Oddly the Massachusetts engineering school I attended 50 years ago also had a live or die competency exam as a graduation requirement that 30% of students failed on the first try.You were then required to stay for an additional semester of remedial education before making another attempt.
https://web.wpi.edu/News/Journal/Spring97/plans-col.html
{{ For an incredible 13 years, life under the WPI Plan was dominated, not by projects or courses, but by the Competency Examination, the most daring, far-sighted and, perhaps, presumptuous of all the Plan’s original features.
The Comp was the Sword of Damocles hanging over every student’s head. At the same time, it was a spectacular rite of passage; the great common experience shared by every graduate of that period and the anticipated experience that focused the programs of those yet to graduate. Those who passed it developed a sense of self-confidence unequaled in times of peace.
The original WPI Plan offered total flexibility in course selection. Students and advisors could make up any program they wished. Qualification in a major field was established only by successful completion of the MQP and the Comp. A total of 12 units of courses or projects and an advisor’s approval were all that were needed to take the exam.
Early on, deep concern arose over the exam. The faculty of each department found they had to define just what sort of creature it was that they thought they were producing. What is a B.S.-level electrical engineer or chemist? Once, one could say it was someone who had passed a particular series of courses. Now we had to ask, for the first time, “Just what should a WPI graduate be able to do and how will we know if he or she can do it?” }}
For Civil Engineering, the Comp Exam was very similar to the state Professional Engineering licensing exam that Civil Engineers take once they’ve accumulated four years of relevant engineering experience after graduation.
intercst
6 Likes
At Harvard my best friends were a Hong Kong “orphan” street kid who had made it into an English language private school on account of his sheer genius, and a ferociously tough, poor, brilliant Boston Latin (https://www.bls.org/) kid who was also a Massachusetts Golden Gloves champion.
The Boston tradition of providing excellent schooling based solely on merit goes back to Puritan times. It is one of the reasons the USA became insanely successful.
The Hong Kong kid, after working in various advanced research centers, went home to Hong Kong and vanished from digital connection when Xi took over and repressed Hong Kong. The Boston Latin kid retired from an executive position at a rich corporation and is now tutoring poor kids in his old South Boston neighborhood. He told me he would have to move soon as his neighborhood was gentrifying him into “spiritual homelessness.”
d fb
3 Likes
Another “win” for the anti-“common core” standards mob. Figures they are putting the question up to a vote of the mob, rather than leaving it to people like the college admissions people, whose complaining about high school “graduates” who were incapable of doing college level work lead to the creation of “common core”.
Onward, to bantu education for the mob, because the most important thing about high school is football.
Steve
1 Like
There was an article in the Hartford paper about UConn cutting academic programs, I assume to free up more money for football.
intercst
I had not heard that, nor know what the reasoning is that may be behind it. I do recall, however, that, in the 2009 recession, some high level government people, like the Gov of CT, voluntarily took pay cuts. Someone asked the U Conn basketball coach if he would take a pay cut. He not only said “no”, he said “no” in the manner of “how dare you even suggest I take a cut in the millions I take from the students and taxpayers of this state, to coach people playing a kid’s game”. In most states, the highest paid government employee is not someone with a real job, like the Gov, or AG, but a football or basketball coach.
Steve
1 Like
I remember that.
I’d cut UConn head coach Jim Calhoun a little slack. He was making half the money of the coaches at other top schools even though he’d won 3 NCAA Men’s Basketball Championships.
intercst
Which has nothing to do with the absurd money being laid out for high school and college sport, vs something, anything, that is actually productive.
Steve