The Univ. of California and other institutions are announcing that they will no longer require that applicants for admission take the SAT and ACT, virtual entrance exams. The N.Y. Times reports: “The change is expected to accelerate the momentum of American colleges away from the tests, amid concern that they are unfair to poor, black and Hispanic students.” Well, I guess so. These exams demand a facility with standard English and basic math/science that many disadvantaged students have no opportunity to acquire. So let’s remove these tests of competence that, it is thought, exclude them from higher education.

But I fear admitting students who cannot demonstrate the knowledge and skills that higher education should demand will have one of two unfortunate consequences. Either colleges and universities will continue to demand the knowledge and skills that are in reality required for work at that level, and students lacking that knowledge and those skills (a lack that is diagnosed by SAT and ACT) will have to acquire them overnight or fail out. Or, to avoid losing many paying students because they can’t do the work, institutions will dumb down their programs. They will adjust to accommodate ill-prepared students and the already rapid downward glide of higher education in America will accelerate.