Is a bachelor's degree an entitlement, or a marker that the recipient has certain academic qualities? Listen to what comes out of some of our universities and you might think it's the former. Remember when schools were talking about getting rid of entrance exams in order to attract more "students of color"?(Except for Asians, of course--schools don't want more of them.) How did that work out?
Before the pandemic, a growing number of colleges stopped requiring applicants to submit SAT or ACT scores, as a way to increase diversity on their campuses. But researchers are finding that the test-optional policy isn’t substantially raising the share of low-income students or students of color at colleges that have tried it.
The latest study, published in the peer-reviewed American Educational Research Journal in April 2021, found that test-optional admissions increased the share of Black, Latino and Native American students by only 1 percentage point at about 100 colleges and universities that adopted the policy between 2005-06 and 2015-16. The share of low-income students, as measured by those who qualify for federal Pell Grants, also increased by only 1 percentage point on these campuses, compared to similar schools that continued to require SAT and ACT scores.
What's unsaid but obvious is that schools are doing away with the SAT/ACT because those tests show that the students the schools want more of aren't academically prepared. I say let's get more such students better prepared in high school through outreach programs and rigorous academics sans excuses, rather than lowering college admissions standards--and, no doubt, academic standards as well.
3 comments:
I once took a class on a field trip to Lawrence Livermore Labs and one part of their presentation really stuck with me. They want their scientists to be well-spoken, able to work with others, and have high GRE scores. No mention was made of college GPA because I think they felt that this measure is subjective.
By watering down college degrees, employers will simply come up with their own devices to measure future employee aptitude. If colleges continue with their watered-down WOKE curriculum, employers will just beef up their own training programs and possibly eschew the college diploma altogether.
The higher ed system makes money by butts in seats, so there is no reason for them to not try to increase the number of tuition sources.
Then a lot of money is spent trying to "help" students who are not academics, who lack ability, training or interest to succeed in higher education.
It's a make-work program for diversity administrators and others with a vested interest in doing-good for people, without then following through so that the students who actually succeed in graduating actually find employment.
But that's not important, since they HAVE A DEGREE (more or less) NOW! Yay for them!
If universities were truly interested in education, they wouldn't have remedial programs on campus for students who were admitted with poor reading, writing and math skills. Make no mistake, these are not study groups or peer learning, these are students who lack skills to be successful because they or their schools haven't done the preparation. This is just more gaming the system. It's not uncommon for students who are not in the top ten percent in academically challenging high schools transfer to schools where their GPA's will move them into the top ten percent. Meanwhile I've heard college recruiters approach students who have little or no academic interest with promises of "free" financial aid and grants. What happens far too often is these same students rack up thousands in loans and have no degree. That kind of recruiting should be illegal. If we had a national system of testing that hinged on true assessment of abilities rather than trying to create outcomes that are politically correct, we wouldn't be at this juncture.
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