You have /5 articles left.
Sign up for a free account or log in.
For more than 30 years, the National Collegiate Athletic Association has based decisions about whether athletes are academically eligible to compete as freshmen in part based on their SAT or ACT scores—despite legal and other attempts to block their use as racially discriminatory.
But proposals that would eliminate the use of standardized test scores in the rules for initial eligibility for the association’s Divisions I and II have advanced in the NCAA’s governance process and are on track to be voted on next January.
The rules changes were proposed by a special NCAA committee that was formed as part of the sports group’s plan to advance racial equity, in the wake of 2020’s national reckoning with racial justice.
“We firmly believe in making values-based and data-driven decisions in the best interest of prospective and current student-athletes,” said Dianne Harrison, president emerita at California State University, Northridge, and co-chair of the Division I Committee on Academics. “Admissions requirements are evolving, and we must shift our athletics initial-eligibility standards accordingly.”
