Mastery seems particularly useful in engineering. Often times, a class may only have a handful of core principles to be mastered. Those classes seem like they are structured around the grading process rather than those core principles, with predictable results: many students who “get it” don’t get grades that reflect their mastery of the material. Ironically, that affects classes taught by better teachers more.
And to the general topic of education, one of the things that still pisses me off is: time. Why do so many aspects of grading classes tie performance to time. Unless they are teaching a bomb-disarming class, there is no reason (especially in the digital age) for a test/quiz/assignment to have a short time to complete. As a professional, I work with people who get things done fast and people who take more time. Often, the person who takes more time does better work. There is value in that, and biasing our education systems in favor of rapid completion does not ultimately serve society.
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The time aspect makes no sense to me. My son excels at all practical examinations and anything hands on. But he has crippling anxiety around written tests and bombs them all. If he is able to pick when he starts the test he does great. He doesn’t need any extra time to complete, he just needs to be able to choose when the hour (or whartever) starts.
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I wish. My son graduated high school with honors, but he had an Individual Education Plan (IEP) that allowed him to pick when his tests started. When he went to college he had a limited plan and didnt do as well. Then when COVID hit it was all timed tests over a crappy internet connection and he flunked out. Take home tests would have been great.
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One of my daughter’s college classes last term had all homework, quizzes, and tests except for the final exam up and available from day one and you could take them as many times as you wanted. The details changed every retake, so you couldn’t directly cheat. The professor let the students know when the material for each had been covered so that they could start that HW/quiz/test. This was for physics, and it was nerve-wracking for her because you start the term with a zero and every item you complete adds points, but you spend most of the term with an F until you build up enough points to start getting into the graded percentages, but she really learned the material and truly earned her grade.
ETA: And the final exam was similar. It opened up on Monday AM of finals week and closed on Sunday night. They could take it as many times as they wanted until they got a grade they were satisfied with during that period.
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And this IMHO is where “education as mass goods” falls over. For courses with 20 to 30 students the profs and TA’s have the time to figure out what a student needs and, in my experience, almost always the leeway to adjust accordingly.
Courses with 200 students? That’s harder to do.
Anecdote: my last exam series, last term undergrad, I got an awful flu. At the time, you couldn’t get adjustments. I had to write 4 exams over 3 days, still suffering. I can only imagine what it’s like for students with comparable challenges as the norm.
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Same: one finals week, I had pneumonia. Still had to physically show up for the exams and take them as if I was hale and healthy.
Well, I would argue it’s not that she’s “exceptional” (not that I don’t think my kid isn’t exceptional!)… I think it’s more like she did not get the joy of learning beaten out of her by a shitty system of education that prizes discipline over learning… far more kids would do well in school if weren’t “learning to tests” or being overly policed in their schools… Maybe it’s less draconian in Canada but here in the states, the public education that most people have available to them focuses less on learning and more on disciplining for the workforce.
We need more of that kind of thing, and less of pushing everyone into the same plans…
And this is why most prestigious universities have lower class caps and more help for professors… Because it’s about an actual education, and not just pumping up the numbers of students to pay tuition and send through to their degrees.
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The article I posted does mention dual enrollment and the impact that’s had on funding for CCs.
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I saw that. Even with that, enrollment is way down.
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Yep, very true. I’m only getting a couple of classes a year now… I’m meant to have 2 this summer, but we’ll see if they make… 
Also… I hit a paywall so…
https://archive.ph/yTBEm
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It will be interesting to see whether or not this leads to significant change. In the US, some schools make a point of focusing on financial literacy. Others promote practical application in math classes - especially for young children.
However, businesses are conflicted about this subject. On one hand, they claim to need more STEM graduates as employees. OTOH, consumers who struggle with math are easier to cheat or recruit into shady investment schemes.
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What if we rearranged our universities around departments of critical thinking rather than departments of chemistry?
Unfortunately, much of the weak thinking I encounter can be directly traced to failure to master core material for the work. Critical thinking in general hits a very hard limit when the inputs to the criticism must come from extensive and specific expertise.
Create a school of applied ethics rather than a school of business?
That was not written by a business person… 
We also need to ensure part of higher education is the development of human relationships. … the kind that happens over a synchronous conversation, a shared goal or the development of two-way communication skills.
Again, and this is speaking from a technical field, a failure to communicate is often rooted in a failure to master some core material. However, I do think that the author has hit a key point, one that doesn’t fit into the ideas of mass and automated education, or student as “customer”. The obvious remedy is obviously expensive.
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It seems like consistent use of Mastery and similar educational concepts would severely blunt the impact of ChatGPT. AI can write a mediocre paper for you but it can’t achieve mastery-level work.
It could get you a mn OK start but you’d still have to reach mastery level on your own.
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I dunno… it feels an awful lot like she’s blaming the people how have little control over anything at this point… I’m sure a lot of people hate that this technology is being used as a shortcut to “getting out of this class” but I’m sure that a lot of people are also very much stuck between a rock and a hard place. I’m glad this dean can speak from a place of purity where she doesn’t have to teach at several different schools to make ends meet, but I’m not sure what she expects those of us struggling to get any recognition for our work to do to change the polices that are being set largely without our input…
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Yes, it’s definitely written from on high. I agree that she expresses little awareness that those overburdened with teaching and (maybe many other work duties) have little time and energy to devote to working on the AI crisis.
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