Miriam Pawel, in an op-ed in The New York Times, argues that the University of California should not bring back the SAT requirement for admission:
What has made the University of California exceptional is its commitment to increase access without sacrificing excellence. In recent years, California has proudly defied a national trend: On average, about 40 percent of its students are the first in their families to attend a four-year college. More than half qualify for free tuition. The percentages of underrepresented students have crept up, through a variety of initiatives. The California Dream Act gave undocumented students access to financial aid, as well as in-state tuition. Students on University of California campuses may struggle with basic math, but they are graduating at record rates.
That piece was largely in response to an opinion piece by UC Berkeley math professor Zvezdelina Stankova making the rounds last month:
Without standardized tests, admissions officers are flying blind, especially as grade inflation has made transcripts a weaker indicator of readiness, and artificial intelligence has made admissions essays a weaker signal of students’ work.
All metrics are incomplete, and our general reliance on standardized tests has always been fraught. And yet, it’s also foolish to deny that tests can be useful. I have to admit that Pawel’s argument seems to very obviously contradict itself: no sacrifice in quality and graduating at record rates while struggling with basic skills? I’m not sure that math checks out.
Apparently, it has been the desperate professors themselves who would like the SAT back and are being overruled. Pawel states:
“Yet just five years later, the University of California is embroiled again in a very public battle over whether to reinstate the SAT. Faculty members, whose 2020 recommendation to retain the test was overruled, have led the charge.”
The gap between administrators and people on the ground doing the actual work remains alive and well.
Even for students prepared for educational coursework, there is an additional problem: for many students, the degree is merely a credential that doesn’t necessarily reflect true learning or a practical skill acquisition. A medical student who wants to use the MD as a label for their startup bio has different goals than one who wants to be a practicing physician. Many students, in college and beyond, view their actual coursework as an unavoidable impediment to spending more time on their all-important extracurriculars that they think will provide the networking and resume-seasoning that will actually help them succeed.
We’ve confounded education as a learning process with “education” as credentialism, all while the costs go up and up and up. Grade inflation combined with CV-slop and the lack of helpful metrics erodes the value of a degree just as regular inflation makes money worth less over time. At some point, the value and the price become irreconcilable.