<story><title>Harvard University Won’t Require SAT, ACT for Admissions Next Year</title><url>https://www.wsj.com/articles/harvard-university-wont-require-sat-act-for-admissions-next-year-11592272825</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>filereaper</author><text>I highly recommend watching the video by Scott Galloway on The College Implosion. [1]&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Colleges have become luxury brands and are adopting a strategy of artificial scarcity to create irrational margins&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s a large movement right now where many are saying the large tuition fees for Zoom lectures aren&amp;#x27;t worth it.&lt;p&gt;Colleges sell themselves for the experience and are a luxury lifestyle brand almost, but with covid the lifestyle aspect of it is wiped out, so its reasonable that students are asking why they&amp;#x27;d pay such high premiums.&lt;p&gt;I think removing SAT, ACT casts a wider net and hopefully allows more students to enroll, what&amp;#x27;s the scaling limitation if everyone&amp;#x27;s doing lectures on Zoom? Presumably everyone&amp;#x27;s also getting graded electronically in some way.&lt;p&gt;[1]: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;youtu.be&amp;#x2F;d8kwzSTITP0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;youtu.be&amp;#x2F;d8kwzSTITP0&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>chrxr</author><text>If the learning experience is simplified to listening to a lecture, either live or recorded, and all grading is done algorithmically, then yes, there is no scaling limitation. This would be considered a very poor learning experience though. Even in the School of Engineering at Harvard, even for the CS classes, very few use autograding. Students expect individual feedback on their work. They expect the ability to personally interact with teaching staff. They expect group work, labs, office hours, reading groups, and some level of supervision over these activities.&lt;p&gt;I work at Harvard, and I can tell you there is a real push to create a quality experience in remote learning, and a lot of resources are being directed towards this. It is not just the same classes via Zoom. Of course these enhanced learning environments could be replicated on campus as well, there&amp;#x27;s nothing particularly special about the remote learning environment.&lt;p&gt;But as you suggest, it is the residential experience that most folks are paying for. Harvard considers the residential experience as one of their primary value propositions. That is why Harvard and other schools are working very hard to get students back to campus. It&amp;#x27;s a difficult balancing act between this and maintaining the health of the campus. A major outbreak amongst undergrads would be a serious blow to everybody involved, so health is always going to come first.&lt;p&gt;Also worth noting that 20% of Harvard students pay 0 tuition, and more than 50% get needs-based scholarships. &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;college.harvard.edu&amp;#x2F;financial-aid&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;college.harvard.edu&amp;#x2F;financial-aid&lt;/a&gt;. So if you&amp;#x27;re smart enough, and&amp;#x2F;or fit into the financial aid brackets, why not go to Harvard? What&amp;#x27;s the risk there?</text></comment>
<story><title>Harvard University Won’t Require SAT, ACT for Admissions Next Year</title><url>https://www.wsj.com/articles/harvard-university-wont-require-sat-act-for-admissions-next-year-11592272825</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>filereaper</author><text>I highly recommend watching the video by Scott Galloway on The College Implosion. [1]&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Colleges have become luxury brands and are adopting a strategy of artificial scarcity to create irrational margins&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s a large movement right now where many are saying the large tuition fees for Zoom lectures aren&amp;#x27;t worth it.&lt;p&gt;Colleges sell themselves for the experience and are a luxury lifestyle brand almost, but with covid the lifestyle aspect of it is wiped out, so its reasonable that students are asking why they&amp;#x27;d pay such high premiums.&lt;p&gt;I think removing SAT, ACT casts a wider net and hopefully allows more students to enroll, what&amp;#x27;s the scaling limitation if everyone&amp;#x27;s doing lectures on Zoom? Presumably everyone&amp;#x27;s also getting graded electronically in some way.&lt;p&gt;[1]: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;youtu.be&amp;#x2F;d8kwzSTITP0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;youtu.be&amp;#x2F;d8kwzSTITP0&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>not_a_moth</author><text>Anyone intimate with Germany&amp;#x27;s vocational training system, that&amp;#x27;s used as an alternative to college by approximately half of all graduating high school students?&lt;p&gt;2-3 years small salary vocational training straight out of HS at 1 of 400k participating companies in 1 of 400 role types.&lt;p&gt;I want to know why implementing this isn&amp;#x27;t a national debate in US, it seems like such an obviously good idea.</text></comment>