UCLA says "NO" to prior learning

I'm not sure if I comletely disagree with this policy. Some credit for prior learning and test scores might be ok, but an entire degree obtained by these methods might not be ok. However, when it comes to the "organized supervised coursework in academic subjects" part might be a bit extreme. If this includes couses outside the class room, then distance learning is included and the result will be extremelly damaging. However, one can asume that a distance learning couse may be properly organized and supervised and therefore not covered by this policy. I wander how many traditional schools have similar policies?

 

Well isn't it both technically. If some one has a better understanding of the world around them woun't that make them have abetter understanding of both social and adademic issues?
or least so the agrgument goes.

are you saying you can't teach 44 year olds? I know there is data otherwise.
I must agree that the 44 year old may be at least as prepared or even better prepared in some matters..They still might not be as academically prepared if they have only focused on CLEPS and GRE's(e.g. unfimilar with the concept of writing a paper in proper academic form( I will grant you that is a fairly easy concept to pick up but scary when you've never done it)).

It might show how well a student does in a diverse population with many different instructors. Depending on the size of the school some departmentd only have a handful or less of instructors for a subject.

The downfall to that is that standardized tests are not the best indicators of success, for example the SATS have been dropped by a few schools as a enterance requirement. Not to mention the number of B-schools that don't require the GMAT. The Miller has long been suspect to have any usefulness in graduate sucess.

 

And public law and medical schools?

 

Any graduate program that isn't 100% open-admissions looks beyond simple possession of an accredited degree.

I don't think that we know enough about what UCLA's policy really is in practice is to say very much about it. After all, UCLA allows its own undergraduates to receive credit by examination, and I doubt if UCLA graduate programs are telling us that they don't accept UCLA graduates.

Of course, UCLA doesn't appear to offer its own students credit for passing CLEP exams. They might believe (and I'd probably agree with them) that the ability to beat multiple choice exams isn't a sufficiently robust assessment of university level work. But it's hard for me to believe that their admissions office rejects every application with any CLEP credit in it. I think that I agree with Oxpecker that this warning is probably aimed at people who try to test out of entire degrees.

I don't think that I agree with that. Using your chemistry major example, the freshman and sophomore years are when students take their introductory chemistry, physics and mathematics sequences. These subjects can't just be blown off, they are difficult courses and they provide the basic foundation for the student's entire subsequent career.

I suppose that I don't have a lot of problem with testing out of that kind of stuff... IF the assessment instrument is sound. At the very least, that means examinations for introductory chemistry that are impossible for somebody who knows little or nothing about chemistry to pass. And equally important, the examinations have to be able to successfully capture the laboratory and practical aspects of the subject.

 

Well, yes. That's true.

How about this? No school should object to a student testing out of all lower division general education requirements.

 

I agree. If you check this link, you will find that the UCLA language of concern dates back many years, to at least the 1995-1997 General Catalog. So it predates the advent of modern DL, and may be an artifact of an earlier era.

I seriously doubt that UCLA would automatically dismiss a current RA degree from Excelsior, COSC, or TESC. I see no indication that other UC schools have any such policy. On the contrary, a recent survey of 2001-2002 Excelsior grads shows that some were attending grad school at UC Davis and UC San Diego (I can't seem to link to this survey, but you can find it by entering "Graduate Schools Attended by Excelsior College Graduates" into Google)

Also, note that the UCLA Nursing School currently grants 30 units of credit for completing Excelsior College Examinations.

 

I looked at UC Berkeley's site and could find no equivalent restriction on credit via testing.

I also found out how UCLA defines a "doctorate" for post-doc appointments; a doctorate, e.q. Ph.D. or M.D. that requires at least 90 semester hours of college to gain admission. So I GUESS a J.D. is a "doctorate" to UCLA...

 

Since most JD programs of which I am aware requre 90 semester hour or the equivalent. I'd say that you were right.

 

I guess I don't know much about CLEP, but is it possible now? I mean, for somebody with no knowledge of chemistry to pass Chemistry CLEP? Not "World Population", "Drug and Alcohol Abuse" or somesuch, chemistry? Some exams (just like some traditional classes) are ridiculously easy, but is it really possible to earn a whole degree with those only?

 

Re: Re: UCLA says "NO" to prior learning

From the 2005-2007 catalog
http://www.registrar.ucla.edu/catalog/UCLACatalog2005-07.pdf

Taken together, these quotes seem to indicate that these aren't challenge exams at all, rather, they are structured independent study courses. This seems to suggest that the issue of new learning, not the credibility of the exams, is the deciding factor.

...and of course the (probably correct) belief that passing a CLEP test doesn't indicate the same level of knowledge as passing a UCLA course in the same subject. Unfortunately, or fortunately, that has never been the point of CLEP (or DSST, or ECE, or...) tests. The point is to indicate the same level of understanding as the student who passes the course at the abstractly typical school. Whether this is an indictment of CLEP tests or the typical school (or neither) is probably up for debate (although, in my opinion, based upon the development and norming of CLEP tests, I would argue that you and others who dismiss CLEP tests would be better served focusing on the achievement level of the average student rather than the tests that measure said level.)

Or neither. I would guess it is a response to mills claiming to grant degrees for life experience and claim accreditation through, oh, I don't know, Liberia or some island maybe. (Okay, so I am just speculating, but so are you and Gert. Still, considering UCLA acceptance of Excelsior College nursing exams, the sneaky methods of today's diploma mills, and the overall landscape of today's educational environment, there is some support for my position.)

Tony

 

Here on Degreeinfo, we have several individuals who had acquired prior knowledge of a subject and so were able to pass CLEP examinations without the need for further study. This should not be misconstrued to mean that these people had no knowledge of the exam subject. So, it is not possible for someone without any knowledge of chemistry to pass the chemistry CLEP, or any other CLEP.

The point of equivalency tests, such as CLEP is to test your prior knowledge of a subject (regardless of where you learned the subject). I lived in South America for two years and, upon returning to the US, petitioned the California State University that I was attending to allow me to challenge the three required second-year Spanish courses. I took three tests (not CLEPs, but more like the type that UCLA uses) and was given 9 units for three hours of testing (I scored 100% on all three exams).

Can you earn an entire degree just by CLEP? Not likely. Now, if this one were to add GRE subject exams into the mix and use those credits at Excelisior College or Charter Oak State College, then it would be possible to complete an accredited degree completely through testing (and, indeed, this has been done by some). Lawrie Miller's BA in 4 Weeks is dedicated to the idea of earning bachelors degrees by examination.

 

I don't know very much about CLEP (or any of the other exams) either.

Is it possible for individuals to pass exams in any subject with only minimal knowledge? I don't know. All I know is what I've read here on Degreeinfo and similar places, where a number of people have posted about all the exams they passed without any significant study or previous exposure to the subject.

Do these questionable exams, assuming that they exist, include chemistry? Again, I don't know. (But I'm willing to bet that there aren't any chemistry lab exams, which is another issue I raised.)

My own feeling, which I'd guess is shared by UCLA as well, is that if a student is going to get university credit for a subject, then that subject should have some content.

People do claim to have earned massive blocks of credit or even quick degrees without having very much previous exposure to their subject, such as prior independent study or on-the-job training.

My impression is that either the accounts are accurate, in which case the PLA testing regimes don't appear very credible, or else the accounts are colored by hyperbole, in which case they are doing PLA schools a real disservice by making them look like accredited degree mills.

There have been several threads on this subject, but since the search function is dead, it's hard to find them. Here's one in which Lawrie Miller gave me a flaming:

http://forums.degreeinfo.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1118&perpage=30&pagenumber=1

 

The difficulty with earning a degree entirely by CLEP comes from the inavailability of sufficient exams to satisfy the breadth and depth requirements (depth, primarily), particularly in one's major area of study. The CLEP program wasn't designed with the "Big Three" in mind.

As Tony deftly notes, however, it CAN be done when other exams are factored in. I did my B.S. in Business with 115 of the 120 credits, ultimately, coming from exams. (I say "ultimately" because I took courses, but they were replicated by exams worth more credits in more areas.) I did my B.A. (concentration in Sociology) by taking just two more exams: an upper-division CLEP and the GRE Subject Exam in Sociology.

Can multiple-choice exams be passed by people without knowledge of the subject matter? It depends on what level of knowledge we're talking about. Obviously, one would have to understand some of the terms on the test, but to what extent does one need to master the subject matter? I suspect test-taking ability has a significant role--it can replace some lack of knowledge--just as a lack of test-taking ability can hinder the display of one's knowledge.

CLEP-like tests are normed against subject groups. If you take a Principles of Economics test, your score is compared to a control group of students who passed such a course successfully (and then took the CLEP). If the test is reliable, your score should demonstrate the same level of knowledge as someone who took the course and got that CLEP score.

The American Council on Education issues credit recommendations for these exams, including a recommended "passing" score. I see that it is 50 for all CLEP tests now, which is a change. The recommendations for DANTES exams still vary.

Some schools use the ACE recommendations, some set their own standards for each exam, and some have decided to accept a score of 50 or above (normed around a 20-80 scale, with 50 always being the median). Thus, they only award credit if you score somewhere in the upper half, compared to the group that took the course. This is a stiff test, considering that the students in the control group took and passed a course in the subject first!

(Other than 50, the scores reported are not percentiles, so a 45 on one test might be a better or worse score than a 45 on another.)

On another note, the CLEP and DANTES programs are administered by the Education Testing Service, pretending to be non-profit. (They're very, very profit-oriented, they just don't pay taxes. They also operate the for-profit Chauncey Group. All of it is under the non-profit College Board, which is really the ETS. Get it? And how can a non-profit own a for-profit business without being for-profit itself? Ahh, it's legal!)

Finally, and not exactly on topic, the ETS and the Chauncey Group (named, by the way, for their incredibly racist founder) also sell examination preparation materials! This is an incredible conflict of interest. First, they foist the testing programs on the students and universities. But the universities get it all for free; the students pay for everything. This made the SAT almost universally accepted (since the schools got a free screening tool, even if that tool is horrible at its task). Once the students--and their parents--had to take on the examinations, ETS sold them the practice materials. This is the moral equivalent of addicting a person to a drug against their will and then selling them that drug. Bah!

 

I have a little different take on this issue. UCLA can and does set its own academic standards and academic standards for admission, which are necessarily inextricably linked. I, for one, think that it is a good thing that they publish these standards in such detail. It saves folks the trouble of applying, paying a fee, sending transcripts, and waiting for months, only to find out that they have been rejected, usually without ever knowing the precise reason why. It also gives folks a better opportunity of challenging these decisions directly--within the system, as it were, or in court.

It is virtually certain, in my view, that there are other admissions departments at schools who have more applicants than seats or who see themselves as upholding "high academic standards" that make the same decisions as UCLA, except that they don't publish them.

Whether you agree with their judgments or not, UCLA has at least acted in the spirit of full disclosure.

marilynd

 

Like Rich, I'm appalled at ETS's domination of secondary education. I also got a lot out of them for my undergraduate degree (60 credits for GREs in Lit and Education).

In Maine now, instead of the state-mandated tests for student progress, the Department of Education is proposing to use the SATs. The argument [sic] is "Well, a majority of the students take the tests anyway." And, I suppose, ETS has all those nice preparatory materials. (The first ones are free.)

It's not really ETS's fault that the D of Ed chosen such a wildly inappropriate measurement (most students take the Maine state driver's license exam too), but they did provide the occasion of sin.

On the other hand . . .

I was sorry to see the number of GRE subject tests dwindle over the years, since they did offer Excelsior and COSC students a more-or-less reasonable assessment of a large body of knowledge gained through independent study for a truly reasonable cost.

In fact, I'd like to see those schools offer credit (and a major) for a decent grade on ETS's new Major Field Tests, which cover more subjects--and are easier, since they are normed against all majors, not just those considering graduate school.

They could raise the bar somewhat to compensate for the unreliability of a single assessment, and the undeniable fact that a self-directed, broad-and-shallow strategy makes for more efficient preparation than pursuing the requirements of a major. (But I think Excelsior's 80th percentile is way out of line.)

On the other hand, there are people with RA degrees walking the streets today who scored in the bottom quartile of those exams. Like everything in life, a large part of getting a B&M degree is just showing up, which is by definition the part that gives distance learners a hard time.

So I doubt that awarding big chunks of credit for Major Field Tests (or smaller amounts for CLEP or DANTES, etc.) would dilute the concentration of academic knowledge among college graduates.

I guess there's a contradiction in there somewhere, but if someone can demonstrate what is by apparent consensus the equivalent of an academic major, I think they should get the credit for it.