"The GRE and Me: Prestige Versus Quality in American Higher Education"

Is the American “testing culture” about maintaining academic standards or something else? In this essay, I suggest there may be more to the story, namely colleges’ and universities’ pursuit of prestige and reputation in the age of U.S. News and World Report, which rates colleges and universities on factors that may have little to do with actual academic quality.

Despite the highly questionable utility of standardized tests to predict academic success, the unmitigated pursuit of prestige and reputation continue to prop up the use of deeply flawed standardized tests in higher education.

The piece includes a narrative section describing my own recent experience with the Graduate Record Exam, and the personal and ethical choices I'm confronted with.

The essay appears in the Spring 2003 issue of "Encounter: Education for Meaning and Social Justice"

Books and Essays by Peter Sacks

Peter Sacks's recent Essays in MindingtheCampus.com
Essays
Why College Still Matters
From mindingthecampus.com
Our Colleges and Their Many Critics by Peter Sacks
From mindingthecampus.com, Sept. 13, 2010
Rethinking the Rules of the Higher Education Game
Academe Magazine, American Association of University Professors
Essays and Commentary
"Is Academic Freedom in Trouble?"
How Colleges Perpetuate Inequality
From the Chronicle of Higher Education, Jan. 12, 2007
"The Geography of Privilege"
Essay in the Spring, 2004, issue of Encounter: Education for Meaning and Social Justice
Class Rules: the Fiction of Egalitarian Higher Education
From the Chronicle Review (Chronicle of Higher Education, July 25, 2003.
"Class Struggle"
Review essay in The Nation, May 5, 2003.
"The GRE and Me: Prestige Versus Quality in American Higher Education"
Essay appears in the Spring 2003 issue of Encounter: Education for Meaning and Social Justice
"Turning Schools into Profit Centers"
From the Jan. 8, 2003, issue of Education Week
"A Nation at Risk"
Review essay of In Schools We Trust by Deborah Meier in The Nation, Nov. 18, 2002.
"On Changing the SAT: A Contrarian's View of Our 'Culture of Standardized Testing.'
Education Week, June 5, 2002.
"Testing Times in Higher Ed"
A review essay on the book, Fair Game?, by Rebecca Zwick for The Nation.
"Pseudo-meritocracy"
The Boston Review, December/January 2001
"How Admissions Tests Hinder Access to Graduate and Professional Schools."
The Chronicle of Higher Education (Chronicle Review), June 8, 2001.
"Predictable Losers in Testing Schemes"
The School Administrator, Dec. 2000
Books
Tearing Down the Gates: Confronting the Class Divide in American Education from the University of California Press)
While we often hear about the growing economic divide between the rich and the poor in America, Tearing Down the Gates locates the fountainhead of these growing economic disparities, our education system, and shows how the widening class divide results in an untold loss of human talent that will derail the American Dream --not just for some, but for us all.
Standardized Minds: The High Price of America's Testing Culture and What We Can Do to Change it (Perseus Publishing)
A critical examination of America's 'testing culture' in schools, higher education, and the workplace, and how the American meritocracy can be more fair for all citizens.
Generation X Goes to College: An Eye-Opening Account of Teaching in Postmodern America (Open Court).
An inquiry into "postmodern" American culture and its sometimes corrosive effects on qualilty in higher education.

Contact Peter Sacks
Find Authors