institutional downspiral

malign merit, circle the drain

the simple fact is that aptitude tests work. IQ tests work. they measure real, meaningful variables that are highly predictive of success at a great many tasks. people are, of course, free to dislike this fact to the fullest content of their hearts, but a fact it will remain.

and being increasingly stupid about it is not helping anyone, least of all those it was intended to.

back in 2020, the university of california system decided to phase out the SAT/ACT and in 2021, a lawsuit made it permanent.

this certainly increased the “diversity” of students, but perhaps not in the manner that had been hoped. i cannot speak to whatever they were aiming at, but “massive diversity of preparedness and capability” is what they got. in these days of grade inflation, AI, and social promotion, it (entirely predictably) filled the UC system with kids who had no business being there and we, flattly, unprepared for and unable to catch up to the work.

it’s so bad the faculty are revolting because STEM students cannot manage middle school math. here’s the letter signed by 686 faculty as of this writing: LINK

it does not mince words:

bravo, folks. exactamente.

the simple fact is that the SAT is one of the best predictors of college success and when you hold high school GPA constant, the effect really pops.

all A students. twice the college completion rate (74%) at 1400+ vs 800-990.

this gets significantly more acute as you move up in the selectivity of a university.

HS GPA predicted basically nothing.

it did a little better in an internal at dartmouth, but it was basically non additive to overall predictivity, meaning it’s all cross correlate and GPA from HS adds almost nothing to the signal. you’d be FAR better off just using SAT and ignoring transcripts.

so, the story is clear, the data favors testing, and the Destruction, Incineration, and Effacement gang will, predictably demand to Do It Everywhere because that is the only note that this flute would seem to know how to play.

but this is not playtime. taken past a point it becomes deadly dangerous.

leaving aside the fact that “health equity scholar” makes “pronouns in bio” look like winning the science fair, this is a truly terrible idea.

the university of california dropped the SAT and the preparedness of STEM freshmen plummeted so precipitously that they were having to reteach middle school math.

and from this you learn "we should drop the MCAT from med school?"

this certainly seems likely to improve the diversity of poor medical outcomes...

it’s also likely to cause actual racism because, in a racially rigged system, racism becomes rational despite, ironically, not actually needing to be racial. it’s just an emergent artifact of differential preferencing.

it’s a different standard.

and that will have effects.

if would work for any bifurcation.

if my med school let in people whose names started with A who had a 24 MCAT at the same rate as people whose names started with B but had a near perfect score, it would become rational to want a doctor named barbara and not alex.

they had to pass stricter tests and have higher capacity and given that schools now graduate far too many students as it is, GPA and diploma and even board cert are just not enough to cover for this.

i’m sure there’s a knee jerk to say “they are all good by the time they graduate” but the data has a tendency to track the MCAT.

here’s data pulled from medical boards (it’s not as complete as i’d like, but the trend is still pretty obvious)

we can argue about base rates and “could you tell?” etc, but in the end, why? if you need a doctor, you want the best one you can find and if it’s clear that it’s easier for some groups to get medical degrees than others because of their ethnicity, why wouldn’t you want the asian doctor?

this is the insidious harm of DEI. it casts all achievements into doubt. maybe doctor so and so really is great and deserves everything they have and more, but if lots of people who look like them got ahead on “intrinsic characteristics” then will people take the chance and find out?

you simply cannot set of spirals like this in any insitution.

the mediocrity downspiral is inevitable.

once you hire, promote, or enroll for reasons other than merit, those without merit start seeking to shove out any who have it.

mediocrity loves company, but only company more mediocre than itself.

A’s hire A’s and B’s hire C’s. (and you seriously do not want to meet the people C’s hire)

they will ravage every institution they touch and the high schools will rot because the colleges are contagious and the grades will inflate and the ability to distinguish will drop. hell, they’re even nerfing the SAT to wipe out its mid level discernment.

these people REALLY want to stop objective assessment.

it’s the exact behavior you’d expect from a B looking to hire C’s and push out the A’s.

any system not a deliberate objective meritocracy will devolve into an anti-meritocracy.

objective testing is a means to prevent this.

it’s why they hate it so much.