Re: 鈥淪tars face fraud charges in college bribery case,鈥� March 13.
As we watch our American friends wave fingers over alleged corruption in the admissions to elite universities, British Columbians should feel no security in our admissions process.
Since discontinuing the provincial examination program some years ago, B.C. Liberals vastly increased the probability that our admissions process is also corrupt or, at least, has great potential to become so.
As a 30-year teacher, I can say that the discontinued exam process was the one safeguard we had that ensured students were treated fairly across B.C. in competition for entrance to B.C.鈥檚 top colleges and universities. Without these exams, you can have no confidence that you are treated the same from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, and high grades in one school district might not be to the same standard in another.
Furthermore, without a standardized process of rigorous exams, you can have no assurance that the teacher in charge of the curriculum has done their job fully.
What does this mean? It means you can have no confidence that you or your child is treated fairly with regard to scholarships, bursaries and entrance requirements. It means that teachers with high standards can be manipulated into lowering those standards under pressure from principals to make the school鈥檚 grades seem higher.
At least Americans have exams, even though these corrupt parents hired cheaters to write for their privileged children.
In B.C., this is an unnecessary annoyance, as these exams no longer exist, making it even easier to game the system.
Daniel Companion
Nanaimo
