Shifting Standards

Many years ago, I taught English at a senmon gakko in Japan. This is a kind of vocational or technical college, with a two-year program of study -- not as prestigious as a traditional four-year or two-year ("junior") college. The department that I was in loosely translates as "International Culture," but the content was essentially secretarial skills (word processing, rudimentary bookkeeping, etc.) with some required English courses. A second department at the school was geared towards preparing kindergarten teachers.

My job at the school included, among other things, creating the English portion of the entrance test and serving (along with all the other full-time faculty members) on the admissions committee. In additional to an English test, applicants would also take a Japanese test and participate in a face-to-face interview.

Due to the aging Japanese population (the "inverted pyramid" as some have called it), the number of applicants to my department decreased each year, in part because four-year and two-year colleges were trying to maintain their enrollments by admitting students who never would have gotten through in the past.

Although the department max was, I believe, 40 students, we were lucky if we got more than 20 applications for my department. This meant that we knew from the outset that we would accept everyone who applied, regardless of their performance on the entrance tests. (The other department usually had at least 50% more applicants than spaces, so admission was actually competitive.)

However, even though the outcome was know ahead of time, we had to go through the motions of considering each and every application during the admissions committee meeting. This would involve, among other things, endlessly reviewing the names of applicant groups for whom a decision had been rendered, currently under discussion, and not yet discussed.  This led to a predictable (though drawn out) process for judging applicants:

• After a short initial discussion, someone would suggest that all of the applicants who had scored above average on both tests and in the interview be admitted. 
• After some discussion about the remaining applicants, the someone would suggest that applicants just below the average score be admitted.
• More discussion would ensue about remaining applicants. At this point, the instructors would usually argue in vain that we should maintain some baseline standard and not admit anyone else. The college president (and it was always his suggestion) would then suggest that the average scores be recalculated for the remaining students, and those above the average be admitted. 
• This process would be repeated until there were only two students left, one of whom is admitted because she (it was an all female school) was the high scorer among the two, and the other because "the test might have underestimated her potential" 

Going through this frustrating charade every year became almost comical towards the end of my time with the school. (The department has since disappeared due to lack of students.)