Families saving for college and encouraging their kids to aim for the top are getting scammed by the left-wing college-industrial complex.

Colleges distort and outright lie about who gets accepted, the quality of education and what it costs.

If they were selling auto loans and used the same deceptive tactics, they’d be in jail.

Columbia University is eliminating SAT and ACT scores as part of the undergraduate admissions process — the first Ivy League school to go permanently test-optional.

It announced the move last week in a slippery statement about making admissions “nuanced” and “respecting varied backgrounds, voices and experiences.”

Truth is, Columbia is ditching merit for diversity. Without admitting it, Columbia is swapping an academic mission — providing a rigorous education to a group of prepared students — with a new one, social engineering.

Expect other colleges to follow.

As Elon Musk commented Saturday, “Very few Americans seem to realize the severity of the situation.”

President Joe Biden made equity the mission of all federal agencies.

His education secretary, Miguel Cardona, last week blasted the higher-education industry’s “unhealthy obsession with selectivity” and urged a focus on “upward mobility.”

That’s politics.

But parents making the biggest investment of their lives, except buying a home, ought to know what they’re paying for: a rigorous classroom experience for their youngster — or a bit part in a social experiment.

Colleges don’t want the public to discern what’s going on.

That’s why they’re railing against U.S. News & World Report’s annual rankings.

The ratings factor in, among other things, test scores, graduation rates (after six years), class size, faculty credentials and students’ debt load when they leave.

Precisely the facts families need.

Nearly all colleges made SAT and ACT scores optional during the pandemic.

And most institutions are sticking with that temporary policy this year.

Not the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which already reinstated testing.

Admissions Dean Stu Schmill explains that it’s “not all about who comes in the door but also who goes out.”

A quarter of students admitted to MIT in fall 2020 scored a perfect 800 on the math SAT and none scored below 700.

Schmill recalled that a decade earlier, when MIT admitted students with a wider range of scores, fewer made it to graduation.

The American Civil Liberties Union slams the ACT and SAT as “unjustifiable barriers for historically underrepresented students of color.”

The issue is more complicated.

The tests have been screened to prevent bias.

But high schools in areas serving black and Hispanic students tend to be lower quality and offer fewer advanced-placement courses, leaving students unprepared.

Unfortunately, most colleges are more interested in being politically correct than ensuring their student body can do the work.

They’re also apprehensive about a US Supreme Court ruling, due by June, that’s expected to curtail or outlaw considering race in admissions.

In lawsuits against Harvard and the University of North Carolina, test scores were used as evidence of how these schools rejected high-scoring Asian and white applicants to promote diversity.

After the June ruling, many institutions will likely eliminate testing to get rid of any proof of racial favoritism.

Erwin Chemerinsky, University of California, Berkeley, School of Law dean, predicts institutions will find ways to prefer minorities “that can’t be documented as violating the Constitution.”

A strong majority of Americans consider it wrong to favor any racial group in admissions.

But right versus wrong be damned.

The left-wing higher-education establishment will probably find ways to do it — and, worse, cover it up.

Race isn’t the only thing colleges lie about.

The US Education Department’s College Scorecard lists schools’ graduation rates.

But check the fine print.

Graduation is defined as earning a diploma within eight years.

Who has time or money for that?

A staggering 91% of colleges misrepresent their costs, according to a General Accounting Office investigation.

Columbia University confessed it falsified class sizes and faculty credentials to U.S. News & World Report, boosting its ranking.

Despite nonstop virtue signaling, the higher-education establishment is anything but virtuous. Americans need to stand up to these liars.

Betsy McCaughey is a former lieutenant governor of New York and chairman of the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths.

Twitter: @Betsy_McCaughey