THE president of the University of California, Richard C. Atkinson, has endorsed a bad idea: abandon the SAT, and thereby increase the racial and ethnic “diversity” of UC’s many campuses. The SAT is the basic test of verbal and quantitative reasoning that virtually all applicants to competitive colleges have long had to take. A few small colleges have recently eliminated the exam as an admissions requirement, but the large research universities and most prestigious colleges find it indispensable. If America’s most distinguished public higher-education system—the University of California—junks the SAT and redefines academic merit, it could send ripples of deeply troubling change across the nation.
President Atkinson asks UC’s academic senate to consider two changes in admissions policy. First, he recommends that the university “require only standardized tests that assess mastery of specific subject areas rather than undefined notions of ‘aptitude’ or ‘intelligence.’” He would not eliminate (for now) the SAT IIs, which are achievement tests in English, math, physics, French, and other subjects. But gone would be the SAT I, the main exam that has traditionally identified diamonds in the rough—students who come from lousy schools and haven’t learned much, but who are nevertheless extremely promising academically.
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