Overreliance on Standardised Examinations and Academic Metrics

GS – II |Education | Higher Education | University Governance | Recruitment and Selection

The Problem with Standardised Examinations

• From Limited Purpose to Overreach: There was a time in India when a single, national examination had a very limited and defined objective: to identify a relatively small number of officers, soldiers and engineers; and to achieve this objective with fairness throughout the entire country. The same mechanism used to select a few thousands has become the means of controlling many.
•  National Examinations Expansion: The National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET), Joint Entrance Examination (JEE), University Grants Commission National Eligibility Test (UGC NET), and other national examinations are being expanded to test millions of students studying various subjects including oncology, organic chemistry, history, and Punjabi literature. All of these tests will be administered via the same multiple-choice format.
• Uniformity Testing’s Shortcomings: While this form of testing was developed to achieve uniformity, it is actually used as an instrument for identifying the talents, logic, and analytical skills of students. Uniform testing fails to assess the presence or absence of each of these areas.
• Memorization versus Thinking Skills: Students come into a classroom with a lot of memorization-based testing, and very few of those students have done the type of broad, unguided reading that used to be expected of every student entering a classroom.
• Impact on Classrooms: Classroom discussions are less in-depth, students read with less comprehension, and teachers are less likely to welcome true questions from students (as opposed to just quoting) than they were before.
•  Examination and Learning: The way we take tests now has completely altered how classrooms were designed to operate. When students fail at taking a test it isn’t because they can’t think; it’s because the test doesn’t require thinking, it only requires mastering a method.

Let Departments Decide

• Departmental Examinations: Let each department decide. A single national body cannot know what makes up a “good” student in either literature or physics any better than the department which accepts that student.
• Academic Evaluation: The use of departmental exams provides the faculty with judgment, while providing the student with the opportunity to pursue an education that matches their abilities rather than being forced into a school based solely on a national ranking.
• Intellectual Interchange: Professorial appointments were once based on discussions with people who knew the work. It was an examination of judgment through intellectual interchange, not of facts.
• Academic Freedom: Teachers who were superb often went beyond the syllabus and were always ready for a dialogue.
• Intellectual Competence: The objective should be to select candidates for their intellectual competence, not for “cracking” the examination.

The Numbers Game

• Publication Counts and Research Scores: Publication counts and research scores are becoming more popular with selection committees.
• Market for Papers: The minimum number of publications required by many universities in order to be considered for promotion or appointment has created a “market” for papers instead of a “market” for ideas.
• Research Assessment: The 2018 University Grants Commission’s regulations have ended the API-based Performance Based Appraisal System (PBAS) and replaced it with an updated assessment model that includes research scores. However, academic performance continues to be measured in terms of how many items are published or presented.
• Doctorate Evaluation: While a candidate’s doctoral degree is typically allocated 30 points in the evaluation rubric used when evaluating candidates for teaching positions, virtually none of those 30 points reflect the quality of thought behind the dissertation; how rigorous the dissertation was; or what type of publications the candidate produced based on their dissertation.
• Scholarly Merit: The International Standard Book Number (ISBN) or International Standard Serial Number (ISSN) does not indicate that the work published is of high academic quality.
• Poorly Researched Articles: There are some magazines that have published articles in seven or eight different fields using the same magazine name, but do not provide an adequate system for submitting these articles to experts who can review them properly.
• Weak Doctoral Supervision: The supervision of doctoral studies has become weak; doctoral candidates are now submitting their dissertations along with a report by a supervisor who did not even bother to read the candidate’s dissertation.
• Viva Voce: The Viva Voce has become a mere formality to the point where those taking part view it as a laughing matter.
• Vice Chancellor Selection: The Vice Chancellor Search Committee has been seen asking candidates about the number of patents they possess. This is an irrelevant question for most fields except for a limited area of applied science.
•  Bias in Research Metrics: Scientist running large laboratories can put their names on each of their research candidate’s papers which results in an artificially inflated publication count compared to what a humanities scholar working alone could achieve.
•  Networking Rather Than Judgment: A large number of job offers made in Indian universities are based upon networking instead of judgment. In these instances, merit has never been used as a basis for evaluating candidates.

Way Forward

•  Decentralize Exams: Let faculties take over testing again and allow each institution select its own students based on how well they perform on these tests and how smart they are.
•  Peer Review Process Restoration: The process of peer review should be restored to peer evaluation and academic judgment, not point-scoring.
• Reduce Dependence on Metrics: The reliance on publication counts and research scores should be reduced because academic success is commonly measured through that which can be counted.
•  Improve Academic Assessment: Assess how well a student’s brain works during their thesis, the strength of their arguments, and the quality of their published works based on the thesis.
• Strengthen Academic Exchange: Restore intellectual exchange, extensive and unrestricted reading, classroom discussions, and teachers’ openness to being questioned.
•  Ensure Accountability: Hold your team accountable for results, give them more time, and provide the confidence to stand by their decisions without relying on numbers as a shield.
• Prioritise Intellectual Capability: The primary criterion should be intellectual capability of candidate rather than candidate’s ability to “pass” or “crack” the test.
• Hold Organizations Responsible: Society should hold organizations responsible for how well they judge things, rather than how high or low a score they give.

Conclusion

•  The decentralization of exams to individual departments, along with the restoration of peer review to the appointment process, is not a nostalgia-driven return. It’s an argument about what a university should do.
•  If we are to create universities that educate students’ minds, instead of calculating scores, then we must once again trust the academic judgments made by people working in those universities.
• The integrity of each person’s judgment will determine how they make decisions, and the public will eventually judge the quality of those judgments.

UPSC Mains Practice Question

Q. “If we want universities that form minds rather than calculate scores, we must restore our trust in the academic judgment of those who work within them.” Discuss the limitations of standardised examinations and numerical assessment in higher education. Suggest measures to restore academic judgment and accountability.

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