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Three-Year Degree
Paul Lloyd
To the Editor:
An article in the Nota Bene section of the January-February issue describes how European countries are cooperating to establish a common university framework, to be based, among other things, on three-year bachelor's degrees. The article goes on to say that this could cause problems for students with such degrees who wish to come to the United States for graduate school, because their qualifications will not match those who have taken "the standard four-year U.S. undergraduate degree." This is a mind-boggling equation of quantity with quality!
Surely it is well known that, because of the generally poor standard of U.S. high schooling, many American undergraduates spend two years taking courses that would simply not be offered in European universities. Such matters as algebra and calculus, basic writing skills, and elementary foreign language competency are all expected of university entrants in Europe, and therefore European university courses begin at what U.S. colleges call the 300 level.
Perhaps the warning needs to go the other way: European admissions officers need to know that many students with a U.S. undergraduate degree have really taken only a two-year course at what they understand by university level.
Paul Lloyd
Center for Innovation in Assessment
Indiana University
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