A Way to Finish Earlier

In September a group of high school graduates entering American University will come on campus in Washington, D.C., with a third of their college work already behind them. Getting these credits required just two days--the time it took to undergo a new series of tests that make it possible, for those who score satisfactorily, to save as much as two years of campus time and thousands in tuition and living costs.

Advanced Standing. College equivalency tests were first tried in 1943 by the U.S. armed forces, but they were never widely used and as the years passed they became obsolete. In 1961 Princeton's Educational Testing Service set out anew to devise a test designed for students who were entering college for the first time.

E.T.S. is the author of the familiar College Board tests and the somewhat less familiar Advanced Placement Examinations, which let able high school students skip certain required freshman courses. An advanced placement student still has to earn all of his credit hours for graduation on campus, which means that he has to work harder than his fellows. Now E.T.S. has worked out an exam that tests knowledge and achievement gained in modern, college-like high schools (or any other way) and determines its worth in terms of credit hours. The examination is based on nationwide tests of 2,600 students completing the second year of college in 1963 and 1964.

The questions, all multiple-choice, are aimed at ferreting out how well the student has assimilated a broad spectrum of knowledge. One question from the sample testing asked the student to identify a quotation "In a flash it came upon me that there was a reason for advancing poverty with advancing wealth . . ." as coming from John Jacob Astor, William Jennings Bryan, Thorstein Veblen, Lincoln Steffens or Henry George. The answer is Henry George, and research showed that more than half the students in the top one-fifth of those taking the test got it right, compared with only 8% of those in the bottom one-fifth.

Defining the Line. E.T.S. still has not publicly offered the test for general use, and American University heard about it only by an informal contact. In mailing out 1,000 acceptances for admission this spring, the university casually and undramatically offered "to recognize the achievements of well-prepared students" by giving them a chance to take the test for credit. Only 96 were sufficiently sharp-eyed to see the opportunity. American University will give as many as 39 undergraduate credit hours in English composition, history, social sciences, humanities, mathematics, and physical sciences, leaving only 82 more credit hours (two full years of study) to get a B.A.

Too few college administrators have yet heard of the tests to make the idea an open target for criticism. Some teachers are sure to say that construing education so narrowly as a matter of credits is to miss the point of the college experience. But the new test is only part of the continuing process of defining the line between colleges and ever-better high schools, and major curriculum changes are bound to take place. Some colleges will drop certain courses because they will find that freshmen are showing significantly higher levels of preparation than had been realized. Others will put more muscle into admission standards in particular fields. E.T.S.'s Dr. K. Patricia Cross, head of the project, feels that one result of the Comprehensive College Tests will be a gradual de-emphasis on credit hours as a way of measuring knowledge. "Europeans measure knowledge in terms of what the student knows," she says. "This will offer a new flexibility for the student who can demonstrate that he has knowledge by giving him credit regardless of how he got it."

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