Mandate that colleges accept scores from at least 3 different standardized tests, administered by different companies, and that the scores must be easily comparable. That may help break ETS's stranglehold over the market and test fees or test prep material might become reasonable.

the SAT test fee is about $65 and there's tons of free prep material (including direct from college board). what would you consider a reasonable price?

Hard to say if that's actually reasonable, given there's exactly 1 (maybe 2, if you count the ACT) test providers. Not really a competitive market.

For a multiple-choice exam, administered electronically to dozens of test-takers supervised by one proctor...is that actually reasonable? Plus they charge you $15 extra if you want more than 4 scores. Most students apply to more than 4 colleges. Are they physically mailing scores to these institutions?

For a mostly-electronic process (other than the essay grading) $65 sounds like a lot. $40 for the non-essay option sounds even more crazy.

I don't mean reasonable in a market equilibrium sense, more of a "hey, that price seems about right" sense.

I'm sure it's not trivial to make multiple versions of the same test every year where the scores are all comparable with each other. then you have to distribute the materials while minimizing the chance that they leak and people come in with the answers memorized.

the college board itself makes about 15% profit each year. definitely a lot better than some market segments, but hardly exorbitant. I guess they might find some ways of trimming the fat if they had more competition, but who knows. more competitors means fewer test-takers to amortize the test design costs over.

It needs to be dismantled due to monopoly. I’m not sure how. Those are orthogonal.

What you’re getting at is the government creates these types of monopolies due to massive regulations and licensing.

The issue is not with the college prep companies. It’s with government getting involved in education, making it way more expensive than it should be. The free market will drive prices down, especially in the education market.

What does the government getting involved in education have anything to do with the monopoly power of ETS? MIT is private, ETS's owner is a company. The problem is that MIT accepts only SAT scores - they should be forced to accept other standardized test scores too. That would create an actual market for standardized testing, along with competition and lower prices.

According to the original article, MIT accepts SAT or ACT. I have no idea if SAT is preferred though. It was certainly the default way back when when I was applying to schools.

That's just a duopoly. Gotta have at least 3 - maybe 4.