Comment by aoki
19 days ago
> Quals will never be implemented at large in undergraduate mass-market coursework.
I believe proctored math placement tests are still common upon matriculation at less-selective colleges (e.g., directional public schools). Usually Accuplacer or done in ALEKS. That said, the outcome these days may be corequisite section placement rather than remedial course placement. Colleges have to balance readiness against the graduation delays that remediation adds (which often lead students to drop out entirely).
There are schools that use placement exams to place new students into their first course level, partly because there is inconsistency between grades from different high-schools, and even standardized test scores aren't amazing predictors of college course performance (they are correlated, just not as much as we'd like). The school I teach at does this, and we often place students who got as high as a 4 on their AP Calc AB exam back into introductory calculus to take again.
GP seemed to be talking more about a qualifying exam at the beginning of every course. I don't think that will ever happen mostly because of what you stated as, "the graduation delays that remediation adds." Can you imagine how long it would take average students to graduate, or the dropout rate, if we made each student pass a placement exam before every course? We couldn't implement this without a radical change to how universities work.