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Comment by stu2b50 | Hacker News Reader

I think this is a good move overall. Remember, they're not phasing out tests entirely, it's over a 5 year period before they can develop alternative tests.

I think US college exam systems are horribly flawed.

For one, why are they run by a private non-profit rather than the government?

They're also clearly not difficult enough, when at elite universities it's more a qualification than a determinant. In other nations, they're hard enough that the bell curve doesn't clip at the end.

The tests should be free, or at least free for, say, 2 tests per year per student. They should be harder. And they shouldn't be held in the hands of a third party.

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What are the odds that the UC system will make a harder test, and secondly, will actually get good applicants to take it?

Whatever test the UC system comes up with will be taken by a huge fraction of college applicants, especially the good ones.

You have to appreciate how big California is (>People than Canada, and any other US state). The UC system is actually the reason that the writing section was added to the SAT (the SAT II writing test used to be mandatory for UC admission). Everyone in my high school (public HS in CA) with even a chance at college admission applied to the UC system. Once you have that process in place it is easy to imagine other state universities copying the test.

CA is 10% of the US population. Also, UCLA and Berkeley are huge international schools (and have students from all 50 states).

A lot of people will take that test for sure. And if it turns out to be a good indicator, other states would probably accept the scores too.

Then California makes it free for CA residents and makes test prep part of the HS curriculum and you're on your way to solving a few systemic problems at once!

They're definitely difficult enough to separate the abilities of most students into rough groups. At the upper 1% it's certainly hard to differentiate but for the other 99% it's quite effective.

What's the downside to making it harder, though? Scores are all considered relative. If the average student makes a 600 points out of whatever instead of 800 points out of whatever, it doesn't actually change anything for them.

The universities generally aren’t run by the government, so their entrance criteria shouldn’t be.

The UC system pretended to be, even though a majority of their revenue isn't from state government anymore and CA abolished the commission for higher education planning (although it looks like Newsom is putting it back together)

https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2019/08/12/califor...

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