A 15,000 student American university
asked me to develop a critical reasoning skills test that would offer evidence
to its accrediting agency that that university is, in fact, improving the
thinking skills of its students. That university called on me to create such a
test because, the officer telephoning me in Albania said, in effect, “Professor
Maxwell, since you are one of only two professors of thinking in the world, we
are turning to you to help us.”
Immediately
I\ asked, Dr. Dorothea Martin, Ph.D., who also lives in Tirana, Albania, and is
one of the most intelligent persons I have ever met, to assist me. She agreed
to do so. The uses we see for ULTRA are
manifold:
1. ULTRA Provides Evidence that a University is teaching its students to think skillfully. If given to student cohorts over a four year period, the prediction is that the university and the accrediting agency will see improvement in thinking skills that exceeds the improvements noted in the general population that come from simple maturation.
2.
ULTRA is powerful screening test for universities and specialized
training programs. The movement to
abolish SAT and similar testing for admission to universities is premised upon
the fact that IQ and SAT scores have low predictive validity and too often
reward the “clever” person over the “wise” person.
3.
ULTRA is a powerful career
guidance device for elementary and high school students.
When properly used, ULTRA will be a much better predictor of one’s best
career choices than the Strong or the Kuder or similar interest tests.
4. ULTRA is a powerful Human
Resources tool
to assist organizations select persons from the top management level to the
unskilled worker level. That is, while
all jobs can use a bit of creativity and enthusiasm, some jobs would bore the
highly motivated person. Matching the
person with the job description is partly a science and partly a subjective
task. ULTRA moves that process toward
the scientific end of that continuum.