External Examination

[Mercudenton]

I've been teaching in the US for 10 years now, after having worked and attended college in the UK. I'm still surprised at how little externality there is to the US higher education system. In the UK, there is a system of external examiners who both approve assignments/exams and review grading. While it is an imperfect system, it brings a measure of quality control both to the individual professors and to the overall quality of the degree. It also (and this is what I miss about it) removes the sense that the faculty member is entirely responsible for a students' grade (scholarship, emotional health, life chances) by allowing faculty to appeal to the externally-established standards.

Similarly quality assurance in the UK brings in external validation of overall academic standards, whereas HLC assessment in the US seems to involve me running an assessment project on my own grading and then someone assessing how well I've assessed my assessing - a situation I have yet to view as anything other than Alice Through the Looking Glass.

I'm curious as to any other people's experience with external examination (which I know exists beyond the UK), and whether there are any models in the US system of colleges experimenting with this model. I'm collecting examples for a small grant project I'm going to work on with some institutional money this summer, so all insights welcome.

[spork]

We don't use external examination in higher ed in the USA because we're 'Muricans, dammit. Everyone should regard us as the shining City on a Hill that we are, and gratefully accept the blessings of civilization that we deign to bestow on the less fortunate. This includes sham processes like assessment that allow people to avoid being held accountable. Freedom!

[Vkw10]

Public K12 schools in some states are creeping into external assessment. Texas newspapers have run a few stories recently about high school students being required to pass the state end of course tests for certain courses in order to receive credit. Apparently other state testing may be waived this year, but the EOC tests will be required and will be onsite, with no remote option. Nephew had to take several of those tests; he said they were aimed at C- students, focusing on basic competency.

[Mercudenton]

I think what you are referring to in public schools is examinations set up an external agency. External examination is somewhat different since it is validation/moderation of the professors' own assignment titles/questions and grading by a peer faculty member at another university or college.

[dismalist]

Seems to be a British thing.

According to Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/External_examiner when the University of Durham was founded in 1832, it had Oxford faculty on its examination boards to convince the public that its degrees were as good as Oxford's. The wikipedia article goes on to extoll this system of quality control. [Now, me, I point out that no one will have an incentive to be better than Oxford under this system. :-)]

External examination does not exist in Germany, for sure, and not in the rest of continental Europe either, at least according to Google.

[Hibush]

Spork captures the fundamental cause of disinterest in external examiners. External examiners could burst that bubble.

[Ruralguy]

It's not so much being Americans per se, but the sorts of wide latitude we've been granted under the umbrella of academic freedom. It's difficult to give up these freedoms even if it means moving to a system that we might prefer!

[Vkw10]

I think what you are referring to in public schools is examinations set up an external agency. External examination is somewhat different since it is validation/moderation of the professors' own assignment titles/questions and grading by a peer faculty member at another university or college.

Thanks for the clarification.

Given the resistance I've seen to even having faculty in one's own department review assessments in core courses where skill mastery is essential to every upper level course in department, I suspect external examination would cause massive outcry. Other than doctoral defense committees, I've never seen it done in the US.

[downer]

Accreditation is just about the only force that makes US colleges maintain anything like uniform standards, and that has a very limited effect. Most of us have taught at a variety of institutions and have seen how much variation there is in expectations. Some places are basically a joke. It is remarkable that this isn't a major issue in higher ed.

The advantage that the lack of uniform standards brings is freedom in how we teach and what we teach. Basic courses can be idiosynchratic. It would be more boring to have to teach more standardized courses.

[Hibush]

The expectation that local evaluators are not as tough as external examiners is playing out in Britain. From the Guardian "The government announced last week that A-level and BTec results in England would be based on teacher assessments rather than exams. But the decision to leave schools without firm national guidelines was denounced as "catastrophic" by a vice-chancellor, who expects the move to lead to higher grades"