11 ms·

The greatest source of admissions inequity is childhood socioeconomic status. Dropping the SAT is so obviously not a fix for that I question the competency of t

The greatest source of admissions inequity is childhood socioeconomic status. Dropping the SAT is so obviously not a fix for that I question the competency of the administrators who thought doing so was a good idea. The SAT is probably the most attainable piece of the application process for a poor kid to succeed at. You literally just need a guide book or two and enough time to study. One good smart friend helps if you're lucky enough to have one. Literally the lowest barrier to entry for a kid stuck in a shitty school with parents that aren't around and no money to your name. Is it still a hurdle for poor kids? Undoubtedly, but I can't think of anything that can show academic capacity that requires fewer resources.

crazygringo 4y ago
> You literally just need a guide book or two and enough time to study. I think it's important to realize just how extremely non-obvious this is, though, for many high school sophomores/juniors. I went to a decent high school and was in honors classes, and even I would have had zero idea test prep was even a thing, if a single science teacher hadn't randomly mentioned it in class once. I went to the school library and found the "Princeton Review" and practice exams and everything. I absolutely credit it with raising my score by probably a couple hundred points. But I never would have discovered it except for that single teacher's offhand comment. I just assumed it would be a test that was an accurate reflection of your knowledge/intelligence, so as long as you were going to school, you'd just take the test and get your grade. If someone had pressed me, I probably would have said that test prep would be something kids in rich schools wasted their money on that wouldn't make a difference anyways. I just had no idea. Yes, I absolutely agree that the SAT is the most attainable way for a poor kid to succeed at. I personally don't support the movements to remove standardized testing, not at all. But I also want to highlight how there's still an utterly gigantic step needed to reliably educate kids both about the importance of the SAT and how to prepare for it. Very often barriers aren't even primarily a question of money/time/effort -- they're simply a question of awareness that an option even exists or that it matters.
- MereInterest 4y ago
  Especially because the entire purported schtick of the SAT is to measure aptitude (the "A" in the acronym). In principle, if the SAT is true to its name, getting a study book shouldn't help at all. But since study guides or repeated testing does improve the score, it can't be a true measurement of aptitude.
  - dlg 4y ago
    It changed its name from the Scholastic Aptitude Test in 1990. (Over time they’ve also eliminated some of the sections most correlated with IQ.) There’s a good history of the SAT and where it succeeded and failed in its goal of making college admissions more fair, The Big Test by Nicholas Lehmann.
    - dsq 4y ago
      What were the sections removed that were more correlated with IQ?
  - BobbyJo 4y ago
    I don't think they meant aptitude in the strictest sense. You ability to learn and apply ideas is an aptitude in and of itself. That is something studying is a part of demonstrating, and the the type of aptitude these tests, I believe, are intended to measure.
    - lupire 4y ago
      You know what's a good way to test for scholastic aptitude? Try studying, and see if helps you learn. Studying to increase score on a test is scholastic aptitude. If studying fails to raise your score, you lack scholastic aptitude.
  - samatman 4y ago
    I would think, personally, that if studying were an important part of scholarship, I said if it was, just hypothetically, then studying for the test of scholastic aptitude would itself demonstrate aptitude for scholarship. SAT must agree, since they changed the test to be much more amenable to study. That must be the reason why right.
alistairSH 4y ago
Part of the argument for dropping the SAT is that the SAT has been shown to be a proxy for family socio-economic status and is no better an indicator of success at college than GPA, honor/AP/IB course participation, and extracurriculars. (I’m not making that argument myself, I haven’t seen numbers explained well enough to form a solid opinion)
- civilized 4y ago
  Almost everything colleges use to admit students is a proxy for socioeconomic status. Some things, like extracurriculars, could be far more correlated to SES. The only exception would be when a student gets points for being from a race or neighborhood that tends to be less affluent. Which raises the question: why single out the SAT?
- wisty 4y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure" SAT is a rugged system that performs well while withstanding concerted efforts by hackers to undermine it. Replacing it with systems that perform no better (when not under anywhere near as much fire, and appearing to have no real security) is probably not going to work so well.
- dirtyid 4y ago
  You can watch SAT prep videos and pirate prep books for free. GPA gets juiced all the time. Honor AP/IB had a solid premium. Very few extra curriculars that don't cost money / resources. The handful of kids (including me) that didn't pay 5 digits for fancy SAT prep at my school poured over some study guides and watched pirated VCDs and ended up doing better than kids who half hearted their private prep.
  - zdragnar 4y ago
    You don't even need to do that. There are plenty of free, legally accessible resources to prepare for the test available now- much more so than when I took the tests back in my youth.
robot1 4y ago
This rings true for myself and a couple of my friends who grew up relatively poor in a wealthy area - our test scores on the SAT and relevant subject tests boosted us into private schools that we would not have gone to otherwise, which then led us to well-paying jobs right out of college. Last I checked, my high school implemented affordable/free SAT tutoring for all students and I hope to see more of it nationwide as I believe it helps immensely in socioeconomic mobility.
robomartin 4y ago
> The greatest source of admissions inequity is childhood socioeconomic status If we are talking about the US, no, I disagree. The greatest source of admissions inequity are shit K-12 education. I'll give you a direct example from when my kids were at the local middle school. Their science teacher --a Chiropractor-turned-teacher-- was, well, there's no other way to put it, a moron. The guy actually taught the kids that the moon does not spin...at all. They, quite literally, had to answer the question that way on a test in order to get the points. I can't even remember the number of horrifically wrong things this guy was teaching his students. By the time my kids got to his class he had been there for about twenty years. It didn't end there. This guy was a bad teacher. He was angry, had self-confidence problems, would yell and scream at the kids, etc. If a kid had a question he would sometimes tell them "That's stupid question" in front of the entire class. Just horrible. I lost count of how many times I met with the school principal and vice principal to file complaints. I had many (friendly) conversations with him. He was clearly intimidated by someone who's daily life was about science and engineering. I offered to come in once a week to help out and bring stuff with me to inspire the kids (robots, space-related stuff I was working on, etc.). Heck, I offered to arrange for the kids to take a tour of a rocket-making factory. He never took me up on the offer. My kids, to this day, tell me their science education happened at home because that guy was a clown and other teachers were ineffective. There was no way to get this guy fired. He did not belong in a school, at all. He is still there. That school might get a better science teacher once he retires...with full benefits for life. I have other examples of truly bad teachers doing the kids a horrible disservice. Unions protect them. You can't get rid of them. We somehow accept this and it permeates the land. The bottom line is that we, the inhabitants of this land, pay taxes and fund schools that are going a horrible job of educating our children. The school is where we can clearly make an effort to provide kids from all walks of life with better outcomes, regardless of socioeconomic status. They can be learning calculus and science even if their parents didn't finish high school and are not in a position to help or advise them. They can be using computers even if they can't afford them at home. They can take inspiring field trips to the most amazing universities, museums and companies even if they don't have the means to do that outside of school. And yet, we don't do that. We don't have a unified nation-wide standard of excellence based on an absolute dedication to giving kids the best opportunities to learn, regardless of socioeconomics. Instead we hire people like the moron from my story, who, for thirty years, will not only teach nonsense to class-after-class, he also manages to destroy any potential opportunity for kids to get excited about learning science by being an absolute asshole. Put a different way: If we had really good K-12 schools and results, university admissions would not be a problem for anyone at all and success rates would be amazing.
horns4lyfe 4y ago
University administrators are incompetent by default.
- wahern 4y ago
  Perhaps a more important factor is that university administrators are being constantly bombarded with various demands, requests, accusations, and threats regarding diversity issues. By students, pundits, even accrediting organizations. A law school dean once told to me that for years the ABA was constantly demanding, privately, that they increase the number of black students. The problem (as I saw it, we didn't discuss it much) is that this university had a reputation for being libertarian, which in the broader political climate translated (especially back then) as conservative, which translated as potentially hostile to black students. There were black students, but they deliberately chose the school for its somewhat unique curriculum which in many respects absolutely did lean libertarian. Most black students, like most students generally, wouldn't have strong enough preferences to override such a negative impression. The woke crowd is far more vocal and fervent, and they're that way because they know that, at least in the short-term, being forceful can be effective, at least superficially. People with more reasonable sentiments and preferences, OTOH, aren't eager to put themselves in harm's way to defend those who are being targeted. For all I know, the ABA was applying pressure because the ABA was being pressured by some other interest groups. And perhaps the ABA pulled their punches, keeping everything on the down-low, precisely because they believed the demands were less than reasonable. As the saying goes, "shit rolls down hill."
hintymad 4y ago
> The greatest source of admissions inequity is childhood socioeconomic status Agreed, and good public schools can be of great help. Only when public schools fail do tutoring and socioeconomic status matter. No, I'm not talking about frills like one ipad per kid or low kid-to-teacher ratio or amazing extra-curriculums. I'm talking about teachers who can really explain concepts and deliver inspiring homework. I'm talking about an incentive system that students are motivated to learn instead of mocking those who try as "teacher's pets". I'm talking about an incentive system that ordinary students like me are pushed to achieve excellence even when they do not feel like studying. Really, it really does not require much to learn high school curriculum. It just requires a lot of dedication from teachers and students. Take a look at Asian countries. The have millions of students who went through daily hardship, yet they had a national system that drives students and teachers to focus on learning what matters, even though they can't necessarily afford what kids in the US can enjoy.
bane 4y ago
I grew up pretty poor, and through a longer story than I want to type here and a confluence of negative voices mostly from my school, was dissuaded from taking the SATs and even considering college. Years after high school I eventually found my way to community college, then to a 4-year, a grad program and so on. It worked out to be a blessing as I graduated without debt from a major university and entered into a realm of well paying jobs that have put me firmly into a life the rest of my family can barely even comprehend. To me the proof I should continue to a 4-year degree was doing well in my community college courses. I am fortunate to have been given the gift of automatic entry by policy makers who decided long ago that if you graduate from a Community College you can go to a State School no questions asked...and you can go to a Community College by basically walking off the street no questions asked. I graduated my undergrad with a 4.0 and my grad with a 4.0, but to be honest I don't think my SATs would have been worth entry into any college and my high school GPA was around a 2.5. My point is, there are other ways of assessing a child's entire future for entry than a single test, and many alternate paths to attainment. But we act as if there is only one kind of path and one kind of package, a 1600 SAT score, lots of extracurriculars, "differentiator" activities, and an original heart strings pulling letter. Top schools need to get smarter, more creative, and maybe take a page from those "lesser" schools they turn their noses up at.
- BobbyJo 4y ago
  Doing well in college is a great measure of how well you'll do in college, and subsequently, many good schools will accept mid degree transfers of undergraduate students who might not have done well in high school. I don't think it's viable to use that to replace the SAT and other current evaluation metrics, however.
  - bane 4y ago
    I guess my point is, why not just shove all the students into a Community College a-like for the beginning of their undergrad? With the following features: - Open enrollment - Cheap - Can drop out and retry later without any penalty - Entry into the final two years is granted based on first two year performance, state schools are guaranteed entry, and privates get to be selective based on major(s), student performance awards, and GPAs. - CC Associates degrees can be earned in periods much longer than 2 years. Allowing students to work, or retake remedial subjects, or try out multiple majors, without it being a huge deal. The first two years of most undergraduate degrees are fairly similar. IIR there's been studies that show that students who arrive at the universities from CCs do as well as or better than their traditional peers. It helps with student cost and loan problems. Graduates who don't go on to their final 2 or have no plans to can simply treat the CC as a trade education. And many students who do flunk out of school due to partying, immaturity, etc. can simply come and try again when they are ready. Students actually get an education rather than studying for a mostly useless test. Basically the CCs are a softer entry into higher education, and can be the test for performance in a way that actually is meaningful. Since student have to pay to be there, it's not just the same thing as high-school, and CC schedules are usually so flexible students can even enter the workforce while going to CC, or take more time to "figure out" what they want to really major in without it costing hundreds of thousands of dollars. Also, as I've gotten older, and realized that tests like the SAT are just a product offered by a company, and not some Federal standard, I've started to view those kinds of tests as more of a racket than a real filter. People I know in higher education think the test is basically worthless, but also acknowledge that students have basically learned nothing over the pandemic, leaving them with very little to be selective for entry with.
Melting_Harps 4y ago
> Undoubtedly, but I can't think of anything that can show academic capacity that requires fewer resources. I'm less inclined than normal to challenge your view because I know how much of an anomaly I am: I was headhunted in HS by several UCs (that I didn't apply to as I focused on CSU because of the costs) despite having pissed off my HS administration who tried to impede my graduation despite holding a 3.2-3.5 GPA but only attending for the exam days. The irony being I'd later go on to get honors and letters of recommendation despite detesting and being a vocal critic of this system during my time in University. And after graduating in 2009 I barely made into my field, health sciences, and because of my strength in physics I was encouraged by my advisors several times to take the MCAT despite having absolutely no interest in medicine. But, the SAT system is ONLY the best option if only we accept we rely on a model that only have bad options. The amount sheer amount of rote learning needed plus defaulting to deciphering cryptic deductive reasoning with misleading questions as a way to show 'academic capacity' underscores why plagiarism, fraud and just outright mediocrity plagues academia. I wonder if having more written or presentation based examinations, like they do in Cambrdige and Oxford in the UK, would be best. The issue is that it doesn't scale at all and thus cannot be so heavily monetized as it is at present. As a person with a BSc and going for my 2nd in AI and ML I think the notion of university being used as a gate-keeping mechanism for mos roles needs to be re-evaluated: the Germanic model has proven that engineering doesn't suffer because you don't follow the 'straddle your undergrads with immense amounts of debt in a cram model from 8th grade onward' which ultimately often fails to deliver for many since the economic down-turns puts so many either of their fields entirely or dropping out for all but a select few who get cherry picked as the norm. In short, the apprentice model works best of all as it gives talented students to shine better than anything else, but because of the current status quo and Paper signalling that University degrees have become (not to mention the admission corruption scandals) this doesn't mean much for the majority of said 'talented' individuals.
checkyoursudo 4y ago
However, there may be legitimate concerns about a Scholastic "Aptitude" Test where you can increase your score by simply cramming with a guide book. Of course, since that is how most (?) college students operate anyway, maybe it is appropriate after all.

crazygringo 4y ago

> You literally just need a guide book or two and enough time to study. I think it's important to realize just how extremely non-obvious this is, though, for many high school sophomores/juniors. I went to a decent high school and was in honors classes, and even I would have had zero idea test prep was even a thing, if a single science teacher hadn't randomly mentioned it in class once. I went to the school library and found the "Princeton Review" and practice exams and everything. I absolutely credit it with raising my score by probably a couple hundred points. But I never would have discovered it except for that single teacher's offhand comment. I just assumed it would be a test that was an accurate reflection of your knowledge/intelligence, so as long as you were going to school, you'd just take the test and get your grade. If someone had pressed me, I probably would have said that test prep would be something kids in rich schools wasted their money on that wouldn't make a difference anyways. I just had no idea. Yes, I absolutely agree that the SAT is the most attainable way for a poor kid to succeed at. I personally don't support the movements to remove standardized testing, not at all. But I also want to highlight how there's still an utterly gigantic step needed to reliably educate kids both about the importance of the SAT and how to prepare for it. Very often barriers aren't even primarily a question of money/time/effort -- they're simply a question of awareness that an option even exists or that it matters.

MereInterest 4y ago
Especially because the entire purported schtick of the SAT is to measure aptitude (the "A" in the acronym). In principle, if the SAT is true to its name, getting a study book shouldn't help at all. But since study guides or repeated testing does improve the score, it can't be a true measurement of aptitude.
- dlg 4y ago
  It changed its name from the Scholastic Aptitude Test in 1990. (Over time they’ve also eliminated some of the sections most correlated with IQ.) There’s a good history of the SAT and where it succeeded and failed in its goal of making college admissions more fair, The Big Test by Nicholas Lehmann.
  - dsq 4y ago
    What were the sections removed that were more correlated with IQ?
- BobbyJo 4y ago
  I don't think they meant aptitude in the strictest sense. You ability to learn and apply ideas is an aptitude in and of itself. That is something studying is a part of demonstrating, and the the type of aptitude these tests, I believe, are intended to measure.
  - lupire 4y ago
    You know what's a good way to test for scholastic aptitude? Try studying, and see if helps you learn. Studying to increase score on a test is scholastic aptitude. If studying fails to raise your score, you lack scholastic aptitude.
- samatman 4y ago
  I would think, personally, that if studying were an important part of scholarship, I said if it was, just hypothetically, then studying for the test of scholastic aptitude would itself demonstrate aptitude for scholarship. SAT must agree, since they changed the test to be much more amenable to study. That must be the reason why right.

alistairSH 4y ago

Part of the argument for dropping the SAT is that the SAT has been shown to be a proxy for family socio-economic status and is no better an indicator of success at college than GPA, honor/AP/IB course participation, and extracurriculars. (I’m not making that argument myself, I haven’t seen numbers explained well enough to form a solid opinion)

civilized 4y ago
Almost everything colleges use to admit students is a proxy for socioeconomic status. Some things, like extracurriculars, could be far more correlated to SES. The only exception would be when a student gets points for being from a race or neighborhood that tends to be less affluent. Which raises the question: why single out the SAT?
wisty 4y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure" SAT is a rugged system that performs well while withstanding concerted efforts by hackers to undermine it. Replacing it with systems that perform no better (when not under anywhere near as much fire, and appearing to have no real security) is probably not going to work so well.
dirtyid 4y ago
You can watch SAT prep videos and pirate prep books for free. GPA gets juiced all the time. Honor AP/IB had a solid premium. Very few extra curriculars that don't cost money / resources. The handful of kids (including me) that didn't pay 5 digits for fancy SAT prep at my school poured over some study guides and watched pirated VCDs and ended up doing better than kids who half hearted their private prep.
- zdragnar 4y ago
  You don't even need to do that. There are plenty of free, legally accessible resources to prepare for the test available now- much more so than when I took the tests back in my youth.

robot1 4y ago

This rings true for myself and a couple of my friends who grew up relatively poor in a wealthy area - our test scores on the SAT and relevant subject tests boosted us into private schools that we would not have gone to otherwise, which then led us to well-paying jobs right out of college. Last I checked, my high school implemented affordable/free SAT tutoring for all students and I hope to see more of it nationwide as I believe it helps immensely in socioeconomic mobility.

robomartin 4y ago

> The greatest source of admissions inequity is childhood socioeconomic status If we are talking about the US, no, I disagree. The greatest source of admissions inequity are shit K-12 education. I'll give you a direct example from when my kids were at the local middle school. Their science teacher --a Chiropractor-turned-teacher-- was, well, there's no other way to put it, a moron. The guy actually taught the kids that the moon does not spin...at all. They, quite literally, had to answer the question that way on a test in order to get the points. I can't even remember the number of horrifically wrong things this guy was teaching his students. By the time my kids got to his class he had been there for about twenty years. It didn't end there. This guy was a bad teacher. He was angry, had self-confidence problems, would yell and scream at the kids, etc. If a kid had a question he would sometimes tell them "That's stupid question" in front of the entire class. Just horrible. I lost count of how many times I met with the school principal and vice principal to file complaints. I had many (friendly) conversations with him. He was clearly intimidated by someone who's daily life was about science and engineering. I offered to come in once a week to help out and bring stuff with me to inspire the kids (robots, space-related stuff I was working on, etc.). Heck, I offered to arrange for the kids to take a tour of a rocket-making factory. He never took me up on the offer. My kids, to this day, tell me their science education happened at home because that guy was a clown and other teachers were ineffective. There was no way to get this guy fired. He did not belong in a school, at all. He is still there. That school might get a better science teacher once he retires...with full benefits for life. I have other examples of truly bad teachers doing the kids a horrible disservice. Unions protect them. You can't get rid of them. We somehow accept this and it permeates the land. The bottom line is that we, the inhabitants of this land, pay taxes and fund schools that are going a horrible job of educating our children. The school is where we can clearly make an effort to provide kids from all walks of life with better outcomes, regardless of socioeconomic status. They can be learning calculus and science even if their parents didn't finish high school and are not in a position to help or advise them. They can be using computers even if they can't afford them at home. They can take inspiring field trips to the most amazing universities, museums and companies even if they don't have the means to do that outside of school. And yet, we don't do that. We don't have a unified nation-wide standard of excellence based on an absolute dedication to giving kids the best opportunities to learn, regardless of socioeconomics. Instead we hire people like the moron from my story, who, for thirty years, will not only teach nonsense to class-after-class, he also manages to destroy any potential opportunity for kids to get excited about learning science by being an absolute asshole. Put a different way: If we had really good K-12 schools and results, university admissions would not be a problem for anyone at all and success rates would be amazing.

horns4lyfe 4y ago

University administrators are incompetent by default.

wahern 4y ago
Perhaps a more important factor is that university administrators are being constantly bombarded with various demands, requests, accusations, and threats regarding diversity issues. By students, pundits, even accrediting organizations. A law school dean once told to me that for years the ABA was constantly demanding, privately, that they increase the number of black students. The problem (as I saw it, we didn't discuss it much) is that this university had a reputation for being libertarian, which in the broader political climate translated (especially back then) as conservative, which translated as potentially hostile to black students. There were black students, but they deliberately chose the school for its somewhat unique curriculum which in many respects absolutely did lean libertarian. Most black students, like most students generally, wouldn't have strong enough preferences to override such a negative impression. The woke crowd is far more vocal and fervent, and they're that way because they know that, at least in the short-term, being forceful can be effective, at least superficially. People with more reasonable sentiments and preferences, OTOH, aren't eager to put themselves in harm's way to defend those who are being targeted. For all I know, the ABA was applying pressure because the ABA was being pressured by some other interest groups. And perhaps the ABA pulled their punches, keeping everything on the down-low, precisely because they believed the demands were less than reasonable. As the saying goes, "shit rolls down hill."

hintymad 4y ago

> The greatest source of admissions inequity is childhood socioeconomic status Agreed, and good public schools can be of great help. Only when public schools fail do tutoring and socioeconomic status matter. No, I'm not talking about frills like one ipad per kid or low kid-to-teacher ratio or amazing extra-curriculums. I'm talking about teachers who can really explain concepts and deliver inspiring homework. I'm talking about an incentive system that students are motivated to learn instead of mocking those who try as "teacher's pets". I'm talking about an incentive system that ordinary students like me are pushed to achieve excellence even when they do not feel like studying. Really, it really does not require much to learn high school curriculum. It just requires a lot of dedication from teachers and students. Take a look at Asian countries. The have millions of students who went through daily hardship, yet they had a national system that drives students and teachers to focus on learning what matters, even though they can't necessarily afford what kids in the US can enjoy.

bane 4y ago

I grew up pretty poor, and through a longer story than I want to type here and a confluence of negative voices mostly from my school, was dissuaded from taking the SATs and even considering college. Years after high school I eventually found my way to community college, then to a 4-year, a grad program and so on. It worked out to be a blessing as I graduated without debt from a major university and entered into a realm of well paying jobs that have put me firmly into a life the rest of my family can barely even comprehend. To me the proof I should continue to a 4-year degree was doing well in my community college courses. I am fortunate to have been given the gift of automatic entry by policy makers who decided long ago that if you graduate from a Community College you can go to a State School no questions asked...and you can go to a Community College by basically walking off the street no questions asked. I graduated my undergrad with a 4.0 and my grad with a 4.0, but to be honest I don't think my SATs would have been worth entry into any college and my high school GPA was around a 2.5. My point is, there are other ways of assessing a child's entire future for entry than a single test, and many alternate paths to attainment. But we act as if there is only one kind of path and one kind of package, a 1600 SAT score, lots of extracurriculars, "differentiator" activities, and an original heart strings pulling letter. Top schools need to get smarter, more creative, and maybe take a page from those "lesser" schools they turn their noses up at.

BobbyJo 4y ago
Doing well in college is a great measure of how well you'll do in college, and subsequently, many good schools will accept mid degree transfers of undergraduate students who might not have done well in high school. I don't think it's viable to use that to replace the SAT and other current evaluation metrics, however.
- bane 4y ago
  I guess my point is, why not just shove all the students into a Community College a-like for the beginning of their undergrad? With the following features: - Open enrollment - Cheap - Can drop out and retry later without any penalty - Entry into the final two years is granted based on first two year performance, state schools are guaranteed entry, and privates get to be selective based on major(s), student performance awards, and GPAs. - CC Associates degrees can be earned in periods much longer than 2 years. Allowing students to work, or retake remedial subjects, or try out multiple majors, without it being a huge deal. The first two years of most undergraduate degrees are fairly similar. IIR there's been studies that show that students who arrive at the universities from CCs do as well as or better than their traditional peers. It helps with student cost and loan problems. Graduates who don't go on to their final 2 or have no plans to can simply treat the CC as a trade education. And many students who do flunk out of school due to partying, immaturity, etc. can simply come and try again when they are ready. Students actually get an education rather than studying for a mostly useless test. Basically the CCs are a softer entry into higher education, and can be the test for performance in a way that actually is meaningful. Since student have to pay to be there, it's not just the same thing as high-school, and CC schedules are usually so flexible students can even enter the workforce while going to CC, or take more time to "figure out" what they want to really major in without it costing hundreds of thousands of dollars. Also, as I've gotten older, and realized that tests like the SAT are just a product offered by a company, and not some Federal standard, I've started to view those kinds of tests as more of a racket than a real filter. People I know in higher education think the test is basically worthless, but also acknowledge that students have basically learned nothing over the pandemic, leaving them with very little to be selective for entry with.

Melting_Harps 4y ago

> Undoubtedly, but I can't think of anything that can show academic capacity that requires fewer resources. I'm less inclined than normal to challenge your view because I know how much of an anomaly I am: I was headhunted in HS by several UCs (that I didn't apply to as I focused on CSU because of the costs) despite having pissed off my HS administration who tried to impede my graduation despite holding a 3.2-3.5 GPA but only attending for the exam days. The irony being I'd later go on to get honors and letters of recommendation despite detesting and being a vocal critic of this system during my time in University. And after graduating in 2009 I barely made into my field, health sciences, and because of my strength in physics I was encouraged by my advisors several times to take the MCAT despite having absolutely no interest in medicine. But, the SAT system is ONLY the best option if only we accept we rely on a model that only have bad options. The amount sheer amount of rote learning needed plus defaulting to deciphering cryptic deductive reasoning with misleading questions as a way to show 'academic capacity' underscores why plagiarism, fraud and just outright mediocrity plagues academia. I wonder if having more written or presentation based examinations, like they do in Cambrdige and Oxford in the UK, would be best. The issue is that it doesn't scale at all and thus cannot be so heavily monetized as it is at present. As a person with a BSc and going for my 2nd in AI and ML I think the notion of university being used as a gate-keeping mechanism for mos roles needs to be re-evaluated: the Germanic model has proven that engineering doesn't suffer because you don't follow the 'straddle your undergrads with immense amounts of debt in a cram model from 8th grade onward' which ultimately often fails to deliver for many since the economic down-turns puts so many either of their fields entirely or dropping out for all but a select few who get cherry picked as the norm. In short, the apprentice model works best of all as it gives talented students to shine better than anything else, but because of the current status quo and Paper signalling that University degrees have become (not to mention the admission corruption scandals) this doesn't mean much for the majority of said 'talented' individuals.

checkyoursudo 4y ago

However, there may be legitimate concerns about a Scholastic "Aptitude" Test where you can increase your score by simply cramming with a guide book. Of course, since that is how most (?) college students operate anyway, maybe it is appropriate after all.