as much as they once did. The percentage of As given by college and university professors has nearly tripled between 1940 and 2008, according to a 2012 study of 200 four-year educational institutions. Even a college diploma is more a mark of “social class than an indicator of academic accomplishment,” stated a co-author of the study, as quoted by the Wall Street Journal.
As a consequence, major employers from Procter & Gamble to General Mills have ceased relying upon the GPA as an indicator of potential job success. In a parallel trend, more students are enrolling in Massively Open Online Courses (MOOCs); they are learning something, but it is often not clear how much. The marketplace is crying out for a means to test peoples’ critical thinking skills, whether they graduate from a traditional four-year college or not.
The Council for Aid to Education has stepped in with a new assessment test that is rapidly gaining market acceptance. This academic year, some 200 colleges will administer Collegiate Learning Assessment tests to create objective, benchmarked report cards measuring college students’ critical thinking skills.
The CLA+ test constitutes yet another force eroding the traditional model of higher education. Writes the Journal:
The new voluntary test, which the nonprofit behind it calls CLA+, represents the latest threat to the fraying monopoly that traditional four-year colleges have enjoyed in defining what it means to be well educated. …
The CLA+ will be open to anyone — whether they are graduating from a four-year university or have taken just a series of MOOCs — and students will be allowed to show their scores to prospective employees.
Four-year educational institutions have long functioned as credentialing entities, certifying that its graduates have mastered certain competencies. But many institutions are failing in that regard. (For an example close to home, witness the case of Norfolk State University, where the board of visitors fired President Tony Atwater last week. Among other problems, according to the Associated Press, NSU has been barred by the Virginia Board of Nursing from accepting new students into its associate degree nursing program because of low pass rates on the national licensing exam.)
Imagine what will happen if young people don’t need a college sheepskin to enter the white-collar job market. Imagine if they could obtain their skills and credentials through MOOCs or hybrid programs — and save thousands of dollars in tuition and fees used to sustain tenured professors and bloated academic bureaucracies. Elite institutions probably have little to fear. A CLA+ won’t replace a sheepskin from the University of Virginia or William & Mary any time soon. But the leaderships of second- and third-tier institutions need to think good and hard how they will cope with the coming disruption. For a university like NSU, its long-term survival could be at stake.