University of California Will Stop Using SAT, ACT

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.md&#x2F;SuCkO" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.md&#x2F;SuCkO</a>

A related article is <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;2020&#x2F;05&#x2F;21&#x2F;us&#x2F;university-california-sat-act.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;2020&#x2F;05&#x2F;21&#x2F;us&#x2F;university-california-...</a>

I know some people protest measures that are considered more &quot;objective&quot; over measures that are more &quot;holistic&quot;, whether this is in school admittance, performance evaluation, promotion consideration, interviewing, determining welfare benefits, choosing who makes the rules and governs.<p>However it has been my experience that whenever an explicit test or hierarchy is removed another shadow one builds up that is more subjective, more biased, and more subject to abuse.<p>Sure the SAT&#x2F;ACT does favor students whose parents had enough money to afford private tutors, but it also meant that if I didn&#x27;t have a private tutor if I could get a perfect score my chances increase. Now it changes to the whims of the interviewer, the committee that ranks my &quot;holistic&quot; experience, etc.

&gt;Admissions tests, allegedly biased against minority students, will be phased out over five years<p>Why are we lumping minorities into one group when we know that many minority groups score better than average on standardized tests than the general population. Asian Americans, Nigerian Americans, Jewish people, etc all do very well.<p>In a world where the wealthy have ever more advantages in college admissions, standardized tests serve to level the playing field. I grew up in a very wealthy town and many kids I knew whose parents spent large sums on SAT tutors never improved their scores because they didn&#x27;t have the intellectual horsepower.<p>Just because college administrators and others feel uncomfortable that certain groups continue to do better than others on the SAT is a horrible reason to get rid of the test.

This is very unfortunate. Yes, you can improve your SAT score by studying somewhat, but not massively. The College board has made a free online prep course with Kahn academy that achieves similar results to professional coaching if the student puts in the time. The fact that a student is willing to put in that time should be an indicator that they&#x27;re likely to be successful in college.<p>Where more of the abuse is is in parents getting disability diagnoses to get extra time on the test. This same technique can be used to game grades though too.

That sound you hear is panicked elites, rushing to the &quot;side door&quot; of the UC system in an attempt to figure out how best to influence their kid&#x27;s probability of admission since paying a few grand for prep sessions (for piece of mind, mostly) on what&#x27;s a pretty darn good measure of academic aptitude is a waste of everyone&#x27;s time, now that the test is rendered meaningless ... until California develops their own. I&#x27;m sure whatever they come up with will be quite the improvement.<p>If there was a checklist that you&#x27;d go down to help the University system implode &quot;remove testing for academic aptitude&quot; is probably right before &quot;all objective measures of performance are banned&quot;. At that point who the hell can justify paying $150k+ for a &quot;degree&quot;?<p>Edit: pasting this from my below comment.<p>I think people are misinterpreting my comment as suggesting elite parents would&#x27;ve been against this - far from it. They absolutely wanted this because now it&#x27;s easier to hide middling academic aptitude from admissions boards at elite schools.<p>To be clear: Removing this test helps elite parents, and hurts those who can&#x27;t afford spending money on &quot;summer experiences&quot; abroad or poverty tourism or whatever.

Such a move would mean I would never have been admitted to university, and I don&#x27;t think I&#x27;m alone.<p>I graduated third from the bottom of my class from High School and had enormous difficulties with a school system that was adversarial to me throughout my childhood.<p>In my public elementary school my principal deceived state officials to try to put me into special ed. She was admonished after it was revealed she hid my Iowa standardized test scores from state officials.<p>In my public high school, my teachers and administrators were given my elementary school file and treated me similarly. I was forbidden from taking AP classes or even taking the exams with self study. After I graduated, my high school refused to release a copy of my file to me, saying they had destroyed it mere weeks after I received my diploma.<p>Standardized tests were the one opportunity I had to demonstrate I didn&#x27;t fit my grade point average or what I&#x27;m sure would have been derogatory information provided by my public school to any university I applied to.

This is a great victory for privileged kids that can now rely more than ever on coaching to have the most awesome extra-curriculars and most convincing essays. Truly a brave step to ensure that poor kids can&#x27;t sneak through the admissions system using their smarts. I expect this will lead to higher donations to the UC system in the future. &lt;&#x2F;s&gt;<p>Seriously, considering stopping donations this year - I&#x27;m a UC alumnus and this makes me sad.

When this subject comes up I always tell the same story.<p>When I entered university, the head of admissions had been forced to accept the job. He didn&#x27;t want to be head of admissions (for physics, our subject).<p>He used the opportunity to do an experiment. Normally you need advanced Maths with a decent grade to get onto a physics degree. He abandoned that and admitted about 20 people without that. He also admitted people with lower grades than usual. Hs basically made offers to everyone who applied. So our first year class was almost twice the size it was meant to be.<p>He was my personal tutor and asked me to help host admissions lunches for prospective students, so the subject of admissions came up.<p>He laughed and said he admitted everyone because as far as he was concerned, if you were too dB to pass first year you&#x27;d be kicked out then and if not you deserved to be in second year whether you&#x27;re grades at 18 were good or not.<p>Of the 20 people without maths, at least 15 failed or transfered to other subjects in year 1. But a few graduated.<p>So he gave them a chance and they took it.<p>I know the logistics make it impossible. But I actually think letting everyone who applies in and letting the end of term&#x2F;semester&#x2F;year exams decide who stays is much fairer than single tests or one off interviews of lists of (parentally supported) extra circular projects. Imagine if MIT or Harvard said &quot;Everyone is welcome but only 10% of people pass the first year&quot;.

Yay, another chance for schools to curate incoming classes based on what they want on a brochure rather than on merit.

I had middling grades and not much extracurricular padding in high school but 99th percentile SAT (no prep other than a practice test). If it weren&#x27;t for the SAT I would have had worse college options. School felt like it provided nothing more than read and regurg and my background did not promote anything extra. So personally I do not see how this decision evens the playing field.

I can&#x27;t help but wonder at the motivations for these changes, at UC and other schools. It seems to be a combination of equity (it favors rich kids), effectiveness (it&#x27;s not that predictive) and risk aversion (can&#x27;t prove racist admissions if there&#x27;s no standardized comparison).<p>And yet... I wonder if we&#x27;re throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Standardized tests _seem_ like they could be such a such a powerful force for fairness &amp; efficiency. I wonder that there isn&#x27;t a way to improve the test - especially since, at this rate, the SAT could be obsolete in a decade or two.

I grew up fairly poor in a rather mediocre school district. I wonder if I&#x27;d have even gotten into college without the SAT (which is the better test, in my opinion). Getting 99%s on that made a difference for me.

I wish UC the best of luck designing another test. That it was a unanimous vote is suspicious to me though... did the college board stop bribing the board of regents? Or did the regents pool together to create a consulting agency that&#x27;s getting paid out to develop the new test? Or are they really all so pliable or same-minded?

Everyone is focused on this being a means of controlling the selection process, but just look at the money. CollegeBoard had a 2017 revenue of $1.07bn with an astonishing $928m in expenses.<p>If the new UCSAT displaces the SAT, UC gets to add an extra $100m to profits and $XXX million in &#x27;expenses&#x27; to get lost in the UC System. And they get more control over the selection process.

UC Berkeley alumni here. Don’t know that this is a good thing.<p>Currently, the UC’s provide a lot of weight to holistic applications. These often favor privileged kids, as they have access to far more opportunities than others. For some, the SAT provided a sort of leveling field in that regard.<p>Still, it wasn’t perfect, but I fail to see how what they come up with will fix the issue.<p>Of interest is that all of this is taking place in a state that has banned affirmative action.

Can we fix the article title to properly capitalize SAT and ACT to be more readable? Particularly since both &quot;sat&quot; and &quot;act&quot; are words.

The connections between this decision, the recent <i>Students for Fair Admission INC v Harvard</i>, and the <i>Varsity Blues</i> scandal are striking. The interesting tid-bit is the <i>Varsity Blues</i> information.<p>Previously, the price of bribery was unknown. The economics of such a trade, illegal as it was, were murky. With the unmasking of the scheme, including possible angles, and now a known bargaining price point, the whole admissions process has become much clearer.<p>Covid19, throws a wrench into everything, including college admissions. But these other mechanisms of entry are still in place.<p>I suspect that the admissions departments are about to get a lot larger. Especially with the ability to use Zoom for everything now.

I took the SAT in high school and my scores discouraged me so much that I ended up not applying to any colleges. Worked out in the end because I went to a community college then transferred to Berkeley (which thankfully didn&#x27;t require an SAT score)

People keep saying those tears favor the rich, but I think if you look at legacy admissions, which are the domain of the rich, those tend to have lower SAT scores than other students.<p>Also, the various people arrested in the college payment schemes were rich, but still were not able to get their kids into the colleges based on their scores.<p>Basically, the colleges are doing this so they have more leeway to select the students they want without having to answer tough questions about bias and discrimination.

It&#x27;s weird that the development of our educational system is being driven by what basically boils down to free market competition where UCs reject the value proposition of those standardized tests and impact the market for educational testing services. It&#x27;s also interesting to see, if you view this as the market becoming more efficient, it&#x27;s interesting to see how long it took for any significant move towards efficiency to happen by rejecting standardized tests. I wonder if market skeptics are right and that these evaluations and decisions would have been made a lot faster and better with regulation and centralization, or if market advocates are right and this was the best&#x2F;fastest way to have educational institutions realize the impact subpar admissions selection based on flawed tests has and course correct, which they might only do because UC is competing against other institutions (unlike universities in other countries), and which opens up the market for better evaluation methods that will, because of a profit motive, lead to new, less biased standardized evaluations being developed rapidly to increase equity and equality of opportunity in society.

&gt; The road to Thursday’s vote has been full of twists and turns. Ms. Napolitano began the review of the use of the SAT in 2018, that prompted a faculty committee began a review of the use of the exam. In February it recommended that the system continue to use the exams, arguing that applicants’ scores on the SAT and ACT still serve as better predictors of first-year performance than high school grades.<p>I think I would have followed that recommendation.

Lot of great comments here, just wanted to add one piece of historical context:<p>This had a really bad outcome the last time the UC system tried to do this 20 years ago: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.berkeley.edu&#x2F;news&#x2F;berkeleyan&#x2F;2001&#x2F;02&#x2F;21_sat.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.berkeley.edu&#x2F;news&#x2F;berkeleyan&#x2F;2001&#x2F;02&#x2F;21_sat.html</a><p>In response to the UC&#x27;s criticism the College Board added an essay to the SAT. The thinking was this would expose the softer, more human side that standardized tests missed.<p>What happened?<p>It significantly increased the cost of the test (gotta pay someone to grade it) and made it even harder for poor kids to go to rich schools because they couldn&#x27;t afford the more expensive test.<p>Not to mention the subjectivity of grading an essay.<p>Standardized testing is like that Winston Churchill quote on democracy being &quot;the absolute worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time&quot; -- what system does the UC have that&#x27;s more fair?<p>The NYT piece said they&#x27;re planning on developing their own test -- so now prospective students have to take two tests if they plan on applying to schools outside the UC system?<p>The practical effect of this is Asian Americans will have to work 2x as hard as other groups to get into good schools, as was revealed by the Harvard case <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;2018&#x2F;06&#x2F;15&#x2F;us&#x2F;harvard-asian-enrollment-applicants.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;2018&#x2F;06&#x2F;15&#x2F;us&#x2F;harvard-asian-enrollme...</a>.

I would prefer if schools just gave as concrete as possible feedback for why individual applicants are or are not admitted.<p>i.e. Congrats, you got accepted. Your GPA ranked in the top $X percentile of our admitted class and your engagement in robotics was astonishing.<p>or<p>You were not admitted because while your GPA was excellent, we did not see sufficient community engagement in your extracuriculars.

<p><pre><code> &gt; ...dealing a significant blow to the multibillion-dollar college admission testing industry. </code></pre> why such concern for a parasite industry?

Still feel like test scores are the least inequitable parts of college admissions. This is where people can <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;2017&#x2F;07&#x2F;14&#x2F;upshot&#x2F;how-universal-coll.." rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;2017&#x2F;07&#x2F;14&#x2F;upshot&#x2F;how-universal-coll...</a>.<p>Louisiana made everyone take the ACT and... more people went to college, especially the high achieving low income and&#x2F;or minority students!<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.rand.org&#x2F;pubs&#x2F;research_reports&#x2F;RR2303z4.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.rand.org&#x2F;pubs&#x2F;research_reports&#x2F;RR2303z4.html</a>

This pragmatically means the administrators are free to pursue their biased and ideological policy objectives.<p>I loathe to be so cynical but &#x27;roughly objective&#x27; measures are usually better than none.

If you thought grade inflation was bad before, hold on to your tuchus.

I can&#x27;t say I agree with this decision. I graduated from Cal probably a bit higher than 70th percentile by GPA in EECS 10 years ago. To this day, I was motivated by everyone smarter than me who was admitted based on merit based on their SAT. If I were to graduate today (at lets say) 85th percentile, not because of merit but because Berkeley admitted applicants not as strong, that would&#x27;ve damaged my motivation more than being in a fair 70th percentile placement.

Yes, finally! As someone who underwent the standardized testing grind, I have been waiting for an announcement like this by a university system for years.<p>I understand that there needs to be some standardized way to objectively score students, because allocating college seats to students seems to be an induced scarcity problem.<p>However, as someone who scored highly and is currently studying computer science at UC Berkeley, I ultimately feel like my time was wasted because the tests have almost no relation to any of my studies in class.<p>I know that in the absence of SAT and ACT, universities will need to come up with a different system, that has an equal chance of being gamed. Perfect is the enemy of good, and in this case, I would rather we strive toward standardized systems that actually relate to the content of high school. So many times while studying for the test I thought how much of a waste of time it is, and that I would rather be doing something else like programming.<p>Thank goodness that nowadays all I have to worry about is actual computer science. I got past the time-wasting hump and I never have to look back again. That is, unless I face the GRE...

Sadly this is a continuation of a long trend. In 2005 Inside Higher Ed mentioned:<p>&gt; Fewer than a third of college degree recipients are “proficient” in everyday literacy, U.S. study finds, and rate is falling.<p>Do you think its gotten worse or better, 15 years on?<p>Back in 2017 I wrote about how Cal State replaced no-credit classes with credit bearing ones, and then nixed the requirements for placement exams and remedial classes: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;medium.com&#x2F;@simon.sarris&#x2F;higher-education-erodes-a7c9983692e0" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;medium.com&#x2F;@simon.sarris&#x2F;higher-education-erodes-a7c...</a><p>&gt; At Cal State, about 40% of freshmen each year are considered not ready for college-level work and required to take remedial classes that do not count toward their degrees.<p>&gt; The hope is that these efforts will also help students obtain their degrees sooner — one of the public university system’s priorities. Cal State has committed to doubling its four-year graduation rate, from 19% to 40%, by 2025.

Ibram X Kendi has an excellent book, &quot;Stamped from the Beginning&quot; that does a great job of explaining how SAT and ACT tests were really only ever meaningful as a barrier to class mobility for blacks in the United states. in the 21st century it does the same thing. By keeping test prep out of public school and forcing takers to invest up to a thousand dollars on a classroom instruction for the test (which often promises an increase up to 200 points) it remains a disadvantage to latinx and black minorities who are generally poorer.<p>&#x27;Test prep&#x27; is also less about what you learn, and more about the finesse or &#x27;form&#x27; required to take the test. Much the same as a power lifter lifts greater weight due to ther superior form, those whove attended test prep complete the SAT and ACT with a higher score because of superior test taking &#x27;form.&#x27;

Giving even more incentive for high schools to inflate their students grades. Give them all straight As so they have a good shot at the UCs.<p>I don&#x27;t see how you can eliminate having some sort of admissions test. It&#x27;s too easy to fake most of the other criteria they want to use for admissions.

They&#x27;re trying to reduce the number of Asians at the school, plain and simple.

Preparing for the SAT, I have to say that it was one of the weirdest tests I&#x27;ve ever taken. I don&#x27;t think it does a good job at predicting future outcomes for students, compared to how they did in their school work.<p>For most people outside of the US system, who want to go to US universities, it is an extra (and expensive) hassle when you&#x27;ve already taken internationally accredited qualifications like the A-Levels or the IB. I&#x27;d much rather trust something that has assessed you over a couple of years over something that just asses how well you can cram for something.

I hope they don’t replace one standardized test with another standardized test. Although, that’s exactly what may happen. It is not far fetched to create a more personalized project based testing that factors in race, ethnicity, socio economic status, gender, etc.<p>Also, if all colleges are created equally, endowed similarly, we may not need a test and follow the K12 model of going to your local college because it is as good as any other college. It is about time we solve education along with healthcare and create equity in the system.

It&#x27;ll probably come back in some form. Totally agree that too much emphasis was on the test score and that it didn&#x27;t actually represent the student and their likelihood for success at the university. This is just Goodhart&#x27;s law in effect, &quot;When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.&quot;<p>However, the reason it&#x27;ll be back in some form later is because you need quantitative measures to help sort the stack of applications otherwise the overhead becomes too much to deal with.

Is there any way that it could make sense to require reporting the # of hours a student spends in SAT&#x2F;ACT tutoring, whether it be private, through your school, or other?<p>As a required field on the common app, this could help in making admissions decisions. There are so many reasons using standardized tests for admissions isn&#x27;t fair across the board, but perhaps understanding how much prep went into the test would provide useful data for admissions offices, and also at the macroacademic (lol) layer.

Anecdote. I did HORRIBLE in high school. I somehow still graduated with less than the required GPA. I think they called it close enough because they didn&#x27;t want to continue dealing with me. When I stupidly thought college would be a good idea, I got in based on my SAT score as my GPA wasn&#x27;t high enough. Of course, I failed out of college too. ;)

As a Canadian who moved to the US for a year in my early 20s and had friends entering university, I had no idea what the SAT or ACT was, and I couldn&#x27;t hear the difference between them when they talked about it. Did you know that SAT and ACT are near-homonyms? When said quickly as in regular speech, they sound almost the same. Talk about confusing.

Personally, I would like to a see a government sponsored test where the study materials are provided for free. I feel like that would help decrease the amount of people who couldn&#x27;t afford the prep courses or tutors. Not ideal, but better than the current system where wealthy parents pay for the best tutors and materials.

Does this mean they will not <i>require</i> the exams, or that they will not consider them in admissions at all? I&#x27;m guessing the latter but couldn&#x27;t be sure from the article.

Also discussed here: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=23266209" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=23266209</a>

I think this is a good move overall. Remember, they&#x27;re not phasing out tests entirely, it&#x27;s over a 5 year period before they can develop alternative tests.<p>I think US college exam systems are horribly flawed.<p>For one, why are they run by a private non-profit rather than the government?<p>They&#x27;re also clearly not difficult enough, when at elite universities it&#x27;s more a qualification than a determinant. In other nations, they&#x27;re hard enough that the bell curve doesn&#x27;t clip at the end.<p>The tests should be free, or at least free for, say, 2 tests per year per student. They should be harder. And they shouldn&#x27;t be held in the hands of a third party.

This is extremely exciting news. Here’s to hoping that the UC system can create an unbiased exam-free admissions process that increases access to college.

There is going to be a massive market for extracurricular consultants in a little while as when everyone gets As, that’s what will be the deciding factor.

Does this mean the UC system will leave it up to the individual universities or departments within? Or is this an outright ban they&#x27;re going for?

I wonder if the decision was made on data. Is SAT score correlated to college GPA? Educated guess says high school gpa has a stronger correlation.

There is no SAT in Canadian school admissions. What would make it difficult fo the US to adopt a similar policy?

&lt;quote&gt;dealing a significant blow to the multibillion-dollar college admission testing industry.&lt;&#x2F;quote&gt;<p>You mean those tests are privately done? It&#x27;s not some standard high school end test administered by the state like the baccalaureate exam?<p>Sheesh.

Non paywall version (different site but same topic): <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.politico.com&#x2F;states&#x2F;california&#x2F;story&#x2F;2020&#x2F;05&#x2F;21&#x2F;university-of-california-eliminates-sat-act-requirement-1285435" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.politico.com&#x2F;states&#x2F;california&#x2F;story&#x2F;2020&#x2F;05&#x2F;21&#x2F;...</a><p>Is there any objective evidence that SAT favors wealthy people. I mean, I am sure it does to some extent. But how much? Even if there is a bias towards richer kids, the disparity could be due to other reasons as well - better schooling, better parenting, better social network etc. How are these other reasons eliminated?

To help minorities... sure Jan.

welcome to socialism&#x2F;communism, where equal opportunities are nothing, only equal results matter.<p>the left is absolutely brain dead, the road to hell is paved with their &quot;good&quot; intentions.

Paywall. What is the proposed solution to replace it?

I attended an elite private high school ($30,000 a year). The school gamed everything for them. It wrote their essays, created leadership positions for everyone, and made sure to spread the applications around so that every student in the references could be “once in a generation.”<p>One guy who went to Princeton used a flagship story of “building a forest”. The school was redoing its grounds and hired a bunch of homeless people to do it as they worked for cheap cash. They let him “oversee” it as a social initiative.<p>Another kid got into Columbia by creating a “nationwide startup innovation movement.” His parents paid the school to book all these convention centres and they flew him out to chill at these fictional events. They claimed all the funds from the events went to startups. They claimed to find over 50 startups and sent each a small check for $30. They sent random startups $30 and used it as a claim to funding innovation.<p>With grades, they had an internal grade to allow for actually rigorous education, but then they would multiply the grade by 1.2 to get your “public school grade.” That’s the grade reported to universities.<p>Oh and the teacher left the room for AP tests and we were taught how to efficiently “come to group conclusions.”<p>The only thing that kept them from doing that kind of stuff for everyone was the SAT as plenty of AP National Scholars couldn’t crack 1800 on the damn thing.<p>We won over a million dollars in our 60 person class in scholarship money off these absurdities as most of them don’t ask about the SAT.

Another strike against genuine education. Now prep schools that have 17 valedictorians will help their students pad their applications with nonsense extra-curricular activities and experiences. However it&#x27;s likely much easier to create the same pastiche of fluff in poorly-performing schools than it is to actually raise test scores.<p>Now more than ever, college signals nothing other than the ability to follow rules and jump through hoops. Such a tragedy.

PDF of the decision: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;regents.universityofcalifornia.edu&#x2F;regmeet&#x2F;may20&#x2F;b4.pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;regents.universityofcalifornia.edu&#x2F;regmeet&#x2F;may20&#x2F;b4....</a>

For the best schools, like Berkeley, I don&#x27;t think this should matter much. At that level, SAT&#x2F;ACT scores are pretty much just a threshold used to whittle down the number of candidates. Once you&#x27;re over say 1500 on the SAT there&#x27;s diminishing returns on trying to close the gap to 1600.

Abolish entrance exams entirely. Replace them with the exams at the end of first semester coupled with some rudimentary requirement that e.g. if you want to do math your high school math grade is OK. Make the first semester de-facto &quot;remedial education&quot; oriented and vastly reduce fees. Basically start with a giant, relatively inexpensive MOOC (possibly joint with other schools to reduce overhead) and then filter that down to people who are going to be able to pull their weight.

Entrance will now be solely based on how much money your parents bribe admissions with.

Well, does IQ matter for academia? Some latent ability to think quickly matters. That&#x27;s the point of the SAT.

A large fraction of the value of a degree is as a hiring signal of employee quality. That signal is degraded by anti capitalist training, by merit hiring equated with white nationalism, by academic grounding diverted to activism, and now by the removal of objective admission standards. As an economic transaction college is being made less attractive, to its long term peril.<p>If not for the evident sincerity of their academic advocates I&#x27;d suspect that these policies were carefully crafted by enemies of higher education.

Higher education is an absolutely shameful industry. They work hand in glove with public and private financiers and textbook cartels to sell 18 year olds on a highly speculative “investment” that very frequently turns out to be worthless from an economic standpoint. This is jus another way to further push open the floodgates.

The real reason for the change is to exclude more Asians.<p>History is a circle.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org&#x2F;harvard-s-jewish-problem" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org&#x2F;harvard-s-jewish-proble...</a>