> but what is the alternative? every university employing their own tests would mean that students now have to prepare for multiple tests based on where they ap

> but what is the alternative? every university employing their own tests would mean that students now have to prepare for multiple tests based on where they apply. Not necessarily. In many EU countries that I am familiar with, there is a standardised, country-wide test which all universities use as their main admission method and which is managed by an entity independent of high schools. Note that this is different from continuous testing throughout the duration of the program. Still, some universities administer their own admission tests in addition because you can't force the university to use only a single scoring method (well, you can't, but it's not necessarily a good idea). Even so, each university solely administering their own admission tests is how it used to work in the past and it worked rather well, despite being a bit more cumbersome. In the end, if you had real knowledge, it didn't matter that you had to take a few different tests. > a job interview system? lot's of bias and unfairness in that too. This does not matter. It just means each business is responsible for its own hires and the only one suffering from a bad hiring process is the business itself. If certain employee qualities lead to an objectively better work performance (and there are surely such qualities), the process will very quickly correct itself to detect those qualities. It's hard to tell without more context, but it sounds to me like you're conflating criteria based on grades (which are continuously accumulated throughout your schooling years) and admission/certification tests which are only administered once, at the moment you are trying to attain some certificate. My position is that the former is a bad thing, but the latter is necessary and closer to testing the thing that matters: your final abilities.