Dartmouth's decision last week to reset your SAT or ACT requirement for admissionsand recent coverage By extolling the benefits of standardized testing in predicting college success, they have brought testing back into higher education news. This will not come as a surprise to Californians. In 2021, the University of California concluded a highly publicized effort to ban admissions testing. California State University followed shortly after.
Enough. Some schools will require standardized testing, some will not, and some might change their minds. The extent to which the SAT predicts college success or helps identify exceptional students is a debate that, like many concerns in the United States before the pandemic, should be retired, or at least reconsidered in light of higher education's current struggles. .
It's not that trial battles and elite admissions are unimportant. Rather, it is the fact that higher education faces a much larger set of challenges, including degree attainment, affordability, and a rapidly sinking reputation.
Nationally, Only about 6 in 10 students who enter college earn a credential or degree in six years.and far fewer graduate on time (four years), the National Student Clearinghouse found. According to the University of California Public Dashboards72.9% of UC students graduate in four years; California Statecontrol panels show a rate of only 35.5%. Completion rates for low-income, historically underrepresented, or students rural origins They are even lower.
Students who leave often take with them a hat trick of dismay: some college experience, loan debt, and no degree. The result? Now we have more than 40 million Americans with some college and no degree to prove.
The struggles of higher education have not gone unnoticed. The percentage of Americans expressing confidence in our colleges and universities has dropped to a new low of 36%, down from 57% about a decade back. According to a recent surveyAt least half of currently enrolled high school students (the traditional group entering colleges and universities) are less interested than ever in taking the time or paying the money to earn a college degree.
And those who enter college face threats to their basic needs that undermine their ability to complete a degree. TO 2023 California Student Aid Commission Report revealed that an alarming 53% of respondents identified as housing insecure, while 66% were food insecure.
At the same time, many studies, including a 2024 report from Georgetown University's Center on Education and the Workforce, affirm the substantial economic value of earning a postsecondary degree. This is in addition to other benefits including better health, higher levels of voter participation and volunteering, greater job satisfaction and greater social mobility.
So how do we give more Americans access to those benefits? Not obsessing over the use of the SAT or ACT by big-name institutions. These schools and their tests (or lack thereof) seem to captivate the media. But the extremely competitive Harvards and Stanfords of the world represent almost 4% of US college students. For financial and other reasons, most Americans will not pursue an elite college education.
So, in California and other parts of the country, what matters most is how higher education leaders are maneuvering their campuses toward greater affordability, student inclusion, and improved academic achievement.
Let's consider the free university movement. While it may not be gaining traction at the federal level, at least 32 states have some form of free collegeincluding California Promise Programs supporting more than 1 million students annually in the Golden State. State-funded free college is gaining momentum with bipartisan support and may be one of the most fruitful paths toward broader affordability.
On the title completion front, focused efforts in Georgia have reduced equity gaps between Hispanic and non-Hispanic white students pursuing their associate degrees. This success challenges results in California, where 58% of Asian young adults and 41% of white adults born in the state have a bachelor's degree, compared to 25% of black and 20% of Latino students. .
Rural students living in learning zones are also worth taking note of. “deserts” where there are no institutions of higher education within a 50-mile radius. Unsurprisingly, those students are much less likely to attend college. But access is expanding; in at least 23 states across the country, including California, Community colleges can now offer bachelor's degrees..
Regarding support for students once they are on campus, although much more progress must be made, the mandatory establishment of basic needs centers in California Community Colleges It's a step in the right direction. These one-stop centers connect students to food pantries, housing assistance, and additional resources like the CalFresh nutrition program.
All of this good work is largely taking place on little-known college campuses, where standardized admissions tests are often not required and even irrelevant. Let's focus our attention on these issues and on those institutions that try to serve all students, not just the most advantaged.
Stephen Handel is director of strategy for postsecondary education transformation at the ECMC Foundation in Los Angeles and previously worked for admissions across the UC system and for the College Board. Eileen Strempel is the inaugural dean of the Herb Albert School of Music and a professor of education at UCLA.
