I refer to M Bakri Musa's column ('C minus for Mahathir-style "meritokrasi", Aug 20) in which it was stated that the University of California (UC) system was doing away with SATs (scholastic assessment test) for its admission process.

The main reason in doing so was not that test scores were not good indicators but that when affirmative action policies were scrapped at UC, it was noted that African American and Latin American admissions went down significantly.

So the recent move to do away with SATs (I believe only SAT1) has more to do with addressing this issue of significantly reduced intake of African Americans and Latin Americans when admission is based purely on meritocractic grounds.

You might want to check the following three articles in the Economist on this issue: 'California higher education: black clouds, silver lining' (April 9, 1998), 'Affirmative action in California: passed' (April 6, 2000) and 'Lexington: Disabling the national education defence system', (Feb 22, 2001).