Standardized tests are the ONLY objective measure of intelligence and ability: every other measure is based upon things like "effort," "upbringing," social class, racial cline, parentage, and diversity.

Subjective "valuing" of bootlicking and gladhanding over objective measures of competence and intelligence is not a recipe for mediocrity; it's a reverse-engineered explanation for the less-than-mediocre caliber of American university professors.

There is abundant scholastic research in the US that shows that there is no such thing as "objective" testing. There is ample statistical evidence that shows the top scorers on the SAT, >85%-tile, come from families where the parents have at least a master's degree. The correlation is quite high. What this suggests (and the articles refers to - coaching) is that to do well on these "objective" tests, you better be a darn lucky tester who comes from an educated family with high incomes who have the means to give you the best resources, from academic coaches to enrichment activities, from the day that you are born to the time of the testing. I would wager you any amount of money that if you took all of the students of each class at India's top tier universities and analyze their socioeconomic backgrounds, you'll find that most if not all of the them came from privileged backgrounds whose parents are educated and likewise are high income earners. So if this is the case, is the one determinant test all that objective? I doubt it. This standardized measure that you find objective skews toward other non-objective parameters such as family background. The only truly objective test is the base cognitive test that allows the normal distribution of scores throughout the population without regard to factors that highly influence test scores. This test does not exist. So really, India stands to lose really great students, whose contributions cannot be measured by one test, by using this system. The US is great beneficiary of this. One last example of this is Steve Jobs. By India's system, he never would have been admitted to a competitive university and his future would have been bleak. Jobs dropped out of a mid-level competitiveness college which did not even use standardized test scores to screen its students. And yet, this drop out changed the world. Yes, he's an outlier, but all it really needs is one outlier to transform a whole industry who impact extends way beyond.

Even if stabdardized tests are not COMPLETELY objective, they are the only things that are OBJECTIVE AT ALL.

EVERYTHING else is SUBJECTIVE. Is the opinion of the principal that you or your mom/dad are having sex with more objective than a standardized test?

...I bet these news should be scored at 5 in the Decline-o-meter, since it is an advantage of the US system.

If standardized tests are so easily gamed, then the smartest students will do the best job at gaming them. Are these tests less gamable than the OPINION of your teacher or how much money Mommy and Daddy contributed to some charity? You seem to believe that people should get into college based upon thier ability to kiss-ass, lie, bribe, and play-act.

If college teachers weren't so gutless, worthless, and/or stupid, they would weed out the outright cheats just through more OBJECTIVE testing, instead of accepting bribes of sex and/or money to pass these low-scorers.

(Is low-scorer an acceptable euphemism for loser?)

Yes, it is very possible.
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Camus10! You are really droll!! Are you really saying that "imported" students are "by rote geeks", and innovation has to come from true-blue american pupils??
Have you looked at the educational background/ native country of all pure science American Nobel Prize winners over the last 20 years? Its amazing what learning by rote can get you!! A nobel!! Who would have thought?
And while we're on the subject of Jobs (what is it with you americans? Why is the iphone always the symbol of the greatest thing mankind has acheived?), he won the National Medal of Technology and Achievement in '85, for the Apple PC, his first, and most important technology/ innovation based award. I'd urge you to look at this year's laureates.

First, the iPhone is hardly "innovative" as most people like to say, since it was not the first touchscreen phone (I had a touchscreen 2 years before the iPhone came out), and a lot of the technology was already in existence and other competitors produce similar offerings. What the iPhone and Apple is good at is selling people a package, a lifestyle most suited to the consumerism and materialism that is currently also the downfall of the United States.

In addition, no nation on earth has produced a working fusion reactor yet so what kind of comparison is that?

Secondly, although there may or may not be an over-reliance of rote memorization in some of the emerging countries, it does not take a genius to see that the US falls way behind in all measures of standardized testing. Yes, standardized testing does not produce a know-all, tell-all picture of future success, but it does produce a measurable baseline for comparison and if students can't even measure up to simple standardized testing that indicates a base level of intelligence and comprehension, how are they going to utilize that knowledge to produce the wonderful innovations people are so eager to talk about? That's like saying I'm going to design a new engine but I can't do basic math. Not going to work!

Thirdly, all nations at every stage of development has "copied" other nation. Look no further than the United States at the turn of the 20th Century when it adopted British industrial innovations to industrialize. Also, before the Renaissance occurred, many works of mathematics, science, philosophy, literature and medicine were copied from Arabic texts into Latin in Muslim Iberia (Spain and Portugal) and spread all over Europe. So copying is not a new phenomenon.

Yes, US institutions remain the world's best educational institutions but the widespread offers of foreign scholarships is also partly due to the lack of talent in the domestic market.

And of course those Arabic texts were themselves translations of earlier Greek and Hindu works.

Hindi, not Hindu! Hindus didn't even conceive of a united set of beliefs called Hinduism when these texts were written. I grind my teeth at the thought of how many times I've been asked by Americans whether I "speak Hindu".

Actually, it would have been Pali/ Prakrit, if you're splitting hairs.....
Just saying, mister banana fritters..

@FORLONEHOPE: The ancient Greeks were the biggest copycats of the ancient world. The Greeks copied wbolesale the BABYLONIAN math and astronomy. The Babylonians were the ancestors of Arabic people.

@BIG BOY: An excellent post, I agree with you 100%. The European Scientific Revolution would have been impossible without the input from the Islamic civilization because THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD which is fundermental to the modern science was born in the Islamic civilization in the 10th century. As a matter of fact, the modern science itself was born in the Islamic civilization. This is the reason why Ibn al-Haytam is called the first "true" scientist in the history of the world. Also the European Renaisance would have been impossible without the Islamic software such as the Islamic achivements in math, astronomy, literature, music and the Chinese hardwre such as paper and printing(China invented MOVABLE TYPE about 400 years before Gutenberg also Koreans invented metal MOVABLE TYPE about 200 years before Gutenberg). Prior to the Industrial Revolution, there were very few original 100% European inventions, most of those so-called European inventions were nothing but copies and adaptations of the original inventions and innovations of Chinese,Islamic, Hindu civilizations. If anybody doubts this, then read The Eastern Origins of Western Civilization by John M. Hobson and also Science and Civilization in China by Joseph Needham.