Destructive Testing in Higher Education

Edward Tsang 2011.11.02

The need to measure performance has exceeded the need to perform, according to university managements. The tail is wagging the dog!

A ridiculous scenario

One way to measure how fast a car travels is to put a block in front of it. After the car hits the block, measure the depth of the impact. From the depth and the weight of the car, calculate the speed of the car.

That may sound ridiculous. But that is how they measure the performance of staff and students.

Burden on students

If a research student has 7 days to go before the supervisory board, what should he do? He could spend 6 days on research, and 1 day to write a report. Alternatively, he could spend 1 day to do research, and 6 days to write a report. Unfortunately, some students do the latter. This is because he could get into trouble with some board members of the supervisory board if report is poorly written. Writing the report takes up time.

Burden on staff

Academics are also asked to write their plans from time to time. The plan will be scrutinised by other academics. Feedback could be negative if the plan is poorly written. They also have to report how they supervise students. Time spent on keeping records and answering administrators' queries take away supervision time.

Rigorous management

Student administration has been more and more rigorous. Following are two rules that I could imagine them introducing in the near future:

A student must provide a timesheet (down to minutes) to show that they spend at least 5 days a week; deliverable output must be submitted to substantiate their timesheet.
A student must submit a "permanent withdraw" form before committing suicide.

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