Colleges Resist Uniform Testing

The presidents of MIT, Tufts, and Boston University attacked a suggestion by a federal higher education commission chair to implement standardized testing of college students at a public meeting of the commission yesterday.

If this suggestion were implemented, Harvard students might once again face the kind of mandatory testing many of them experienced through state-wide exams in grade school. But Harvard “would be reluctant to accept any form of standardized testing,” Senior Director of Federal and State Relations Kevin Casey said in an interview yesterday.

“Standardized curricula or testing would limit our ability to educate,” MIT President Susan Hockfield said at a meeting of the U. S. Secretary of Education’s Commission on the Future of Higher Education in downtown Boston.

The 19-person commission was formed last year with the aim of creating a national strategy for post-secondary education. Last December, the commission’s chair, Charles Miller, suggested that introducing standardized testing at the college level would make colleges more accountable to their students and improve educational quality.

The federal government would enforce the testing by withholding student aid from schools that do not participate, said Miller, formerly Board of Regents chair of the University of Texas system.

University President Lawrence H. Summers, currently in India, was not present at yesterday’s meeting. But three other presidents of Boston area universities said in their speeches to the commission that standardized testing would hinder educational innovation.

Boston University President Robert A. Brown told the commission that a school’s own regulation of faculty expectations and grading policies, not a nationally administered test, is the appropriate way to assess educational quality.

Tufts President Lawrence S. Bacow said in his speech that standardized testing would not address the differences between institutions. “What works at Harvard or Tufts would not work at MIT, would not work at UMass,” he said in an interview yesterday.

A suggested federal database of individual college student records also sparked debate at the meeting.

The informational benefits of such a database would be outweighed by concerns about privacy, President of Bunker Hill Community College Mary L. Fifield said in her speech.

But former MIT president and commission member Charles M. Vest replied that the commission supports the creation of the database and would ensure that the appropriate precautions were taken to protect privacy.

Harvard Graduate School of Education student Jessica M. Bibeau, who spoke for three minutes during a public comment period, supported an alternative to the proposed testing.

“The purpose of this accountability system should not be to penalize a one-size-fits-all definition of poor performance, but rather to allow institutions to focus their efforts toward meeting their stated goals,” she said.

But most students who spoke sought to communicate to the commission the need for larger grants and cheaper loans, citing their own educational debt.

The commission of university leaders, CEOs, policymakers, and researchers will release a report in August with their recommendations.

—Staff writer Lois Beckett can be reached at lbeckett@fas.harvard.edu