My thoughts on the admission system is that there are not incredible incentives to improve it besides public outcry (which is powerful in it's own way, but not

My thoughts on the admission system is that there are not incredible incentives to improve it besides public outcry (which is powerful in it's own way, but not enough so to warrant a change overnight, perhaps not even over the course of 5-10 years). If a college overlooks a well-qualified student due to poor assessment, the two possible outcomes are that the student will go to another a school of similar caliber, or that they will end up going somewhere down a few levels of caliber. Although unfortunate, neither of these are too bad, and the hypothetical losses to the school and society are purely that, hypothetical. I believe that introducing an alternative to college that can offer a similar level of education without an application system (or with a more lenient application system) will help drive the incentives to where they need to be. For example, imagine Eileen is applying to Harvard and Harvard has the top program for her interest. We've measured that Harvard is the top program for her interest purely on the content that she would learn and the projects that she would complete. Unfortunately, Eileen gets rejected from Harvard, but now instead of going to UPenn, she signs up for online courses over the next four years that cover the exact same content and projects. Eileen goes on to invent the flexible solar-powered iPhone that reads minds and solves world hunger. She becomes Time person of the year. She donates a lot of money back to her online program. Future incredibly qualified applicants will want to follow in Eileen's footsteps and may sign up for online courses without considered Harvard at all.