Crazy, but as you can imagine, in a community such as Boulder this is an idea that the liberals find quite attractive.
Thankfully there are voices of common sense regarding keeping the SAT as a good indicator for colleges. The conclusion is…
I sincerely hope that SAT defection is only a fad, limited to small high-end institutions. The arguments advanced by the as yet tiny band of top colleges or universities that are abandoning the SAT are empirically unfounded, if not downright fraudulent. When it comes to protecting their own academic standards, they may have any number of ways in which they can live without SATs, both in choosing whom to admit, and teaching them once they are enrolled. Unfortunately, however, the collegiate stratum from which SAT defectors come serves as a role model for the rest of higher education. Thus, the disparagement of the SAT as an admissions criterion by the top tier schools may set an unfortunate precedent for the rest, risking widespread debasement of national collegiate academic standards that are not all that high to begin with.
and the qualifications of the author are…
Peter D. Salins served as Provost of the State University of New York (SUNY) System from January 1997 to October, 2006, responsible for university-wide academic planning and standards, including admissions and instititional research. He iscurrently University Professor of Political Science and Director of the Graduate Program in Public Policy at Stony Brook University.
Hat-tip to Kimberly Swygert writing over at Joanne Jacobs’ blog.
