Across the United States, colleges and universities are walking away from standardized testing. What began as a temporary adjustment during the COVID pandemic has become a permanent admissions shift at many institutions. Supporters call it inclusive and equitable. Critics say it is masking deep academic failures and sending students into college unprepared.
At the center of this debate is the California State University system, which dropped the SAT and ACT requirement in 2022. Professor Andrea Mays, an economics professor at Cal State Long Beach, says the results are already showing up in her classroom.
She describes what she calls serious “deficits in learning” among incoming students. Many of these students spent critical middle school years in online learning during the pandemic. But Mays believes the removal of standardized testing has made matters worse.
She told Fox News Digital that students are arriving on campus unprepared and are dropping out at higher rates. According to Mays, the drop rate is up “phenomenally,” and department chairs are seeing the same pattern. She said roughly 25 percent of students are dropping classes, with math being one of the biggest problem areas.
Basic Math Skills Are Missing
Mays teaches a class designed for non economics majors. She insists that the math required for the course is not advanced.
“I teach a class that is offered for non economics majors,” she explained. “I could put on an index card exactly what math is required for my class, it’s not calculus, and they are struggling with it.”
The skills she is talking about are not college level calculus or advanced statistics. She says students are struggling with concepts typically taught in middle school.
“They’re embarrassed, they’re demoralized,” Mays said. “They come into my classroom, and they say, or into my office hours, and they say, I never learned this stuff, I don’t know how to calculate a percentage change.”
She added that she can teach them the material, but many students never seek help at all.
“I can show them, but those are the students who are actually coming to me and asking me for help,” she said. “There are lots of other students who are just too embarrassed even to do that, and who just end up dropping the class.”
Mays argues that allowing students into a four year university without confirming they are academically prepared is not compassion. It is setting them up for failure.
“Access without readiness is not opportunity,” she wrote in an opinion piece. “It is a disservice. If CSU is serious about student success, affordability, and equity, it must be willing to measure preparedness and act on what it finds.”
She also warned, “Pretending preparation gaps do not exist is not equity.”
Why Universities Are Scrapping the SAT
California is part of a much larger national trend. Nearly 2,000 colleges and universities have made the SAT and ACT optional. More than 80 percent of four year schools no longer require standardized test scores.
Elite institutions have followed the same path. Columbia became the first Ivy League school to permanently go test optional. Harvard extended its policy through 2026. Cornell extended its test optional approach through 2024. SUNY announced that applicants to its four year colleges would no longer be required to submit SAT or ACT scores.
The stated reason is inclusivity and diversity. Acting Chancellor Steve Relyea said when the California State University system removed the testing requirement, the goal was to “level the playing field” and provide “greater access.”
A year long study by the Admission Advisory Council concluded that standardized tests provided “negligible additional value” in predicting student success compared to high school GPA.
Instead of test scores, schools moved to what they call “multi factored admission criteria,” placing greater weight on GPA, extracurricular activities, and socioeconomic factors.
Activist groups have also pressured universities to eliminate testing. In an October 2022 webinar titled “Preparing for a Supreme Court Decision Involving Race Conscious Admissions,” officials from the National Association of College Admission Counseling advised admissions officers to “eliminate consideration of applicants’ ACT and SAT scores because they reflect a variety of biases related to race and ethnicity.” They even urged guidance counselors to “ensure that test scores of any sort do not appear on student transcripts because of their correlation with race and ethnicity.”
The College Board, which administers the SAT, described standardized tests and grades as “potential roadblocks” to furthering diversity goals and encouraged schools to consider admissions materials “in addition to or in lieu of standardized test scores.”
Critics argue that these moves are closely tied to the debate over affirmative action. By going test optional, colleges can admit more underrepresented minorities without relying on scores that show measurable performance gaps between racial groups.
The Cultural Bias Argument
Opponents of standardized testing often argue that the SAT is culturally biased. Scholars have pointed to certain wordy math questions and verbal analogies as examples of potential disadvantage for English language learners or students from different cultural backgrounds.
One frequently cited example is the analogy question “oarsman is to regatta” as “runner is to marathon.” Critics argue that familiarity with sailing terminology might favor students from wealthier backgrounds.
The University of California system ultimately stopped using standardized test scores after concerns of racial bias and a 2021 settlement.
However, a faculty led report found “no clear evidence of racial bias” in the SAT. The report also stated that sizable numbers of first generation, low income, and underrepresented minority students earned admission “solely by virtue of their SAT scores.”
In other words, the test has often provided an objective way for talented students from disadvantaged backgrounds to stand out.
Research has consistently shown that SAT and ACT scores predict academic performance. A 2020 study from the University of California found that “SAT and ACT test scores are positively associated with college success in terms of freshman GPA, graduation GPA, first year retention, and graduation.”
Dartmouth recently reversed course and reinstated its standardized testing requirement. University researchers said the data shows standardized test scores are “highly predictive of academic achievement at Dartmouth” and that GPA and SAT scores maintain a linear relationship.
MIT also brought back its testing requirement. MIT Dean of Admission Stuart Schmill told The New York Times, “Just getting A’s is not enough information for us to know whether students are going to succeed or not.”
Grade Inflation and the Illusion of Success
Another factor complicating the debate is grade inflation. High school GPAs have been rising even as test scores have stagnated or declined.
From 1998 to 2017, the proportion of high school seniors graduating with an A average increased by more than 8 percent, while SAT scores fell by 24 points. ACT researchers found that between 2010 and 2021, GPAs rose from 3.17 to 3.36. The largest jump occurred between 2018 and 2021. During the same period, ACT scores remained flat or declined.
This creates a troubling pattern. Students are earning higher grades but not demonstrating stronger academic skills on objective assessments.
Without standardized testing, universities must rely more heavily on GPAs that may not reflect true mastery of material. As Professor Mays noted, high schools are “heterogeneous.” Not all schools are equal, even if they claim to be.
“You’ll get students who get As in algebra two, and then they come into my class and they can’t calculate a percentage change,” she said. She added that some cannot “find the intersection between two straight lines, both of which are seventh and eighth grade math requirements.”
Mays believes passing students along from high school to a four year university without verifying readiness is deeply unfair.
“So that students are getting passed on from high school into a four year university is a disservice to them,” she said. “They get here thinking they’re wonderful and finding out that they are at the bottom of the ability distribution for math and English.”
What Happens When Testing Disappears
Supporters argue that eliminating the SAT broadens access and reduces inequity. But critics warn that it may increase subjectivity in admissions and create confusion.
Robert May, a professor at the University of California, told The New York Times that eliminating the testing requirement would add confusion and significant costs to the admissions process and make acceptance even more subjective in the short term.
Research from Amherst College economist Joshua Hyman found that requiring standardized tests can actually benefit low income students. When Michigan required all public school juniors to take the ACT, for every 1,000 low income students who scored high enough to attend a selective college on an optional ACT, an additional 480 did so after being required to take the exam.
Mandatory testing, in that case, expanded opportunity.
Professor Mays believes that if students are not ready for four year college work, there are alternatives.
“Go into the community system and take the lowest level English class you can so that you can write a sentence, you can write a paragraph, you could make an argument,” she said. “Take a basic math class that will transfer onto a four year university and learn how to do the basic math that perhaps you didn’t learn when you were in middle school online.”
“There’s no reason not to use an SAT as a filter to let students know whether they’re prepared for college level work or not,” she added.
The larger question remains whether removing objective measures solves inequity or simply hides uncomfortable truths about preparation gaps and failing schools.
Standardized testing does not create those gaps. It reveals them. Without measurement, there is no clear way to know whether the education system is working.
If students arrive at college unable to perform middle school math, scrapping the SAT does not fix the problem. It only delays the moment when students discover how unprepared they really are.
