College paying admitted students to re-take the SAT… Say what?

Did you catch this NYTimes story yesterday?
Going Crazy over the SAT

Baylor University in Waco, Texas was red faced — and red handed — after The Times’ Sara Rimer reported that the college was actually paying members of the freshman class to retake the SAT’s.

Administrators claimed that they were merely giving admitted students a chance to burnish their records and win so-called merit scholarships. But it seems more likely that Baylor’s marketing team was trying to drive up the school’s test scores — and move it up in college rankings, like the ones issued by U.S. News & World Report.

This excessively standardized-test-focused approach to higher education is rightly condemned in the recently released Report of The Commission on the Use of Standardized Tests In Undergraduate Education, from the National Association for College Admission Counseling. The report is likely to have a significant impact, given that the association’s membership includes some of the most influential admissions officials in the country.

The report warned that the national obsession with SAT’s was distorting the college admissions process, damaging public education, and favoring students from wealthy families who now hire test prep consultants as a matter of course. More here.

With college ranking driving colleges to crazy stuff like this the national epidemic of student ACD (aquired college disorder) can be no surprise.