In most countries, getting accepted at college is challenging.
Their students are rigorously tested on what they learned in high school, and, if they can’t demonstrate mastery of the material, they can expect to be, summarily, refused entry into university.
For example, in Switzerland, the test is the Matura. China has the gaokao. For South Korea, it is the formidable, Suneung.
In the US, it doesn’t work that way.
We have around two hundred colleges and universities–out of approximately three thousand–that are selective, i.e. have an acceptance rate of less than fifty percent. (It should be noted that these institutions are deliberately inching towards becoming more and more selective.)
The remaining twenty-eight hundred, or so, are taking a different tact. More than one thousand of these schools have made submitting standardized test scores (SAT and ACT) optional. They describe their screening protocol as “holistic.”
I would portray “holistic,” in this context, as, “College is for everyone.”
As you might imagine, I didn’t react well when my alma mater, Xavier University, announced that they would no longer be requiring standardized test scores.
I’m getting much too old to traipse down to Norwood and march with a sign, back and forth in front of the president’s residence. (The president is a Jesuit priest, who lives in a students’ residence hall.)
Instead I wrote an op-ed, which, miraculously, got published in the local newspaper.
Here’s an abbreviated version.

Academic Capability Just as Crucial as College Accessibility

Ask your college freshman daughter to look over her right shoulder. Given how much college has been “watered down” in the last fifty years, there’s a good chance that guy sitting behind her in English Literature 101 thinks Catcher in the Rye is a book about baseball.
Well, chalk another one up for the “Everyone Goes To College” crowd.
Xavier University has dropped SAT and ACT scores from their application process.
Since the Great Recession of 2008, the survey data for young people considering college is clear. Most students aren’t worried about “finding themselves” or pursuing their passions anymore.
Today, going to college is a means to an end—getting a good job.
Since everyone wants a “good” job, every Tom, Dick, and Harriet feels compelled to matriculate. (Forty-five percent of high school graduates, nationwide, are going on to college.)
Unfortunately, this has resulted in a severe Supply versus Demand crisis.
Every year around 1.9 million bachelor’s degrees are conferred, but there are only about 1.1 million suitable jobs available.
Two out of three of those high school grads, who join the stampede to college, end up disappointed, i.e. dropping out or graduating and ending up underemployed.
The problem isn’t making college more accessible. The issue is to how to increase the academic capability of the average freshman. (Nationwide, twenty-five percent need remedial classes today.)
According to PrepScholar, Xavier University:

• Is rated “lightly competitive,” with a 70% acceptance rate.
• Has an average freshman GPA of 3.52. (Given the grade inflation of the past twenty years this is, very much, middle-of-the-road.)
• Has a 50th percentile SAT score of 1170. (Charles Murray, author of Real Education, wouldn’t consider the average Xavier freshman as college material.)

If the administration of Xavier University were focused on serving their students, who are seeking well-paying professional jobs, they would be concentrated on gainful outcomes, which would lead them to make it tougher to join their college ranks. Instead, they are emphasizing accessibility, and as a byproduct filling the costly seats in their classrooms.
Here are the arguments for increasing accessibility as cited in the recent Cincinnati Enquirer article:

• Taking the SAT or ACT can be very stressful for high school students who have a lot going on and are feeling pressured.
• SAT performance is linked to family income.
• Caucasian students score higher than black or Hispanic students.
• Students will be motivated to apply who don’t perform well on standardized tests.
• Diversity will be encouraged.

Well, that should make everyone feel much better. I’m only going to make three comments.
I worked for thirty-six years in a high stress, business environment. Most well-paying jobs come with a lot of pressure and anxiety.
There’s an old proverb,
“If you can’t stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen.”
Whether we like it or not, whether it seems fair or not, family income is the biggest determinate of which students graduate.
I attended the graduation ceremony at a local prep school last May. You could blindfold those kids and lock them in a closet. With or without an SAT test score, they are going to kick the butt (academically speaking) of the average freshman being accepted at Xavier University today.

Today, economic competition is global.
As Charles Murray has said, “America’s future depends on how we educate the academically gifted.”
China and our best universities like Harvard, Stanford, and Yale have one idea. However, the majority of colleges and universities in the US are headed in an entirely different direction.

Notes
Read Charles Murray’s, Real Education.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/tomlindsay/2014/11/28/unintended-consequences-how-the-college-for-everybody-agenda-harms-both-students-and-the-economy/#6e486fe93194

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/underemployment-for-recent-grads-worse-today-than-in-early-2000-s-180429491.html?.tsrc=daily_mail&uh_test=2_14

More than 9.7 million students take the gaokao—high exam—each year.
Here are three sample questions:
If x + y ≥ a, x – y ≤ -1, and the minimum value of z = x + ay = 7, what is a?
Write a 1000 word essay:
Art is a form of ideology that reflects people’s lives, while serving the people at the same time.
In a letter to James Madison in March 1787, George Washington wrote, “That a thorough reform of the present system is indispensable, none who have capacities to judge will deny ____.