Dive Brief:

• Indiana University Bloomington, the state's flagship institution, will no longer use the SAT or ACT as a general admissions requirement. Six other campuses in the IU system have opted to go test-optional as well. 
• Students who would enroll in fall 2021 no longer need to submit their test scores on their applications.  
• The move gives new momentum to the test-optional movement in higher ed, which accelerated late last year when advocates sued the University of California System, arguing its reliance on standardized assessments in admissions was discriminatory. 

Dive Insight:

A policy change by the Indiana University System's board of trustees in December allows all nine of its campuses to go test-optional, Chuck Carney, a spokesperson for the system, told Education Dive in an email. Bloomington made the change Tuesday after the Faculty Council there approved it, Carney wrote in an email. 

Research shows for many students, a GPA is a better predictor of academic success, Carney wrote. 

That IU, a major higher ed system in the country, has shifted its testing requirements signals a win for advocates who want to discontinue the SAT and ACT in college admissions.

The biggest development in this campaign came in December, when a coalition of students, nonprofit groups and a largely minority school district in California sued U of California, demanding it remove the tests as an admissions requirement. 

They alleged the use of the SAT and ACT is prejudicial in part because it benefits students and families who can afford extensive test prep and tutoring. Students who are the most disadvantaged are often low-income or from minority groups.

There are other, more consistent ways of measuring academic potential, such as a students' high school GPA, the coalition contended. 

The University of North Carolina System recently published the results of a pilot that allowed three of its institutions — Elizabeth City State, Fayetteville State and North Carolina Central universities — to waive the SAT and ACT in admissions as long as the accepted students whose assessment scores fell below the required threshold had a higher GPA to make up the difference.

The system, which is mulling getting rid of the assessments as an admissions criterion, found that once in college, the students with lower SAT/ACT scores performed no different from their counterparts who met the typical admissions standards. 

If the lawsuit against the U of California succeeds, it would likely disrupt the entire testing industry in academe. It is one of the largest research university systems in the U.S., enrolling more than 226,000 undergraduates, and California is the biggest state market for college admissions exams, Bob Schaeffer, public education director of the National Center for Fair and Open Testing (FairTest), said in a press release last year. 

The system had already begun to consider the tests' role in admissions. In July 2018, system president Janet Napolitano asked the Academic Senate to review standardized testing in admissions. It since formed a task force to determine whether the tests are useful measures in admissions and expects to deliver its recommendations before the end of the academic year. 

"We are disappointed that plaintiffs have filed a lawsuit when the University of California has already devoted substantial resources to studying this complex issue," Claire Doan, a system spokesperson, said in a statement emailed to Education Dive on Wednesday. 

At least 51 institutions removed the SAT/ACT testing requirement in 2019, adding to the more than 1,000 test-optional colleges and universities in the country, according to FairTest.

Colleges — particularly large, public institutions — are adopting test-optional policies or proposing to drop ACT/SAT requirements for all or many applicants at "an unusually fast pace," Schaeffer wrote in an email this week.

The six other IU campuses that have chosen to go test-optional are Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis, Indiana University–Purdue University Columbus, IU Northwest, IU Kokomo, IU South Bend and IU Fort Wayne.

Lourdes University, a private college in Ohio, also announced this month it would go test-optional, The Blade reported.