You may have read about this year’s college-entrance exam in Liberia, which 25,000 students took and not one passed. Nothing a little Race to the Top funding can’t cure, of course; but in the meantime, how does Liberia expect to continue recovering from its long civil war if everyone doesn’t go to college? Officials complained that “the applicants lacked enthusiasm and did not have a basic grasp of English,” which suggests an obvious solution: Send them to an American college, where they’ll fit right in and help the “diversity” numbers too.
But now Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Liberia’s president, has found a simpler solution. Much in the manner of Seth, the Oxford-educated dictator in Evelyn Waugh’s Black Mischief, who modernized his nation by decree, the Harvard-educated Sirleaf has directed officials at the University of Liberia to admit the top 1,800 scorers on the exam. Problem solved — and if not enough of them end up graduating, a presidential directive can fix that too.
Meanwhile, what about next year’s test? To avoid a repeat of this year’s embarrassment, President Sirleaf might want to look into another useful American educational tradition: recentering.