Commentary: Eliminating Standardized Testing Had Shockingly Bad Results

Test Taking

For years, liberals have scoffed at the idea that standardized testing is the best predictor of academic success. The National Education Association, for instance, claims standardized tests are “both inequitable and ineffective at gauging what students know.” Activists’ campaign against standardized testing — and their assertions that such tests discriminate against “underrepresented minority students” — culminated in the decisions by more than 1,000 colleges to drop their standardized testing requirements.

This week, cold, hard data showed just how foolish those decisions were. The University of Texas at Austin released the academic performance data for students who submitted standardized scores versus those who did not submit such scores. The result is unambiguous: Students who did not submit standardized tests performed drastically worse than students who did submit their scores. The students who did not submit ACT or SAT scores finished the fall 2023 semester with a grade point average 0.86 grade points lower than students who did. This demonstrates an average difference of almost an entire letter grade. Had the University of Texas utilized all applicants’ standardized scores, it very well might have decided against admitting many of those who did not provide their scores. Students who did not provide scores had a median SAT of 1160, markedly lower than that of the students who did provide their scores: 1420. The University of Texas would have been correct in deciding against admitting those students with lower scores given how much better students with a higher average SAT performed academically.

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Yale University Employs Nearly one Administrator per Undergrad

Yale University

Yale University employs more than three administrators and support staff for every four undergraduate students – roughly one administrator per undergrad, according to a College Fix analysis.

Over the last decade, Yale added 631 administrators and support staff to its payroll, according to data provided by administrators to the federal Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System.

As the university embraced new DEI efforts, the number of administrators and support staff increased by 13 percent, from 4,942 to 5,573, between 2013-14 and 2021-22, the analysis found.

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Federal Judge Won’t Hire Clerks Who Signed Letters Defending Hamas

A federal judge recently announced he would not hire law clerks who signed letters defending the actions of Hamas.

In response to a letter released by student groups at Harvard blaming Israel for Hamas’ attacks, U.S. Court of Federal Claims Judge Matthew Solomson (pictured above) wrote in an October 11 LinkedIn post that he would “refuse to credential anyone who supports or even remotely sympathizes with terror in the form of a modern day pogrom.” Student groups at universities across the country, including Columbia University, Yale University and George Washington University, released statements and held protests in support of Palestine.

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New Documentary Exposes Ivy League Privilege and the Students it Shuts Out

“Exclusion U,” a feature documentary released this year, details how Ivy League universities accumulate billions of dollars as they restrict class sizes, turn away qualified students, and favor the children of the rich.

“Ivy League endowments are worth $193 billion dollars, but they only educate 0.3 percent of U.S. undergrads,” the film’s narrator stated. “That’s less than 63,000 students.”

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Commentary: Cancel Yale Law School

If U.S. News and World Report’s ratings can be taken seriously, Yale is home to America’s top law school. Tuition at Yale Law School is just shy of $70,000 a year plus expenses for room, board, books, and sundries, though many students qualify for scholarships and generous financial assistance. A juris doctor degree from Yale opens a great many doors, but it is a fact that fewer Yale Law graduates go into Big Law than their peers from Harvard and other Ivies. Many go into government instead. It’s said that somewhere between 25 percent and 35 percent of all federal clerkships go to Yale Law grads.

But what exactly does a three-year, $210,000 (plus) Yale Law School education purchase? In particular, what does a Yale Law education look like?

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Schweizer: U.S. Institutions of Higher Learning Fail to Report Millions of Dollars from China

TRANSCRIPT: McCabe: Investigative journalist Peter Schweizer, in his new book Red-Handed, reports how the Chinese Communist Party has targeted American institutions of higher learning. Schweizer told The Star News Network how these institutions, after receiving funds from communist China, have worked to suppress criticism of the communist regime there and…

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Explosive Growth: Yale Now Has as Many Administrators as Students

Yale University nearly doubled its number of administrators from 2003 to 2019 while only bringing in an additional 600 students, according to the Yale Daily News.

Yale now has an approximately equal number of students and administrators, the Daily News reported. Yale professors expressed concern about the impact of the school’s massive bureaucracy on teaching, students’ lives and university costs.

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Commentary: The Left Destroys Everything It Touches

What was the purpose for the insane opposition of the Left between 2017 and 2021? To usher in a planned nihilism, an incompetent chaos, a honed anarchy to wreck the country in less than a year?

No sooner had Donald Trump entered office than scores of House Democrats filed motions for impeachment, apparently for thought crimes that he might, some day, in theory, could possibly commit.

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American Greatness Ad in New York Times Calls for Yale to be Renamed After Jeremiah Dummer

The New York Times on Thursday published an advertisement calling for Yale to be renamed after someone who was not a brutal, white supremacist slave-trader. A Harvard man named Jeremiah Dummer fits the bill, New Criterion editor and American Greatness contributor Roger Kimball argues.

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