Higher Admissions, page 13
Many parents invest additional resources to enhance their children’s chances of attaining either a good or a better life. For many, the good life entails acceptances at high-status colleges and universities. Consequently, it is the norm for upwardly mobile families to “play the game” and embrace cultural logics and values institutionalized to determine academic success and mobility, including attending high-quality schools, getting high grades, participating in numerous extracurricular activities, and obtaining stratospheric SAT or ACT test scores. In turn, the consumption of education for the public good in the early twentieth century has developed into education as a private good—one for individual or personal interests and increasingly less a good that ensures the health of an inclusive democracy.14 Competitive middle- and upper-class parents and students who treat education primarily as a private good, whether unintentionally or not, disregard the reasons why history has demanded corrective, redistributive practices. Consequently, they now either willingly or tacitly accept racial and socioeconomic segregation in their communities. When Conant and Chauncey conspired to create an aptitude test that would open the doors to Harvard in the 1940s to build a more representative (white male) leadership class and intelligentsia, as Nicholas Lemann shares with us, they believed that they were doing a good thing for the nation.
The persistence of the myth of meritocracy, coupled with the perpetuation of deficit narratives surrounding underachieving, poor, working-class, and supposedly “less qualified” Black, Indigenous, and Latinx students, forms a barrier to accepting educational policies aimed at rectifying past discrimination and fostering equity. Even if these students demonstrate excellence within their communities, the reliance on SAT scores—benchmarked against averages inflated by more privileged peers—can effectively exclude them from the top-tier colleges and universities, particularly those that continue to mandate SAT scores for admissions.
Adding a layer of historical irony, in June 2023 the U.S. Supreme Court created a full-circle moment. The test whose origins trace back to Harvard University in the early twentieth century ultimately played a role in dismantling the same university’s liberal, race-based holistic admissions process less than a century later. Affirmative action, much like K–12 school integration, has faced erosion because the promotion of racial diversity in schools and education is not deemed a compelling national interest for the majority in America. This sentiment is underscored by a 2019 Pew Research poll revealing that a significant majority of (white) Americans express a preference for local schools over diverse ones.15
Lemann’s book concludes on a mildly somber note, just as this response is likely to do. The question is where we go from here in a nation where there is no federal or state guarantee of a high-quality education for all students to really approximate a more level field of education. An ultimate challenge lies in addressing the majority of U.S. students for whom the SAT is not a pivotal aspect of the high-stakes college admissions game affecting only around 6 percent of college-bound students. Ironically, the very issues that spurred the call for equal opportunity in education for marginalized youth in the early twentieth century persist, shaping patterns of achievement disparities a century later. The enduring forces of racism and economic inequality infiltrate the walls of schools across the nation’s thirteen thousand districts and significantly inhibit equal opportunity for all social groups in higher education.
Meanwhile, the future of both K–12 and higher education, driven by technological advancements, will be quite different from anything most of us could have imagined. The World Economic Forum’s (WEF) Future of Jobs Report 2023 forecasts significant changes during the period from 2023 to 2027, with significant declines in some labor segments and increases in others due to artificial intelligence and big data analytics.16 While machines may excel in certain areas, conveying emotional intelligence remains a uniquely human capability, essential in both work and daily life. Our society continues to require what education historian David Tyack called the “humanization of industry.”17
Moreover, the imperative for environmental sustainability, driven by the challenges of climate change and global warming, underscores the need for expansion in the agricultural, vocational education, and digital commerce sectors. Our planet urgently requires a generation of residents and learners who will pioneer innovations in renewable energy, contributing to the preservation rather than the detriment of the earth. The WEF’s report highlights that future work demands skills such as analytical and creative thinking, empathy, active listening, leadership, and influence. Notably, these skills are crucial for addressing the complex challenges posed by rapid technological advancements and environmental sustainability. Traditional metrics like the SAT, now susceptible to being outperformed by artificial intelligence embodied in machines, will fall short in assessing these essential skills.18
Lemann writes persuasively that “Just as it’s an illusion to believe that standardized admissions tests for highly selective colleges represent opportunity in America, it’s also an illusion to believe that dropping these tests will bring about the dawn of a new age of truly meaningful equal opportunity in America.” He ends by noting that the fix for equalizing American education requires “a different project, much larger, and far more important.”19 Lemann acknowledges the necessity for change. Yet, he stops short of offering any concrete visions or solutions.
The urgency for both K–12 and higher education reform cannot be overstressed. A democratic society, with higher education as one of its pillars, has a responsibility to nurture the boundless potential of a diverse new generation of thinkers and producers, regardless of their social backgrounds. Considering the evolving landscape of technology and significant changes in the labor market, a reliance on the SAT for admissions might be increasingly misaligned with the exigencies of the future, including the determination of the next generation of leaders and policymakers. We must ask ourselves whether we are missing a pivotal moment for a re-envisioned approach to selecting the minds who will shape the future. Paradoxically, a deadly pandemic offered an opportune moment for our higher education system—especially the modest-sized sector of highly selective colleges and universities—to transcend their historical reliance on metrics that further entrench social and economic divides. For pragmatic reasons of ease and efficiency, or the desire for “objective” measures of academic potential, in addition to the dominance of the cultural logics that we construct about the “chosen,”20 some of these institutions are now returning to old practices rather than engaging in deeper introspection to ensure that their practices truly align with the institutions’ professed values of accessibility and inclusion. Meanwhile, the actualization of a collective future within a truly representative, democratic fabric hinges on this critical alignment of principles and actions.
Notes
Introduction
1. Ray Hart et al., Student Testing in America’s Great City Schools: An Inventory and Preliminary Analysis (Washington, DC: Council of the Great City Schools, October 2015), https://www.cgcs.org/cms/lib/DC00001581/Centricity/Domain/87/Testing%20Report.pdf.
2. Nancy Burton, Predicting Success in College: SAT Studies of Classes Graduating since 1980 (College Board Research Report No. 2001-2) (Princeton, NJ: Educational Testing Service, 2001).
3. See Rebecca Zwick, ed., Rethinking the SAT: The Future of Standardized Testing in University Admissions (London: Routledge, 2004), esp. Geiser and Studley, “Predictive Validity and Differential Impact of the SAT I and SAT II at the University of California.”
4. Claire Cain Miller, “New SAT Data Highlights the Deep Inequality at the Heart of American Education,” New York Times, October 23, 2023.
5. Claude Steele, Whistling Vivaldi: How Stereotypes Affect Us and What We Can Do (New York: W. W. Norton, 2010).
6. Gary Orfield, The Walls around Opportunity: The Failure of Colorblind Policy for Higher Education (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2022), esp. chap. 1.
7. William H. Frey, “The ‘Diversity Explosion’ Is America’s Twenty-First-Century Baby Boom,” in Our Compelling Interests: The Value of Diversity for Democracy and a Prosperous Society, ed. Earl Lewis and Nancy Cantor (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016), 16–38.
8. Earl Lewis, “Toward a 2.0 Compact for the Liberal Arts,” Daedalus 148, no. 4 (Fall 2019): 218–221; Evan Castilo and Lyss Welding, “Closed Colleges: List, Statistics, and Major Closures,” Best Colleges, January 17, 2024, https://www.bestcolleges.com/research/closed-colleges-list-statistics-major-closures/.
9. See the report Higher Education for American Democracy: A Report of the President’s Commission on Higher Education, 6 vols. (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1947), https://books.google.com/books/about/Higher_Education_for_American_Democracy.html?id=wvCcAAAAMAAJ.
10. University of California, Office of the President, “Institutional Research and Academic Planning,” accessed February 21, 2024, https://www.ucop.edu/institutional-research-academic-planning/content-analysis/academic-planning/california-master-plan.html.
11. For a description of the key components, see University of Maryland, Baltimore County, “Meyerhoff Scholars Program,” accessed February 21, 2024, https://meyerhoff.umbc.edu/13-key-components/.
12. Alicia Victoria Lozano, “California Ends Affirmative Action in the ’90s but Retains a Diverse Student Body,” NBC News, June 29, 2023, https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/california-ended-affirmative-action-90s-retains-diverse-student-body-rcna91846.
13. California saw a noticeable dip in racial diversity in the University of California system after the adoption of Proposition 209 but has seen enhanced diversification of late. Patricia Gándara attributes this to policies and practices, especially the cessation of requiring the SAT.
14. For a full accounting of this argument, see the briefs filed in the complaint and briefs filed in the Grutter and Gratz cases. The litigants conceded that all of the students admitted to the University of Michigan were qualified. They steadfastly objected to any consideration of race.
15. Scott E. Page, The Diversity Bonus: How Great Teams Pay Off in the Knowledge Economy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017).
16. David Leonhardt, “The Misguided War on the SAT,” New York Times, January 7, 2024.
1. The Birth of the American Meritocracy
1. W. Allison Davis and Robert Havighurst, “The Measurement of Mental Systems (Can Intelligence Be Measured?),” Scientific Monthly 66, no. 4 (1948): 307, 311.
2. Henry Chauncey, notebook entry for July 31, 1948, Henry Chauncey Papers, Box 95, Folder 1068, Frame 00250, Educational Testing Service Archives, Princeton, NJ (hereafter Henry Chauncey Papers).
3. Carl C. Brigham, A Study of American Intelligence (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1923), 190.
4. Carl Brigham, “Intelligence Tests of Immigrant Groups,” Psychological Review 37, no. 2 (1930); Brigham, “Manuscript for Article on Board Examinations Taken by West Point and Annapolis,” handwritten, dated 1934–35, Carl Campbell Brigham Papers, Box 1, Folder labeled “MSS 4,” 17, Educational Testing Service Archives, Princeton, NJ.
5. It’s worth noting that when Conant was a Harvard undergraduate, Frederick Jackson Turner, the originator of the now much-disputed “frontier thesis” of American history, was a highly esteemed faculty member there.
6. James B. Conant, “Wanted: American Radicals,” Atlantic Monthly, May 1943.
7. Henry Chauncey, letter to the editor of the Boston Globe, February 12, 1945, Henry Chauncey Papers, Box 47, Folder 1041.
2. Higher Education for All
1. U.S. President’s Commission on Higher Education, Higher Education for American Democracy: A Report of the President’s Commission on Higher Education, 6 vols. (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1947), https://books.google.com/books/about/Higher_Education_for_American_Democracy.html?id=wvCcAAAAMAAJ, 1:65.
2. U.S. President’s Commission on Higher Education, Higher Education for American Democracy, 2:6.
3. An excellent overview of this subject, pre–standardized testing, is Harold S. Weschsler, The Qualified Student: A History of Selective College Admission in America (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1977). Much of my discussion of the early days of college admissions is drawn from it.
4. Roger L. Geiger, The History of American Higher Education: Learning and Culture from the Founding to World War II (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015), 282.
5. Lawrence Vesey, The Emergence of the American University (1965; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), 13–14.
6. E. F. Lindquist, ed., Educational Measurement (Washington, DC: American Council on Education, 1951), 8, 16, 37.
7. Clark Kerr, The Uses of the University, 3rd ed. (1963; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982), 121. See also John W. Gardner, Excellence: Can We Be Equal and Excellent Too? (New York: Harper, 1961). Gardner was the president of the Carnegie Corporation, a trustee of ETS, and another crucial supporter of the SAT. Both Kerr and Gardner shared with Conant a conviction that educational elitism must be zealously protected and that this can be done without peril to the larger dream of an egalitarian society.
3. Testing, Affirmative Action, and the Law
1. W. Allison Davis and Robert Havighurst, “The Measurement of Mental Systems (Can Intelligence Be Measured?),” Scientific Monthly 66, no. 4 (1948): 301–316.
2. William O. Douglas, dissenting opinion in DeFunis v. Odegaard, 416 U.S. 312 (1974).
3. Robert Comfort, interview with the author, April 12, 2021.
4. John C. Jeffries, Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr. and the Era of Judicial Balance (New York: Scribner, 1994), 487.
5. The 1947 Truman Commission report, Higher Education for American Democracy, uses the word “diversity” repeatedly, both in describing the state of American higher education and as a quality to be desired, as in “We need to perceive the rich advantages of cultural diversity.”
6. A standard anecdote from pretesting days entails a professor saying on the first day of class, “Look to your right. Look to your left. One of the three of you won’t be here next year.”
7. James Bierman, interview with the author, March 3, 2021.
8. Marginal note by Lewis Powell in Regents of University of California v. Bakke, Supreme Court Case Files Collection, Box 469–472, Powell Papers, Lewis F. Powell Jr. Archives, Washington and Lee University School of Law, Lexington, VA.
9. The Open Universities in South Africa (n.p.: Witwatersrand University Press, 1957), 6, 14–15.
10. The Open Universities in South Africa, 14.
11. Thomas J. Espenshade and Alexandra Walton Radford, No Longer Separate, Not Yet Equal: Race and Class in Elite College Admission and College Life (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009), 92; Report of the UC University Academic Council Standardized Testing Task Force, Systemwide Academic Council, University of California, January 2020, 45.
12. Jamal Greene, How Rights Went Wrong: Why Our Obsession with Rights Is Tearing America Apart (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2021), 201.
13. Michael J. Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 141.
14. Robert Comfort, interview with the author.
15. In his 2023 majority decision striking down affirmative action, Chief Justice John Roberts included an unexplained footnote exempting the military academies, which can still take race into account in admissions.
16. Sandra Day O’Connor, majority opinion in Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 306 (2003).
17. Evan Thomas, First: Sandra Day O’Connor (New York: Random House, 2019).
18. Samuel Alito, dissenting opinion in Fisher v. University of Texas, 579 U.S. 365 (2016).
4. Admissions without Testing
1. Richard C. Atkinson and David S. Saxon, “Standardized Tests and Access to American Universities: February 2001,” in The Pursuit of Knowledge: Speeches and Papers of Richard C. Atkinson, ed. Patricia A. Pelfrey (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), 137–148.
2. This seems to have been mainly a business decision: not enough colleges were requiring the SAT II, and therefore not enough students were taking it, to generate enough revenue to make it worthwhile to the College Board.
3. Anthony Carnevale, interview with the author, November 30, 2022.
4. William G. Bowen, Matthew M. Chingos, and Michael S. McPherson, Crossing the Finish Line: Completing College at America’s Public Universities (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009), 115–116.
5. Testing without Meritocracy
