I thought college was about not standardizing things, to get away from teaching the MSA, SAT, etc. The only two subjects where I can see standardization working is Math and Language. Otherwise, there is no point. Students should be able to pick their english and history course and look at the syllabus and take the class based on the textbooks. I don’t know about you but if I was taking english 100 and had to re-read a book that I already read, I would look at a different teacher for a different book. With science classes, its already standardized considering that there can be 400+ people registered for bio or chem 101.

Hey, are you talking about standardized testing for these courses? I heard a rumor about this earlier last year. Is there some sort of link to an article about this?

Before I can make an opinion, could you link us to an article or something?
While standard exams would be great for lower level science classes (thus making every student learn the same material instead of varying knowledge between students), they may take away from the random interests each student develops as the effect of having professors with varied interests.

If they mean “each class X has to have 1 type of this paper/project/experiment, 1 of this type, and 1 of that type, and a total of XYZ has to be written/completed/mastered, but how each teacher gets there is up to that prof” (my current experience at UMBC), then great! I had to change some assignments around to make sure skill Y was more clearly demonstrated, but the overall style of what I do doesn’t change.

If it means “each class has to use this text, assign precisely these things and use precisely these tests/grading-guides and be on the exact same schedule” (my experience at CCBC), then it would totally suck.

I think its more like “each class has to use this text, assign precisely these things and use precisely these tests/grading-guides and be on the exact same schedule” We’re currently investigating this rumor and there should be an article out about it in the next few weeks.