Thread by @davidfrum

Not that you asked for it, but my 2 cents on how to fix *both* college admissions *and* student loan problem. Probably a lot wrong with my idea, but file it under "just so crazy it might work." 1/x

1) Form a consortium of the nation's most admired employers: Google, Morgan Stanley, Merck, etc. The consortium hires a panel of leading academic experts. The experts devise an exam to test BA-level subject-matter expertise in math, physics, US history, English composition; etc.

2) The test is administered at regular intervals in multiple US locations. It's free. Anybody at any age can register to write the exam. If they score high enough, they get a Google/Morgan Stanley/Merck certificate of BA-level proficiency in their subject matter.

3) It's not a degree obviously. But many potential employers may think it's good enough. Many potential students may think it's good enough. And for the first time, colleges may feel the hot breath of competition down their necks.

4) The test should not be a trick. Old exams should be posted online for anyone to read. High-scoring papers should be posted too, anonymously obviously. Anyone interested could study directly: here's what you are expected to know; here's what BA-level proficiency looks like.

5) If a student wants to accredit herself for employment, she can study on her own time, at her own pace, and at no charge for the certificate she needs. If an employer seeks to know that the student can do the math - the exam says yes or no, again for free.

6) Colleges and universities in turn would be liberated/pressured to get out of the businesses they are charging enormous prices to do badly - employment accreditation; social reform - and to focus on the thing they're supposed to do: advance and share knowledge for its own sake.

7) The expected economic return on the certificate should rise toward infinity. The expected economic return on the BA should drop toward zero. If you're not seeking knowledge for its own sake - why are you in a university at all?

8) Universities have proven their utter uselessness as agencies of social reform. In part, this is not their fault: 18-21 is simply too late to start, the work of equalizing opportunity begins with prenatal nutrition and revs into highest gear from birth to age 5 or 6.

9) But in great part, the failure of universities at social reform *is* their own fault. They have responded to their adopted mission above all by developing well-paid self-seeking internal bureaucracies who shrug off drop-out rates and student debt as someone else's problems.

10) The present system offers a few lucky students a leg-up they might otherwise not have received, while crushing many more ex-students under debts they cannot repay for degrees they did not complete. The people employed to operate this system of course defend it, but ...

11) ... it's otherwise pretty indefensible. Accreditation for employment should be shaped by potential employers, at the major employers' expense, not the future employees. Social reformers should press for better nutrition for expectant mothers, improved early eduction, etc.

12) We take universities too much at their own high-flown self-presentation. If it quacks like a rent-seeking self-dealing cartel that finances itself by imposing debt on those least able to bear that debt ...

13) If ambitious young people could capture more of the economic value of a fancy degree, without the trauma and debt imposed by the fancy degree-granting institutions, maybe US society would fuss less over the admissions processes to those fancy institutions.

14) And then those institutions could shed a lot of administrative bloat, and rededicate themselves to what should be their mission: not reforming the world, but understanding the world, and teaching that understanding to those who seek understanding for its own sake. END

Some data points as a PS
More than 25% of students admitted to college drop out. That's a total of 39 million Americans. educationdata.org/college-dropou…

Black students are 33% more likely to drop out of college than the general average. Students with disabilities are almost 60% more likely to drop out. educationdata.org/college-dropou…

Debt owed by college drop-outs averages almost $14,000 per person. 46% of college drop-outs are in arrears on their college debt. .lendedu.com/blog/college-d…

Obviously, some radical rethinking is called-for here.

belated edit: "The experts devise EXAMS [plural] to test BA-level subject-matter expertise in math, physics, US history, English composition; etc." That is, I envisioned an array of exams in many different topic areas.