The SAT Fails Its Biggest Test

The College Board, owner of the SAT, is: A a billion-dollar monopoly B not connecting students to success and opportunity C facing an existential crisis D all of the above

- SUSAN ADAMS

Chaos. That’s the effect Covid-19 has had on America’s system of higher education, which was already struggling before the pandemic. One need look no further than the current state of affairs at the College Board, long regarded as an impenetrable fortress among the ivory towers. Its core product, the SAT, has set the standard for college admissions for more than five decades. Few realize it, but the New York City-based organization that offers the SAT and Advanced Placement tests is a non-profit that operates as a near-monopoly. Its tests, which have a stranglehold on their student-customers, fuel more than $1 billion in annual revenue and $100 million in untaxed surplus. It has $400 million invested with hedge funds and private equity, and its chief executive, McKinsey-trained David Coleman, 50, pulls down the compensation of almost $2 million a year.

But fortress College Board is under attack.

“Shame on them,” says Anne, a mother of two teenage girls in Raleigh, North Carolina. “If the College Board cared about the well- being of students, they would shut down the test.” Her 17-year-old has been trying to take the SAT since the spring, but all three of her test dates were canceled. More than 1 million students are in the same boat.