Race-based Affirmative Action Is Dead. But California and Texas Point to a Promising Alternative.
If you want to help disadvantaged kids, bring back meritocracy
With the Supreme Court’s sweeping decision in Students for Fair Admissions last year, the nation’s highest court outlawed the use of race in college admissions decisions and set off a restructuring of the nation’s higher education system.
Across the United States, colleges and universities have been debating how they can help disadvantaged students get an education, a debate that has added urgency after the outlawing of racial preferences. Some schools argued for increasing the use of holistic measures that go beyond tests and grades and include more emphasis on extracurricular activities, personal essays and soft skills.
In their quest to figure out a way to diversify their student bodies, some schools have decided to de-emphasize the SAT and other standardized tests, arguing that they reduce diversity. Last year, Columbia University in New York City decided to drop the SAT requirement for good, arguing that they will now be designing “our application and its requirements to afford the greatest possible opportunity and flexibility for students to represent themselves fully and showcase their academic talents.”
But the backlash to the backlash to testing has also begun. In 2022, MIT decided to bring back the SAT/ACT requirement after experimenting with dropping it, arguing that it was the best tool they had to predict student success and that it actually helps students from underprivileged backgrounds.
And in the spring of 2021, a Stanford study found that while SAT scores do have a strong correlation to household income – a common critique of the SAT is that it simply measures how rich a student’s parent is – essay content is even more strongly related to household income. That means that by increasing their reliance on student essays, schools may be biasing the process even further toward richer students.
Indeed, personal statements may be a tool of racial discrimination by admissions officers. In 2018, a study revealed that Harvard University consistently assigned lower personality scores to Asian-American students. Replacing standardized tests with subjective personality assessments allows colleges and universities to implement their racial preferences under the pretext of encouraging a “holistic” approach to admissions.
One sign that the tides may be turning in the SAT debate was a lengthy piece published in January in the New York Times by David Leonhardt titled “The Misguided War on the SAT.” In that piece, Leonhardt concludes that “administrators at elite colleges have justified their decision to stop requiring test scores by claiming that the tests do not help them identify such promising students — a claim that is inconsistent with the evidence. The evidence instead suggests that standardized tests can contribute to both excellence and diversity so long as they are used as only one factor in admissions.”
Even with SATs, economically advantaged students still often have greater access to college admissions in ways that are not always meritocratic. What can be done to help students who don’t have SAT tutors, college counselors, and the like, without using divisive race-based admissions?
The search for alternatives to testing
