THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
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OPINION
WWW.KANSAN.COM
OUR OPINION
THURSDAY, APRIL 20. 2006
College exit exams have no place
The government is on to us, or so it seems.
Concerns have mounted about the competence of college graduates. That, and a perceived slackening in competitiveness with higher education institutions elsewhere in the world, prompted our government to take action. From this, two predictable outcomes occurred: A committee was formed, and its solution involved more testing.
Last fall, the U.S. Secretary of Education created the Commission for the Future of Higher Education. Its purpose is to analyze and make suggestions on how to improve the nation's colleges and universities.
Charles Miller, the commission's chairman, has publicly advocated the implementation of an exit exam for graduates in order to gauge students' progress. He said this method would provide better information for the American public so people get their money's worth in investing in public education. No doubt there needs to be a high level of transparency in the higher education system. And yes, students being held accountable for what they learn isn't a bad idea.
Nonetheless, inherent flaws immediately become apparent when considering this option. One must take into account the considerable financial and logistical burden created by these exams. Also, believing a single test used to measure institutions across the nation with different goals, standards, fields of study and challenges seems ludicrous. Supporters
Issue: Required aptitude tests for graduating college students
of the measure say it can be done because improvements in testing practices now are able to measure an important set of skills to be acquired in college: Critical thinking, analytic reasoning, problem solving and written communications. But this does not take into account creative thinking, social aptitude and other valued forms of knowledge. Really, can testing ever be improved to the point where it negates any doubt on whether it could successfully quantify knowledge gained?
Stance: This isn't high school. How can one standard exam test the range of different skills and career fields that students study?
We appreciate the goals of the commission,which are to improve the standards of our nation's universities in order to remain globally competitive and accountable to every tax-paying citizen. However, this proposal brings about more questions than answers at this point in time. Instead,the commission needs to identify a meaningful way of reporting student achievement while avoiding the trap of an oversimplified national standard.
- Malinda Osborne for the editorial board
Free for All callers have 20 seconds to speak about any topic they wish Kansan editors reserve the right to omit comments. Slanderous and obscene statements will not be printed. Phone numbers of all incoming calls are recorded.
Free for All Call 864-0500
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So I just waited around in a frat until 4 a.m. for a guy that doesn't even know I exist. Can my day get any
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Go ahead and replace that tired, overused Playboy on your nightstand with a kiosk 34.
Is it sad if you cuss while you're praying to God for forgiveness for cussing?
Straight Awareness Week failed because the straight people didn't flaunt their straightness as much as the gay people flaunt their gayness. So now we're going to have Straight Awareness
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Month
It goes on and on and on. Yeah, Deion Sanders,
1995. It goes on and on and on.
So, I shaved my cat last night.
Delta Force is just mad
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because they can't win an election, no matter how hard they try.
I now know why we lost to Bradley. Julian Wright wears jean shorts. Bench
him.
I lost my mp3 player. if anyone has found a black iRiver, not iPod, iRiver, Please e-mail losmyriver@yahoo.com There is a dash rowward
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cash rew
So I just read the article about the guy that killed the 10-year-old girl and then I found him on Myspace. Does that freak body also run?
I just want to know why KU continues to give John Randle a scholarship to go around bearing up on other
anybody els
Could the person who puts the Sudukus in the paper not put anymore one stars on Tuesday, Thursday. I hate my meteorol-
people
ogy clas
I don't regret my abortion.
Chuck Norris died 10 years ago, but the Grim Reaper can't get up the courage to tell him.
Whoever invented the Super Nintendo is amazing, and who ever created Bomberman is Jesus.
COMMENTARY
Put politics aside and unite for cheaper education
I'm sure that it's not surprising to anyone who is reading this, but our humble University is experiencing a substantial decline in the funding that it receives from the state of Kansas. This has been a large reason why tuition here has skyrocketed to the point that last year's "tuition enhancement" was ranked the sixth largest in the nation among top public universities by USA Today. Although plans have been put forth to try to get a handle on the quickly rising cost of an education, there seems to be little hope that the University will remain within the financial reach of most college-bound students in Kansas. What makes this current situation even worse is that many students and their parents don't understand the dynamics that have lead to this sorry state of affairs. Although many students are well-versed in the issues and rhetoric of national politics, the vast majority of students only have a passing knowledge of politics at the state level. This is where the origins of this particular problem lie.
Right now the state of Kansas is facing a huge budget situation. The main reason for this is a recent Kansas Supreme Court decision that mandated that funding for K-12 education be increased by almost $300 million last year. The Court reserved the right to mandate an additional $500 million this year if it feels another increase is needed. For those keeping score, when this whole kerfuffle started, K-12 education received about $2.7 billion from the state. With the increase last year and the one that has been threatened this year, funding for primary and secondary education will rise by more than 25 percent in just two years.
At the same time of this vast increase, the state has experienced stagnate revenues. Even though news came out this week that state revenues are expected to increase by about $286 million in the short term, it doesn't take an economist to realize that this increase is not enough to cover the mandates of the Supreme Court. In addition, the tenor of state politics indicates that a tax increase to make up the difference is nowhere in sight. Just a few years ago, Gov. Kathleen Se-
bellius tried to pass a tax increase that was promptly defeated in the legislature. Disturbingly, this has led to nearly $1 million in contributions to elected officials and the state parties, and includes about $100,000 to candidates for statewide office, most of which has gone to Gov. Sebelius who is currently one of the biggest advocates for this plan, according to an article in the Wichita Eagle. On top of that, there is currently debate in the state senate over a proposed $614 million tax cut that was recently passed by the Kansas House of Representatives.
About the only serious proposed solution for finding the much needed funding has been to allow gambling in Kansas. However good this seems on the surface, enthusiasm for this plan has largely resulted from a huge campaign by gaming interests to bring casinos and slot machines to Kansas. I won't go into the details of this proposal since my colleague, Courtney Farr, did a great job several weeks ago of explaining why this plan would be a bad idea for everyone except casino operators. Suffice it to say, though, that this plan has little chance of solving the state's budget woes.
All of this leaves us at a point where it looks as though portions of the state budget will have to be cut. Primary and secondary education and certain other costs just can't be cut in the current situation, and social services, the other large part of the state budget, probably won't be cut, either, especially after the backlash against Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt for cutting Medicaid and other social services over the past several years. So where will cuts come from?
If you guessed higher education, you're probably right. But it doesn't have to be that way. As students, no matter our different
political leanings, we can agree that we'd like to see a college education remain affordable for as many people as possible. Fortunately, a lot of diverse things can be done to ensure that tuition increases remain reasonable. For one, with state primaries and elections coming up in August and November, students who live in Kansas should volunteer their time to support candidates that are against major funding cuts to state universities. In addition, depending on your political bent, it would be a good idea either to support efforts to pass a state constitutional amendment that would prohibit the Supreme Court from mandating specific funding requirements to the legislature. Or, support efforts to fight tax cuts and increase state revenue and thus decrease the chances that state funding for our University will be drastically cut. The cliché that the squeaky wheel gets the grease is true and since we are almost 30,000 strong, there's no reason why the student body can't get active to keep tuition affordable.
Goetting is a Leavenworth senior in political science and East Asian languages and culture.
OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE
The following tools are all free and available on the Internet:
Word processor: Abiword
- www.abiwont.org
Photo editing: The GIMP
- www.gimp.org
Office Suite Tools: Open Office - www.openoffice.org
A collection of free tools is available on The Open CD: www.theopencd.org
Sourceforge.net hosts thousands of different open source projects, including two developed in house at KU.
COMMENTARY
Reforming a digital pirate
COURTNEY FARR
opinion@kansan.com
Buying software in a box was an alien concept to me from day one of my digital life. In the early 90s, a respected veterinarian gave me my first pirated copy of Windows 3.1. I traded war games with the son of the man that ran a local church camp. Most people in my small home town hadn't even heard of the Internet vet.
As the Internet exploded, I continued my piracy on a grander scale. PR campaigns and increasingly complex copy protection didn't slow me. The first hiccup in my pirate life came as a letter from lawyers representing the Motion Picture Association of America and my Internet Service Provider. In 2002, my roommate and I had been running a Web site hosting thousands of movies, songs and software, freely trading whatever we could get our hands on. The letter, threatening legal action and the loss of Internet service, justifiably worried us. We killed the server.
With our pipeline to free goodies down and fear that our ISP was scanning our traffic, I went in search of new ways to get programs. Not long after, I discovered open source software. The definition of open source is hard to pin down. It typically refers to free software developed by a community of programmers. They release the source code so that others can modify the program, learn from it or improve it.
To some reading this, the concept may be a decade old topic. Based on recent conversations I've had though, many of my peers seem not to know about the existence of these programs.
I've been a huge fan of open source software since my introduction to the topic through Abiword, a free word processor.
As students, you can benefit from using open source programs. Why pay hundreds, or even thousands, of dollars for programs if you can get free, quality equivalent tools? Adobe Photoshop CS2 runs $600 for a retail copy at Wal-Mart. Microsoft Office can cost $500.
You have probably used open source programs without realizing it. Many campus computers sport Mozilla Firefox. Widely considered more secure than Microsoft's Internet Explorer, a KU Web site states: "Highly recommended that everyone stop using Internet Explorer for web browsing and use Mozilla Firefox instead."
Dustin Brown, software engineer, Networking and Telecommunications Services, said the college has released two open source projects to Sourceforge. The programs, RINGS and ANSR, assist behind-the-scenes telecommunication and security processes at the college.
Help yourself and support open source developers by checking out their software.
I want KU to start recommending more open source tools to students. Our college already recognizes the superiority of Firefox. Do the same for other worthy projects.
Farr is a Scott City senior in journalism.
TALK TO US
Jonathan Keiling, editor
864-4858 or jkaeling@kansan.com
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864-4858 or jbicke@kansan.com
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Jason Shad, opinion editor
864-4924 or jshada@kansan.com
Patrick Ross, associatm opinion editor
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864-4462 or adddirector@kansan.com
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864-4462 or adsales@kansas.com
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864-7869 or mgibmon at kleanan.com
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864-7686 or jweaver@kansas.com
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