Carrying out tests which would give a degree [duplicate]

Question

With the Internet having more and more data every day, a lot of which is science-related, a kind of test could be used to give a degree for someone who knows a lot.

The questions of the test would be graduate level of difficulty. Can this become applicable in the near future or not?

For example, someone who has passion about a topic and has studied online would be given the chance to get a degree. Now, of course, at a university there are labs and this wont be applicable for every profession but since most software used by universities to teach are available for everyone, I don't know maybe if someone completed a course or something he would get a graduate degree.

Answer 1

With the Internet having more and more data every day,many of which are science related a kind of test could be used to give a degree for someone who knows very much.The questions of the test would be graduate level of difficulty.

You are misunderstanding the fact that being awarded a PhD degree does not hinge on a test of knowledge, but rather on a test of ability, namely the ability to produce novel and meaningful scientific research. There might be some tests of knowledge involved on the way towards a PhD (qualifying exams and such), but it fundamentally is not a test of knowledge. A PhD is not, contrary to popular impression, a certification that you are a smart and knowledgeable person.

It does not matter in the slightest that you answer super-tough questions about a given field if you have not demonstrated that you can actually contribute to research in that field.

Answer 2

Accreditation is the process by which educational institutions are evaluated to make sure they meet certain standards. Getting a certificate saying you passed some online test has little value without understanding who's giving the certificate and what the accomplishment represents. I'm sure you can find an online test that says you're a genius, why should anyone believe it?

It is of course possible to take tests from an accredited online institution and receive a degree, that's the usual route of online study. It is also possible to take tests from a non-accredited institution and receive some kind of certificate saying you did it, although that has comparatively little value depending on who's giving the certificate. You generally cannot simply take one test from an accredited institution and receive a degree, as an institution that handed out degrees in that manner would almost certainly not meet accreditation requirements.

Answer 3

While (barely) possible this seems unlikely, especially in a time frame that would be useful to you. You would need to find a university, hopefully a reputable one, willing to do it as well as a problem significant enough to have the faculty there agree that you had covered all the necessary bases.

It is also unlikely that very many people would be able to gain the necessary knowledge both about the field and about research to make this common enough that people would consider it. One of the problems is that you can learn on your own but focused learning usually (i.e. most people) requires guidance. That is what graduate, especially doctoral programs, are all about: both the what and the how of contributions to scholarship.

Some people have been awarded honorary degrees, which don't carry quite the same weight, for their work outside academia that contributes something important, or even a lifetime of contributions.

See the canonical question about doctoral admissions to see what is usually required before you are even allowed to begin doctoral study.

It is a lot more than being about being "smart" or "knowing a lot" of stuff.

But it is rare because so few could begin to do it, so it hasn't been considered enough to be an option in almost every case. And it is also unlikely that you could get a degree for some "exam", though exams are often required in doctoral study to guarantee broad knowledge of a field.

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I suspect that if it were to become more common, it would require a process in which one first makes a plan and a proposal, then gets approval (or not), and then executes the plan and carries out the study. The approval process might be quite difficult.

The reputation of universities depends in part on doing things right which implies some vetting process. This would be especially true in some fields where human subjects are involved.

Answer 4

There are a couple of problems with just a test. The first one is that in my undergraduate degree I probably did at least 30-40 hours of exams (probably in excess of 50 hours). So you'd expect at least that much in the exam. Then this doesn't account for all the assignments, lab experiments, reports and other examination I went through. This means the exam would have to be essentially full time over 1 or 2 weeks minimum. This would also be expensive since you'd need a specialist to spend their time marking all these exams and you probably won't get the economy of scale that you get in normal university courses which reduces the marking time.

But what this doesn't capture is that not only is your education over years, but the testing was also done over years. You can always cram for an exam and then forget the stuff, but being able to remember the core material you learnt in each course, and then apply it in the next course done months or years later is a hidden test that is not as obvious when you look at undergraduate degrees. In addition by providing courses there is an additional guarantee than the student has been exposed to the connections between ideas as understood by experts. This is the guided learning that is provided by universities and is also a hidden factor that a degree signals. This understanding would also be something you'd want to probe if you were an accreditation giving institute.

So in reality you'd probably want a much longer period of testing (I'd guess on the order of 6-12 months, but wouldn't have to be full time) done by an intelligent agent that understands the field properly and can adjust the tests to make sure the random understanding obtained on the web actually sees all the connections. So I'd say, for this to be equal to a traditional degree, you'd probably need general AI as a precondition, at that point education is going to be very different.

This also says nothing about graduate degrees which rely on undergraduate understanding. For coursework components you could probably repeat the arguments I made for undergraduate, but the research component is a lot harder to test. This would probably require a kind of apprenticeship for the examination (like I mentioned in the last paragraph) as well as demonstration of the appropriate level of research skills, this is very different to just learning stuff off the web. But here we are kinda getting back into what we already have, just maybe on a cut down time scale.

Answer 5

There are many other good answers, but one of the issues that underlies your question is really: "What is a degree?"

At its core, a degree is an institution such as a university saying "Yes, this person actually knows something". This works because those who are looking at the degree (employers) typically trust universities to have rigorous processes to actually verify the "actually knows something" part. But because there are so many universities in the world, and because not all of them are trustworthy, there is a second level of trust: Universities are "accredited" by accreditation agencies who check and verify that the universities that are accredited have rigorous processes when they certify the "actually knows something" part. You see that degrees only really mean anything if the person who looks at a degree actually has trust that it means something. A degree from an unaccredited university does not inspire trust, and people will generally not accept such a degree as proof of "the person actually knows something".

In essence, what you are suggesting with the online test is that you want to set up "The Substitute University of the Internet", that can check from online posts, online tests, and other sources whether someone actually knows something -- and if so, give that person a degree, say the "Bachelor's Degree of Knowledge, awarded by The Substitute University of the Internet". You can of course do that. (That's perhaps a bit like Trump University.) The problem is that if those who present such a degree to a possible employer, these employers will generally disregard the degree unless they have trust in The Substitute University of the Internet, and at least at the moment people will generally not have that kind of trust. Of course, The Substitute University of the Internet could turn to one of the accreditation agencies for accreditation, and should it receive accreditation people will have trust -- but because, as the other answers point out, everyone believes that such tests can not be meaningfully done, one can suspect that the accreditation agencies will not accredit The Substitute University of the Internet, and so no trust is conferred.

The upshot is: Degrees, like money, are all about trust.

Answer 6

Who would pay for the development of that test, and who would pay for the grading? As others have mentioned, such a test would be huge, and development and validation of that test will be expensive. Why would a university invest in that?

The grading will be a beast as well, why would a university agree that I spent that amount of Work-Time on non-tuition paying students?

In short, I suspect that the universities would have to ask such a high price for this test in order for it to be viable/profitable, that there just won't be enough demand for it.