THE INFORMATION CONTENT OF STANDARDS. Rutgers University, in streamlining its admissions procedures, is asking applicants to self-report their high school grades. The administrative savings strike me as minimal, since admission officers will still verify the transcripts of all admitted students. Although Rutgers is joining the California system in using self-reported transcripts, Insta Pundit jibes, "Hmm. I guess this is okay, but for some reason I'm reminded of those "no-doc" home loans . . . ." Rutgers as higher-education version of mortgage hustler. That's not completely wrong, as this University Diaries post notes. Certainly, Rutgers's aspirations to football prominence as a substitute for academic excellence have come a cropper, with Fresno State, who was shown up by Wisconsin, who was shown up by Michigan, who was shown up by Illinois, who is a past winner of the Fulmer Cup, has demonstrated.

It might be more cost-effective for New Jersey to ask its aspiring collegians to self-report their transcripts to a state office that would fund students with the difference between out-of-state and in-state tuitions and thereby outsource the higher education to Wisconsin (keep scrolling) and other state universities where the institutional rot is less obvious than it is in New Jersey. There'd be much less physical plant to defer maintenance on. We could use some geographic diversity at Northern Illinois, and we might have a home for some displaced Rutgers faculty.