Insane Admissions Policy at Wisconsin Universities

The University of Wisconsin system has announced a new admissions policy that will substitute race and socioeconomic status for academic achievement in judging applications. It is insane. Here is the story from the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel describing the insanity.

Look, everyone is entitled to a free public education. But, if after 12-18 years of education, counting Head Start, publicly-subsidized preschools, 4-K (didn't exist when I was growing up), 5-K (we just called it kindergarten), grade school, middle school and high school, all on my dime -- I pay taxes, but my children go to Catholic schools -- if you haven't achieved a level of proficiency academically that is sufficient to get you into one of the umpteen Wisconsin universities, many of which aren't too rigorous to begin with, then that's too bad.

In case we haven't noticed, we are in a global economic competition with China and India, both of whom are much larger than us, growing much faster than us, whose economies are growing very fast, and who don't seem to have the psychological fixation we seem to have about not rewarding excellence and instead rewarding mediocrity or, it seems, incompetence. Our university system that is paid for, again, with my tax dollars, should be about excellence in academic achievement, period. Anything else is cultural suicide.

We are not too demanding academically from our high school seniors, we are not demanding enough.