In this excellent essay at Minding the Campus, Mary Grabar suggests that we may be coming to the end of merit-based admissions.

She writes, “Testing reveals lack of college-readiness, and as FairTest’s long career has demonstrated, the easiest way to overcome (or rather circumvent) inadequacy is to eliminate the tests that show it.”

This is all part of the great egalitarian delusion that society can make everything fair and equal. Even if they don’t go to college at all, the really smart and energetic kids will find ways to succeed. On the other hand, degrees from elite universities won’t magically turn dull kids into budding geniuses. Messing around with the natural order of college admissions makes the social planners of the Left feel good, but it doesn’t change the underlying reality that ability and determination are very unequally distributed human properties.