Rethinking Education: Beyond SAT Scores and Completion Rates

Employers often rely on SAT scores as a primary metric for hiring new candidates, particularly recent graduates, but this approach overlooks the multifaceted nature of indicators that can better reflect a candidate’s potential. Education serves as a signal encompassing intelligence, work ethic, and conformity, yet high SAT scores alone do not guarantee success in the workforce. In fact, a drop-out from high school or college with excellent test scores could indicate deeper issues regarding commitment or adaptability. There is a significant lack of comprehensive data on completion rates, particularly in graduate programs, which hampers a nuanced understanding of educational outcomes. While data is abundant in early education, higher-level educational attainment is less well-researched. Many discussions surrounding completion probabilities fail to account for the diversity of individual experiences, often misleadingly suggesting that everyone who attempts to succeed will do so. A refined approach in researching and interpreting educational data is essential to develop better metrics for assessing potential and guiding policy decisions.