Message-ID: <33A2A63E.1E67@yale.edu>
Date: Sat, 14 Jun 1997 10:10:06 -0400
From: DJR <daniel.ryan@yale.edu>
Reply-To: daniel.ryan@yale.edu
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To: socgrad@csf.colorado.edu
Subject: Define GRE
References: <3.0.1.32.19970614094119.006d4518@ariel.macarthur.uws.edu.au>
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Julie Sloggett wrote:
> 
> Excuse my ignorance here, but what on earth is a GRE score?

Julie, no need for an apology.  How many of us USAmericans would know
what an A-level was?

I know that some of the folks who have offered straight-forward answers
have an ever so slightly critical side, so, how about we come up with a
"Devil's Dictionary" type definition for the GRE?  Put on your thinking
caps.  Here are a few starter ideas.

The Graduate Record Exam is...

....a remarkable marketing achievement

....institutional isomorphism at its finest

....a triumph of technology over thinking

....one of many things that have helped to condition Americans
   to accept corporate surveillance

....a contributing factor in credentialism arms wars 

....a necessary evil

....another element in the ideology of the constant
   return to "aptitude" rather than "achievement"

....a marker of fundamental distrust that judgement might
   be based on an "ethic of responsibility"

....a device for increasing the demand for test preparation
   services

....another brick in the wall

....something for intellectuals to ritually decry but do
   nothing to change

....another bar in the iron cage

....an example of a technology or practice that fulfills an
   organizational need even if it doesn't do what proponents
   say it does.  In other words, it really doesn't matter
   whether it predicts "success" in graduate school or
   "promise" for later professional achievement.

....corporate welfare for the makers of number two pencils.
   Incidentally, the emergence of the computer administered
   ETS test has given rise to pencil industry conversion bill
   in congress.  Call your representative today.

....another system in which the people most affected by its
   twists, turns and practices have no standing, either in
   legal, market or cultural terms, to influence decisions
   about how it works.

   What if "Takers of the GRE" were a giant membership 
   organization?  What if ETS (Educational Testing Services)
   didn't have all the graduate schools in the US requiring
   the purchase of their products?


Research question: in what realms, for what purposes, and under what
institutional arrangements do universal testing requirements take hold?
How does the American tradition differ from the European or Asian on
this count?  What is the general phenomenon whereby testing is
implemented in the name of fairness, objectivity, anti-corruption and so
on turns into a recipe for rigidity, mediocrity and unfairness?  For
answer, see Weber?