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.
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
What this shows is how much integration of schools after 1954 depended not on court orders but on political will. We don't need another Earl Warren running his mouth off. We need a John Kennedy willing to send the marshals to the University of Mississippi and the National Guard to the University of Alabama, who will tell the officials there that if they don't follow the law they will be pushed out of the way. We also need people -- William Otis, for instance -- who are prepared to respond to colleges circumventing the law by openly describing them as mediocre institutions with low-class graduates; as long as Harvard gets treated as a great university even by critics, it will have a strategic advantage.
I can assure you that objective measures will be used for the bulk of admissions. MIT’s experiment doing away with standardized testing for admissions lasted but one year: the faculty would have none of it. Harvard and others at that level want to know and to advertise the fact that they have the cream of the crop. It is a matter of status and they will never give that up. Perhaps they will become more and less explicit by subcontracting the “work” much like admission to West Point by Congressional recommendation/appointment. They already do use alumni to recruit. Just set aside X freshman seats for external alumni evaluators to fill by appointment. How will that be second guessed as an institutional decision when there are _no_ common or established criteria for the evaluators to use other being “impressed” by X? And low and behold: Harvard and others get the demographics they want. Universities at that level can self-fund those programs using endowment monies.
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.
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
What this shows is how much integration of schools after 1954 depended not on court orders but on political will. We don't need another Earl Warren running his mouth off. We need a John Kennedy willing to send the marshals to the University of Mississippi and the National Guard to the University of Alabama, who will tell the officials there that if they don't follow the law they will be pushed out of the way. We also need people -- William Otis, for instance -- who are prepared to respond to colleges circumventing the law by openly describing them as mediocre institutions with low-class graduates; as long as Harvard gets treated as a great university even by critics, it will have a strategic advantage.
I can assure you that objective measures will be used for the bulk of admissions. MIT’s experiment doing away with standardized testing for admissions lasted but one year: the faculty would have none of it. Harvard and others at that level want to know and to advertise the fact that they have the cream of the crop. It is a matter of status and they will never give that up. Perhaps they will become more and less explicit by subcontracting the “work” much like admission to West Point by Congressional recommendation/appointment. They already do use alumni to recruit. Just set aside X freshman seats for external alumni evaluators to fill by appointment. How will that be second guessed as an institutional decision when there are _no_ common or established criteria for the evaluators to use other being “impressed” by X? And low and behold: Harvard and others get the demographics they want. Universities at that level can self-fund those programs using endowment monies.