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Higher education in US is more of a paradox today with most Americans wondering if it will ever measure up in terms of performance and quality and if our country will ever regain its past glory. Especially at the K-12 level, the quality of education received by students is very poor. As compared to Asian and European kids, our kids perform poorly as reflected in our elementary and secondary school test scores.

For decades, our education system has been held in high esteem globally. Today, there is serious skepticism on whether our students are receiving the quality of education they deserve. Lack of quality and performance is evidence in every type of education including traditional college education, top up education for working adults and part time programs offered by eLearning courses.

In keeping with this serious concern, a lot of discussions are going on in our country especially in the last couple of years. The Obama administration has placed universities and for-profit colleges under scanner. Many a conversation analyzes public universities and community colleges with regard to cuts in appropriations at the state level. Various studies have been conducted that shows that it is not really necessary for every American to reach out for higher education as we do not learn much there anyway.

If we want to bring about a significant change to our education system and place it on the path to recovery, it is imperative to first measure the extent of student learning in colleges. Of course, our federal system has tried out various tactics including testing student performance with standardized tests to determine which schools are eligible for funding and which are not. This in turn has placed a lot of pressure on teachers who eventually started coaching students exclusively with the perspective of answering these tests. This understandably has hugely curtailed free expression and creativity in students.

There is a voluntary system of accountability already in existence. Put together by universities, this form of testing is more conducive to developing critical thinking in students as opposed to the controversial testing system in place now. People argue that it is certainly not possible to jam into a multiple choice test interconnection of concepts and ideas that students are supposed to already have learnt by the time they join college.

Detail oriented overall testing has become rare as universities and colleges today focus less on liberal arts and more on professional programs. GRE subject examinations do something like this. Students with majors in certain subjects are given an opportunity to demonstrate their knowledge level in an independent manner as they apply for graduate schools.

Is it possible to find out the extent to which Business Administration majors understand basic concepts of business through a national test? Will a national learning test that identifies students who cannot write well be an impediment to learning process in college? Such exams will definitely be useful in measuring performance and quality.