Once they arrive on campus, most college students think the days of standardized testing are behind them. Some will go on to take graduate school exams, but these are options for those pursuing advanced degrees, not requirements for graduation.

It will therefore come as a surprise to many that a U.S. Department of Education commission is considering whether standardized testing should be implemented at the college level. With recent evidence indicating that many college seniors fail to graduate with basic literacy skills, employers, taxpayers, parents and alumni are seeking accountability from both public and private colleges. They want to see students graduating with skills that will allow them to become successful members of the workforce, and that justify the money the nation devotes to its colleges and universities.

But to impose a standardized test on institutions of higher education would be to establish a level of uniformity that’s inappropriate for our institutions of higher learning. The thousands of colleges across the United States vary widely in their scope and approach, from the tiny liberal arts school to the major research-oriented university, and a single test cannot adequately measure students taught in such diverse environments.

Within a large university, classes are similarly wide-ranging. At Boston University, classes range from wine tasting and media ethics to the history of ancient philosophy and molecular biology. Students come to college because it offers them choices, and a standardized test could never account for the broad array of knowledge being taught within a single university, let alone at schools across the country.

Standardized testing would also encourage colleges to gear their courses towards test preparation, just as many high schools now develop courses aimed solely at helping their students pass tests mandated by the No Child Left Behind Act. The problem is that these courses emphasize test scores over actual learning. It would be a sad day for our nation’s colleges, which pride themselves on intellectual inquiry and learning for the sake of learning, if they began to “teach to the tests.”

It is certainly important for colleges to be held accountable — especially public universities, which are supported by taxpayer dollars. But at what cost do we judge their performance? Nobody wants to see our institutions of higher education become bland and homogenized; we must not let the government allow that to happen.