One of the largest and most enduring sets of assessment practices and rituals is the set of policies regarding college admissions. Challenging and changing these policies is never easy because such moves inevitably upset those privileged by the current arrangements.
Writing in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Eric Hoover reports on the activities of Accept (Admissions Community Cultivating Equity and Peace), a group seeking to reimagine the college admissions process, and their Hack the Gates project. The project has convened scholars and admissions officials in an effort to rethink college admissions.
Efforts to modify the admissions process and the assessments embedded within them raise some interesting questions about the very foundations of colleges as formal organizations with set boundaries. Formal organizations maintain boundaries to create conditions that make activities within them more manageable. Such arrangements are consistent with industrial era forms of organization. The question is whether they are consistent with expectations and needs in an era of global digital information networks. In other words, should we be examining ways to hack the gates or should we be rethinking the need for the fences?
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