Many colleges and universities have gone “test optional” in recent years, no longer requiring that applicants include their SAT and ACT scores. This supposedly represents an improvement because the tests are biased, and doing away with them is an advance for “social justice.”

Not everyone agrees. In today’s Martin Center article, NC State professor Stephen Porter argues that schools in the UNC System should bring back the standardized tests because they enable people to see whether admissions officials are abiding by the Supreme Court’s ruling against racial preferences.

He writes:

The recent Supreme Court ruling on affirmative action forbids the use of race in college admissions. Yet North Carolina public universities are already finding ways to circumvent the spirit of the ruling, such as by using essay questions that ask students about challenges they have faced or to reflect on their identity. These prompts allow students to say, for example, “As a Black student . . . ,” which is indeed permissible under Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard; students are not forbidden from bringing up their race in their applications.

Eliminating the standardized-test requirements allows school officials to engage in what they call “holistic” admissions. But what that actually means is that they can ignore aspects of the student’s profile that reflect poorly on his or her fitness for the institution or major.

Porter emphasizes that this is just as important for graduate admissions as undergraduate:

Including graduate admissions is vital, because while undergraduate admissions are handled by a central office, graduate admissions are conducted by small groups of faculty in many different academic departments across the universities. The central administrations provide little oversight of this process. Given the political orientation of the faculty, discrimination is more likely to occur here, and detailed reports for each graduate program will put pressure on faculty to comply with the law.

Read the whole thing.