Exams in Postgraduate, Master and Doctorate courses, evaluation tool or a farce?

Exams in Postgraduate, Master and Doctorate courses, evaluation tool or a farce?

The exams at all levels (primary, secondary, undergraduate university) are necessary to check the learning of theories and ability to apply to solve problems. It is understood that students are dedicated only to STUDY, and therefore, have time to read, reflect, memorize, apply, discover and analyze facts in relation to relevant theories.

Fortunate students live in societies where the educational system, educational centers, teachers and pedagogical resources are first level, so that in addition to adequately transmitting the correct and necessary knowledge, they create and develop in the students the ability to approach, analyze, solve problems, simple or complex, as if it were a "natural condition". This ability develops to act as individuals or groups.

An example of the ability to solve problems is the result of PISA assessments. In Science and Mathematics, the way in which knowledge is applied to real-life situations is evaluated and measured; in Language it is evaluated to capacity of comprehension and interpretation of texts. In real life, when you understand and correctly interpret a text, when you can explain ideas, proposals, research; When the application of Science and Mathematics is also understood, the training is complete. At school, the ability to think about something must be created, how to do, analyze, describe, explain, apply, improve that something. An abstract society forms a large number of people with these capabilities, which gives it advantages and greater potential; a concrete society is the opposite and has severe limitations.

When there are problems or limitations in the educational systems and all its components, the students do not acquire the mentioned capacities and failure in PISA or similar tests is inevitable. The society where this problem exists is always concrete, with a short-term vision and conformist, always a user of new knowledge and applications.

If PISA were applied at the postgraduate university level, would the same correlation appear? By logic and real facts, a postgraduate educational system, universities, professors and first-class resources, must promote the creation of first-level postgraduates, the "PISA tests" for them must be resolved satisfactorily. The most impressive scientific achievements, industrial development and Nobel Prizes can not arise in another context. An exam is an indicator of real learning and the creation of new skills. The student of masters or doctorate does not attend a session of torments, only a routine act where he must face an unknown situation (content of the problems) but manageable with all the cognitive tools acquired.

When the basic education system is deficient, it extends to a university system, undergraduate and postgraduate, also deficient. If a "PISA evaluation" is applied at the graduate level, it will also be deficient. It is natural that when the student attends an exam, not only "feel a little nervous before the exam", as Mafalda and his friends; He will also feel fear, stress, anguish, uncertainty and it is possible that even his memory fails. Exams do not measure knowledge and the student will not have an opportunity to demonstrate what they learned.

When the teacher, the content, method and objectives of the university or graduate school are aligned with academic excellence; the student only attends a routine control test.

In general, students memorize, prepare aids for plagiarism (for example, strips of paper with small-print annotations), they mechanically respond to matters of which they have no idea and can not see the relationship with the subject in which they are "evaluated. " Nothing is measured, it only shows how skilled students are to cheat. It is true that there are students who really learn, who strive on their own, and in the exams they respond in the appropriate way, but they are part of a select or strange minority, the "nerds" of the group.

From my own experience, I confirm that exams do not measure learning and how to apply it. It is true that there are also exceptions. In Master's, in a course of Administration, theoretical and not mathematical, in a partial examination, I dared to answer a question with a different scheme than the textbook, justifying the proposal; naively believing that creativity was allowed. I was disapproved because the professor wanted to be written to the page where the author's ideas were. For the next evaluations, I memorized everything; up to the position, shape and size of punctuation marks. Was it the Memorization or Administration course? This situation is frequent, application of useless tests that do not measure what is relevant.