Colleges Didn’t Only Lose Their Value—They Lost Their Way
Student evaluations subject professors to perverse incentives.
By Mark Schneider
The American Enterprise Institute
January 14, 2026
Last November, a faculty report from UC San Diego showed that over the past five years, the number of freshmen placed in remedial math had increased thirtyfold. Reactions ranged from sober warnings about declining readiness to claims of a collegiate “math horror show.” In response, some commentators argued that treating the findings as a problem reflected a culture-war misunderstanding about equity, student success, or what colleges “really do.”
That reaction entirely misses the point. The UC San Diego report exposed something far more consequential. American colleges are failing at one of their core economic functions: They are no longer acting as credible gatekeepers for employers.
For decades, a degree from a selective college meant something. Employers could assume they were hiring from the top of the talent pool. Not because colleges magically transformed students, but because admissions and subsequent academic standards filtered for readiness, persistence, and cognitive skills. Colleges did the sorting up front, so employers didn’t have to.
That system is now weakening, largely thanks to the choices made by colleges and universities themselves.
An analysis of admissions and transcript records from a selection of elite colleges found that standardized test scores were far better predictors of first-year academic performance than high school GPA, even after accounting for race, gender, and socioeconomic status. The research showed that students admitted without test scores perform much worse in college courses than their peers who were admitted with test scores. In other words, tests contain real information, and colleges know it.
So why have so many institutions abandoned them? A recent paper on test-optional admissions offers a blunt answer: social pressure.
