Actually, that is quite different.
1. Seems like a legitimate choice on what a test is designed to measure. Exam times are the same for all students.
2. "Fortunately, the plan appears to have been vetoed." - so it didn't actually come to pass.
1. Seems like a legitimate choice on what a test is designed to measure. Exam times are the same for all students.
2. "Fortunately, the plan appears to have been vetoed." - so it didn't actually come to pass.
In this case extending the time because "female candidates might be more likely to be adversely affected by time pressure" negates the advantage people that can work under pressure have.
I'm curious how they're going to do this in real life when (unsurprisingly) they will be expected to work under pressure and it will highlight a big mismatch between academic and professional performance levels.
The pressures STEM employees face at work are usually very different from exam pressure, so I would lean towards "very little" as the answer to that question.
Everything about academic studies is an arbitrary "neutral point". The quantity of information for one topic, the difficultly of the exam, the time allotted.
It's exactly like saying that you don't actually need to show all that knowledge during the exam since Wolfram Alpha can do that for you. And in real life deadlines are no longer like an arbitrary exam time or even a standardized interview test. They're usually as tight as the best people on your team can afford. That becomes the "neutral point". And that's when it will matter that two people that previously looked equal start performing differently.
An exam tests you for a lot of things and they just lessened one. Which isn't in itself a necessarily bad thing if it didn't give ammo to every person claiming that men are better at STEM. Now their bias is backed by universities so good luck fighting it.
*Just highlighting again that this is discussing the "increased exam time" topic, not the "let's change results to exclude women" topic.
> It's exactly like saying that you don't actually need to show all that knowledge during the exam since Wolfram Alpha can do that for you.
I don't get how this is at all equivalent. Could you please clarify?
And I'm not even touching the situations where it could be a matter of life and death and you have to fix it now.
> I don't get how this is at all equivalent. Could you please clarify?
I was referring to this:
> The pressures STEM employees face at work are usually very different from exam pressure, so I would lean towards "very little" as the answer to that question.
Exams rely on a lot of memorizing which can easily be replaced by Google and WA and is not a reflection of how you will do real work so why test that "knowledge"? The pressure to properly allot time to every question and finish in the exam in time after providing all or most of the solutions is an ability to work under pressure perfectly equivalent to the one you feel doing a task at work. You can't replace the working under pressure skill with almost anything else.
You have to know if those future engineers can do it fast and well even under pressure. Lessening one burden is no different from lessening the other. And when you do it for the benefit of a single group it can't not feel like it's strengthening arguments that some people need help to get through STEM. That's the last thing women in STEM need, having to fight yet another prejudice.
A being a better sprinter than B neither means B can't work under pressure nor that B is the worse mid-distance runner. The same is true for mental tasks.
As an employer, "working under pressure" is not very high on my list of considerations. I would much rather have a complete picture of the candidate's ability to learn and retain information. Well-designed systems take months and months to build, I would prefer information about the candidate's general aptitude than their ability to work in crunch time.
If I was looking for employees for a job in which "working under pressure" was a central component, I would rather test for that in the interview process and have their university scores be uncompromised by pressure.
It's because academic performance is by design an average of skills displayed over multiple years. You can't fulfill the expectations of all employers at once with a standardized test. The degree (and the marks attached to it) just show the average performance per topic over the years. How fast you can finish your assignment is an integral part of any academic program. That's why you get tight(ish) deadlines for any assignment, and exam times.
By extending that time you can no longer make the difference between 2 people with good knowledge but different working under pressure skills. That's the difference between good and best.
I'm not saying the exams become irrelevant, just that this kind of thing does more to discredit the image of women in STEM than a slightly lower exam mark. This just strengthens preconceptions that some groups need help to be equal. And it's backed up by universities and whatever science they used to reach this conclusion.
> By extending that time you can no longer make the difference between 2 people with good knowledge but different working under pressure skills. That's the difference between good and best.
This is true, but if two students have the same score from elongated tests and one does not test well under pressure, it's straightforward to understand that one of the students would have performed better on a time pressure exam. However, consider:
Student A achieves 92% on a 1.75 hour exam but would have achieved 90% on a 1.5 hour exam. Student B achieves 94% on a 1.75 hour exam but would have achieved 88% on a 1.5 hour exam.
In a 1.5 hour exam, the clear conclusion is that student A is the better student. But is student A truly the better student in this scenario? The exam length is a rough estimate made by a university, and it seems like an arbitrary line to draw.
Allowing every student to have enough time to show the breadth of their knowledge on the subject material is not "helping" women. The same principle is applied to both men and women. It is an attempt to provide a level playing field and work towards meritocracy.[1]
Consider an exam on a technical subject that contains questions that are difficult to parse in English. Non-native English speakers have trouble parsing the questions which results in lower test scores. If I suggest that we simplify the language in order to accurately gauge the students knowledge of the subject, you may suggest that this is discrimination against native English speakers. This is undoubtedly true in the context, but it is an attempt to move towards a level playing field which tests knowledge of the subject, which is the entire point of the exercise. You can test for English proficiency separately, that is not the point of the exam.
[1] Contrast this with link 2 in the GP which is straightforward discrimination against men and was roundly rejected for that reason.
If they decided to lengthen times to better fit real world conditions, it is fair. If they went searching for 'fair' changes that could be made that would statistically boost one group over another, it isn't a fair change.