蜜桃影视

American higher education has always been enamored with longevity. Student tour guides on campuses across the country tout their institutions鈥� origin stories, quirky campus traditions and historical successes as they strut backwards past various stately, be-columned buildings with cornerstones announcing their decades 鈥� or centuries 鈥� of academic tenure.

It鈥檚 understandable enough: Many colleges and universities bill themselves as unique clubs with particular characteristics that they鈥檝e developed organically over time. More seriously, the academy has an instinctive reverence for intellectual history; campuses have long served a key role as repositories of human wisdom.

And yet, framing the academic life in terms of links to the past can also create institutional calcification. It can make today鈥檚 status quo seem like the only possible way of organizing a campus.

Take colleges鈥� admissions processes. Several months ago, before the pandemic, California civil rights activists in an effort to force the system to drop standardized college admission test scores as an admissions requirement. Now, suddenly, unexpectedly, they鈥檝e gotten their wish. Earlier this month, that, among other things, its schools would not require students to include standardized test scores with their applications 鈥� starting with the 2021 freshman class.

The global coronavirus pandemic is shaking the very foundations of that chunk of the higher education universe. Indeed, public health concerns spring administrations of both the SAT and ACT. For now, UC鈥檚 change is temporary, but the system鈥檚 size and scope 鈥� it enrolls more than 280,000 students across 10 campuses across the state 鈥� should open a broader conversation about how to make college admissions fairer. It鈥檚 worth asking: If we can do without mandating standardized assessments in college admissions now and the sky doesn’t fall, why bring them back at all?

The UC wouldn鈥檛 actually have to blaze a trail. As it happens, my alma mater, , was the first college in the country to go test-optional (more than 50 years ago). The college has tracked the academic trajectories of students who submit test scores against those who don’t for decades, and it says that it doesn’t find any real impact. (In case it matters: I did submit my scores.) Their findings aren鈥檛 unique: When it comes to predicting students鈥� likelihood of graduating from college, high school grade point averages than scores on standardized college admissions assessments. Major university systems in Indiana and North Carolina 鈥� part of more than 1,000 test-optional campuses across the country 鈥� .

Advocates for making these admissions tests optional also cite studies that flag possible biases in their design. evidence of bias against African-American test takers in the verbal section of the SAT, arguing that it 鈥渇avors one ethnic group over another.鈥� There鈥檚 also a socioeconomic angle. 鈥淭he highest predictive value of an SAT isn鈥檛 in how well a student will do in school, but how well they were able to avail themselves of prep material,鈥� John A. P茅rez, chairman of University of California鈥檚 Board of Regents, . 鈥淎nd access to that prep material is still disproportionately tied to family income.鈥�

At present, there鈥檚 ample reason to believe that these assessments have come to serve less as an upward mobility path for historically underserved students and more as an amplifier of existing social inequities. And yet, the tests鈥� critics shouldn鈥檛 overplay their hand (and the research behind it). While college admissions tests have sometimes served as an unfair hurdle for students, particularly those from diverse backgrounds, a good test-optional policy would convert them into an alternative pathway.

鈥淪cores are best used not as the basis for a rank ordering of individuals,鈥� , 鈥渂ut as thresholds, dividing an applicant pool into those above and those below a line that is roughly predictive of likelihood of success.鈥� That is, they could allow students with lower GPAs to prove their mettle 鈥� and earn admission 鈥� with higher scores.

What鈥檚 more, generally because of inequitable allocation of public education resources, many students from historically underserved communities attend schools that do not offer the full range of advanced coursework and extracurricular activities prized in competitive college admissions. Assessments like the SAT and ACT, however imperfect, could be used to give high-scoring students from under-resourced schools a chance to boost their admissions chances.

Does such a test-optional policy seem impossibly radical? Would it be such an unconscionable departure from college admissions鈥� meritocratic aspirations? It certainly doesn鈥檛 seem so. Suddenly, admissions offices in California are capable of breezing away the core metrics of prestige higher education 鈥� things the university system was preparing to defend in court just months ago. Perhaps this status quo was overdue for an update.

Those admissions policies aren’t a pile of natural, set-in-stone definitions of a quality applicant. They’re just the ones we’d gotten accustomed to. As colleges pause on mandating college鈥檚 admissions assessments, a decision made for them by the pandemic, it’s an opportunity to think seriously about what’s lost and what would be gained by making this change permanent 鈥� not just in our chaotic present, but as part of building a better, fairer future.

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