Talent Recruitment Openness Seems Platinum to me

So there was an article in the NYTimes today about colleges abandoning the use of the SAT/ACT in the admissions process. The general tilt of the article was that colleges do this to boost their applicant pool size, which then allows them to move up the rankings when they turn down more applicants. It also describes how some schools do not require the tests for applicants, but do require the tests for merit aid. The article seems to imply that the first activity is gaming the system and the second activity may just be unethical. I know I'm weird, but I had the exact opposite reaction upon reading the story.

Awhile ago, Malcolm Gladwell wrote an article in the New Yorker about how we really don't know what makes good teachers. There are lots of rules, regulations, and schools dedicated to saying what is required in order to be a teacher, but none of these have been found to produce great teachers. Gladwell gives several examples of how other entities (football coaches and investment bankers) go about finding top talent when they are looking for something hard to quantify. Both groups recruit widely, train intensely, and monitor progress methodically. They constantly thin the herd searching for the exact talent they want/need.

My thinking on the college article was that colleges are simply applying the principles that the football and banking groups apply (according to Gladwell). Given the poor predictive nature of the SAT/ACT for college performance, it makes sense for colleges to not treat them as hard and fast rules to be applied across the board at all times. By removing barriers to entry (standardized tests) colleges are widening the scope of people that can apply and getting more diverse streams of talent.

The implication of the article is that this may be some sort of race to the bottom, but maybe it's a race to the top. Maybe, in the long term, this is just one of many gradual steps towards identifying better indicators for the best and brightest students. One can only pray that other parts of the American education system adopt a similar openness.