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PETER SCHNEIDER's avatar

The irony of doing away with standardized testing is it promises a return to the bad old days when colleges simply admitted who they wanted-which often left out Jews and others. Hence, the SAT was developed to remove discriminatory admissions and attempted to lend some objectivity to the process.

Working in Higher Ed, I can assure you that the use of proxies is booming. And is totally transparent. Absent some very clear language, Higher Ed will simply evade and continue.

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Jim Dueholm's avatar

The problems I have with the suggestion of a few schools that would avowedly discriminate on the basis of race is how to select the schools and the facts the discrimination, even if open, remains unfair and, for public schools at least, unconstitutional. As one whose status as a Wisconsin farm boy was very helpful in gaining admission to law schools, I've struggled to distinguish that preference from one based on race or ethnicity, aside from the fact the latter is unlawful, the former not. The answers, I think, are that standards are lowered less for geographic and cultural preferences than for racial and ethnic preferences, and that geographical and cultural preferences are indeed a part of a holistic approach to admission, while the holistic justification for racial and ethnic preferences is just a dodge for blatant discrimination for the benefit of the favored classes. Jim Dueholm

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