Inside Higher Ed has a piece today on a new approach to admissions at Tufts — one that seeks to “measure creativity and leadership potential.”

We can assess a young person’s academic capabilities with a fair degree of confidence, but there are lots of deep thinkers among college administrators who believe that they can come up with a superior student body by instead trying to measure creativity and leadership potential in 17-year olds. I think that’s delusional and the resulting “rainbow” will include students of such disparate learning ability (creativity and leadership won’t get you very far in organic chemistry) that the job of the professors will be made harder. Likely result: lowering of academic standards.