Tuesday October 1, 2013 year: 133 No. 78
the student voice of
The Ohio State University
www.thelantern.com
thelantern Alutto: Standardizing college education ‘very difficult’
sports
Liz Young Campus editor young.1693@osu.edu
Running the field
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Braxton Miller returned as the Buckeyes’ starting quarterback, running for 198 yards and 4 touchdowns.
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The pros and cons of instituting a standardized college exit test are prompting various reactions from members of the Ohio State community. In an interview with The Lantern Sept. 23, OSU Interim President Joseph Alutto said the fact that college graduates do not have one standardized skill set is in some ways a “national problem.” “We have such variance in the quality of the educational experience,” Alutto said. “The variance in the quality of the student experience from institution to institution is astonishing, and so you understand the drive for some standardized measure so that people can have a confidence that whatever they’re investing is worthwhile, but it’s a very difficult thing to do.” One such voluntary test is the College Learning Assessment, CLA+ for short, which approximately 200 U.S. colleges and universities administer, according to The Wall Street Journal. According to the exam’s website, the test allows recent graduates to “use their verified scores to provide potential employers with evidence of their work readiness skill,” giving students something measurable to show for themselves beyond grade point average. Some OSU students said standardized tests are already prevalent in college and help employers see which students faced a tough curriculum. “I’m a pharmacy student, so I have to take the PCAT (Pharmacy College Admission Test) anyway,” said Mike Kowalczyk, a fourth-year in pharmaceutical sciences. “It would be a good idea because OSU is a tougher school than most and it would help show that.” The 90-minute long CLA+, created by New York
Courtesy of MCT
Some members of the OSU community have been reacting in various ways to the possibility of a standardized exit test. City-based nonprofit Council for Aid to Education, is based on a 1600-point scale. By asking performance-based questions, the exam evaluates critical thinking, problem solving, scientific and quantitative reasoning, writing and the ability to critique and make arguments. There are some students who believe a single standardized test like the CLA+ is too arbitrary of a benchmark because of the diverse nature of skills that college students have. “How is an art major going to be able to do the same things that a history major or a CSE major
is going to be able to do?” said Mitch Gerhart, a second-year in business administration. “There are so many different majors and so many different jobs that I don’t know how it would gauge anything.” Alutto expressed a similar concern. “A student passionate about art is going have a different set of skills than someone who is interested in engineering or someone whose passion is poetry or Middle East literature or psychology or business,” he said. There are also other groups that have created tests to objectively test student performance. The Lumina Foundation, an independent, private foundation focused on higher education success based in Indianapolis and the MacArthur Foundation, an independent foundation based in Chicago that focuses on increasing knowledge, have both designed knowledge standardization and skill testing measures for graduates, and some companies, such as General Mills Inc. and Procter & Gamble Co., use their own applicant assessment tests. One incentive for instituting a test is to form an objective indicator of student success. According to a report by The Economist last year, the average college GPA increased to 3.11 in 2006 from 2.52 in the 1950s and the average number of A’s distributed by professors has increased as well, leading some to believe grades may no longer be a fair indicator. Other students, though, said adding a test to the post-graduation job search only adds challenges. “When there’s such diverse offering of majors, how are you going to have one standardized test prove what they’ve learned? No job is a test — you don’t take tests for your job,” said Matt Janette, a fourth-year in international business and Arabic. “It’s ridiculous to add to the amount of studying that students already have to do, with the amount
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University Police receives ‘stamp of approval’
Chef 2 Chainz
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In his cookbook, 2 Chainz gives advice such as wearing a Versace apron while making teriyaki salmon.
campus
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#AJO: Pay it forward
The death of an 18-year-old college student inspired her parents to start a movement of paying kindness forward.
weather high 81 low 61 partly cloudy
W 82/61 mostly sunny TH 81/63 showers F 81/63 t-storms SA 80/55 partly cloudy www.weather.com
Dave Dziak Lantern reporter dziak.5@osu.edu The Ohio State University Police Division has recently been recognized as an elite player in U.S. law enforcement. The Division became one of the 59 accredited college law enforcement agencies nationwide, a recognition less than 10 percent of the 680 college level agencies receive, according to a Division announcement in early September. The accreditation lasts for three years, with annual reports to be submitted each year, according to a university press release. The Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies, Inc., is a nonprofit organization that accredits police departments across the country and has international representation with countries including Canada and Mexico. CALEA is also responsible for developing standards and best practices for law enforcement agencies which gives a “leading edge for agencies to use” in writing and following procedural information, CALEA deputy director Craig Hartley said. One of the main reasons departments seek accreditation is to provide “elite public safety” and avoid “paper tigers,” which means a policy that is on paper but isn’t enforced, to ensure the division is following the policies it puts forth, Hartley said. “It’s a real testament to service,” Hartley said of
Daniel Chi / For The Lantern
The Ohio State University Police Division recently became one of the 59 accredited college law enforcement agencies nationwide. OSU’s accreditation. The CALEA accreditation process involves five steps: enrollment, self-assessment, on-site assessment, commission review and decision and maintaining compliance and reaccreditation. The initial accreditation fee was $8,400 and the annual continuation fee for OSU will be $4,065, University Police Deputy Chief Richard Morman, who was the person in charge of orchestrating the accreditation process, said in an email.
OSU began the process in August 2010, but its involvement with CALEA started long ago. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, CALEA selected OSU’s University Police as “Field Review Agency,” which meant OSU was essentially looked at as an example, Morman said. It wasn’t until University Police Chief Paul Denton took over in 2006, though, that OSU began to
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Campaign gets students ‘moo-ving’ to drink milk Dave Dziak Lantern reporter dziak.5@osu.edu For many students, going to college equates to cutting back on calcium, but some Ohio State investigators want to change the pattern. An OSU campaign to get students to consume more dairy products ended in September after “positively impacting calcium intake in students,” according to principal investigator Carolyn Gunther. The campaign, “Calcium Keeps You Moo-ving,” aimed to inform students of the health benefits that come with consuming dairy products and lasted from the beginning of school year to early September. The campaign reached about 5,000 people a day, totalling approximately 80,000 people, according to project manager Jamie Seger. Some OSU students were involved with the campaign as well. “It was kind of cool. This campaign was different in the sense that it was a social media campaign,” said Brittney Batcho, a fourth-year in human development and family science, who assisted with the campaign. The campaign recruited the help of some OSU athletes, including basketball player Aaron Craft, who was quoted in one promotional poster
saying, “Chocolate milk is my favorite drink. I drink it for its recovery benefits after a workout and because it tastes phenomenal!” The American Dairy Association contributed $50,000 for funding for research and collaborated on promotional materials, Gunther said. Batcho, who is pursuing a minor in nutrition, said the campaign was primarily geared toward freshmen because when students come to campus, they don’t always have dairy products immediately at their disposal. “When kids leave home, you see a precipitous drop in diet quality,” said Gunther, an assistant professor of human sciences. The problem is access, said Gunther, who worked on a milk vending machine study for the past several years. “They lose easy accessibility to milk and dairy products,” Gunther said. For her study, milk vending machines were placed in buildings across campus such as Baker Hall, Drackett Tower and Taylor Tower. According to Gunther, the study showed students with easier access to milk and dairy products were more likely to consume them and thus consume more calcium.
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