CPE for you and me!!
Joe Cooper
I must be stupid, in fact, very stupid.
I thought that when a person goes to an institution of higher learning and completes his studies with acceptable grades that he is proficient in those disciplines.
I found out that I may be wrong.
I am a My Turn Student so in general I don’t concern myself with the requirements for graduation because I don’t plan to. This semester at the first class meeting of my courses the instructors went over the CPE requirements for the school.
As stated on the CUNY Portal:
The CPE tests a student's competency in areas that the CUNY faculty considers important for later success, including:
Reading and interpreting textbooks and material of general interest;
Organizing and presenting your ideas about what you have read and connecting those ideas to other information or concepts;
Writing clearly and effectively for an audience; and
Interpreting and evaluating material presented in charts and graphs.
A student must take the test after completing forty-five credits. That is basically one term before graduation. If a student fails, he has two more tries before going through an appeals process for an fourth try.
You don’t pass the test, you don’t graduate.
That means, in theory, a student could have a 4.0 GPA and not graduate.
Also failing the test does not stop a student from transferring to another college, including another CUNY senior college.
I assume the PhD’s who came up with this test are smarter than me.
So I must be stupid because I have one question that need answering. Aren’t the skills required to pass the test the skills students either had before entering the college or acquired in their studies at the college?
I know that there are students who are still taking the CPE right up to “graduation” time and still fail. By the time you are ready to graduate you have not only finished are your remediation (if necessary) but all the required and elective courses. I thought most or at least some of these courses require the following:
Reading and interpreting textbooks and material of general interest;
Organizing and presenting your ideas about what you have read and connecting those ideas to other information or concepts;
Writing clearly and effectively for an audience; and
Interpreting and evaluating material presented in charts and graphs.
To quote Yogi Berra, “This is déjà vu all over again.” The skills needed to do well in the courses seem to be the same skills needed to pass the CPE.
I assume you cannot get through sixty credits without reading and understanding at least one textbook.
I assume you cannot get through sixty credits without organizing and presenting ideas in writing or in the oral form properly at least once. I am also sure that in a math or marketing course grafts and charts are presented.
Apparently I may be wrong.
To my knowledge, this type of test is not given at other universities. Thus logic tells me that the “powers that be” at CUNY do not have much faith in the curriculum or much faith in the way the curriculum is administered.
If a student can get through two years of college and cannot read and interpret a textbook, organize and present his ideas in writing properly and interpret charts and grafts and still has a 2.0 GPA or better, something is really screwed up.
If you go back to a column I wrote called “See Spot Run.” The reason becomes obvious. Many courses have administered in such a way that to get an acceptable grade the skills mentioned above may not be necessary.
Who gets hurt, CUNY or KCC?
No, the enrollment is larger than ever. The faculty or staff, no, their jobs are safe. Are the students hurt? If they complete their two years a KCC and graduate, are they really ready for a four year school or to hold a responsible job? The need for the CPE test says maybe not. |
