Kohlberg and the University of Chicago

A former student sent me an email containing a link to W.C. Crain's 7th chapter of Theories of Development in which he discusses Kohlberg's stages of development.  In the opening paragraphs, Crain discusses the life of Lawrence Kohlberg and at one point he mentions that "in 1948, he enrolled at the University of Chicago, where he scored so high on admissions tests that he had to take only a few courses to earn his bachelor’s degree."  It struck me that his entrance to college along with the experience he had as a working man (apparently he was the second Engineer on a freighter helping transport Jews from Europe to Israel for several year after high school) would certainly give him the impetus to try to get his bachelor's degree so he could move on.  But I wonder if someone would have a similar option today.  (I emailed the dean of students at UofC to find out, hopefully I will have a definitive answer soon)

We have come to expect nearly everyone to go to college and obtain some type of degree, but I think at the same time it has become next to impossible to be granted that degree without taking a certain number of courses, regardless of the level of personal expertise or understanding of the field in which the degree is to be granted.  Perhaps I have grown too cynical of late, but I tend to think a great deal of that is tied to the economics of the issue.  If you were just granting degrees without forcing students to take a large amount of coursework first, your degree might not be seen as worth the fifty thousand dollars a year you are charging students to go there.  This would be a disaster for any school that is chasing rankings and the prestige and money that go with them.  It would also be the nail in the coffin for US News and World Report whose only profitable issue is the one in which they rank schools so everyone will know where to go, or try and go, in the fall.

Follow this backward to the instutionalization of the Carnegie Unit, the so called standard that was called for when someone decided that student experience in any one place had to be somehow comparable to student experience in another.  (An interesting discussion of the history of the Carnegie Unit can be found here)  Apparently it wasn't enough to have examinations designed by professors and other leaders in various fields, a seat-time component had to be introduced so that US News and World Report could make a profit on their magazine.

In watching a few students here and there, it is apparent that the seat-time system of comparison is at least as flawed as was the original one based on various examinations.  The fact of the matter is that students learning varies according to so many variables that pretending that they are going to have, or need, the same experience to master a certain subject or concept is rather absurd.  To me anyway.

So if we are going to continue to require degrees for various jobs, despite the fact that it is acknowledged on a wider and wider scale that degrees are not significant indicators of ability or sometimes even a similar background knowledge of skills, why shouldn't we go back to a system that would allow someone with a great deal of experience or knowledge in a certain subject to be granted a degree in their field if they pass certain examinations or demonstrate their mastery in some way?  If an accomplished writer decides after skipping college to return later in life to take some courses, will you force them to take Freshman Composition?

Please don't get me wrong, I am all for Freshman Composition, but only for the folks that need it.  (In point of fact, I am really only for it for the folks that want it, if a brilliant scientist finds out later in life that writing is more necessary than they imagined, and they likely will, they will either learn to write effectively enough or pay someone else to do it.  This creates jobs for English majors, something I am always in favor of and eliminates more extremely unwilling and miserable Freshman Comp. students thereby making the class more fun and perhaps even more valuable for us English majors.  If I were John Hodgman I would ask you to say thank you since I just solved that one nicely!)

Some school systems have created exams that allow students to test out of certain classes.  There is even some talk that the soon to be released Keystone Exams will allow that in Pennsylvania, but right now information is extremely hard to come by and relatively contradictory.  But if we must continue to place value in standardized tests and will continue to force children everywhere to take them, we ought to seriously consider using them to allow students to test out of some of the seat-time requirements which would create a real reward for doing well on standardized tests if they could then take more electives or perhaps have half the school day off to go and get a job and buy more ipods or iphones or isecondlives or whatever they want.