On June 30, ETS agreed to acquire ACT. For enrollment and admissions leadership, this lands in the middle of a decision you are already managing: what role standardized testing should play in your process now that the rest of the application is losing its signal value. The deal consolidates the testing market you depend on at the same moment the market itself is splitting in two directions, and reading that split correctly matters more to your policy than the acquisition does.
The acquirer's condition is worth holding in view. ETS is buying ACT while cutting hard, having lost the SAT and put the GRE and TOEFL up for sale for around $500 million. The exam your applicants may soon be required to take is now owned by a distressed organization mid-pivot, and continuity under that kind of owner is a question rather than an assumption.
I. The recovery is real at the top and absent in the middle
The single most useful thing this analysis can do for your policy decision is to separate two facts that the headlines are blending. The reinstatement is real, and it is concentrated.
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