ETS Acquires ACT

Two years after Educational Testing Services lost its contract to administer the SAT, ETS has acquired ACT from a private equity firm.

“Every student deserves a strong education, a fair shot at college, and a path to a good job,” Amit Sevak, CEO of ETS, said Tuesday in a news release announcing the acquisition of ACT, which administers a standardized college admissions test that rivals the SAT. “Together with ACT, we’re determined to serve students and parents along with educators and states by expanding access to education and job opportunities across America.”

(ETS declined to disclose the terms of the deal to Inside Higher Ed.)

The deal is the latest move by both ETS and ACT to grow their presence in the skills-based credentialing market amid the rise of test-optional college admissions policies first put in place during the pandemic. While colleges and universities have used both the SAT and ACT to help assess an applicant’s aptitude for success for decades, during the 2026 admissions cycle fewer than 10 percent of bachelor’s degree–granting institutions required applicants to submit ACT or SAT scores.

Both tests have seen declining participation rates in the 2020s.

In 2025, only 1.38 million students took the ACT, compared to 1.78 million in 2019. That drop in demand led the ACT to lay off more than 100 employees in 2023 and sell the nonprofit to the private equity firm Nexus Capital Management the next year. At the time, Janet Godwin, then CEO of ACT, said the purchase was aimed at doubling down on assessing “college and career readiness” and reaching a wider pool of learners, job seekers and employers.

In addition to administering its namesake college admissions exam—which 36 percent of high school graduates took in 2025—ACT also provides career-planning tools and operates ACT WorkKeys, a workforce skills assessment system that awards the National Career Readiness Certificate, used by thousands of U.S. employers to evaluate workplace competencies.

“Becoming part of ETS will allow us to take what we’ve built and scale it within a broader vision for readiness,” Steve Tapp, CEO of ACT, said in Tuesday’s news release. “Joining ETS gives us the platform to fulfill our mission at a scale we couldn’t reach alone. This is about more students getting the guidance they deserve, and more of them finding their way forward with confidence.”

The same year that the ACT became a for-profit company, ETS—which had already executed several rounds of layoffs since 2019—lost its contract to administer the SAT for the College Board. And while ETS still owns and administers two of the largest exams in the country—the Graduate Record Examination and the Test of English as a Foreign Language—participation for those has also been on the decline. In January, reports surfaced that ETS was looking to sell or find strategic investors for the two exams, though no deals have been publicly announced.

In the meantime, ETS has been going all in on developing career-readiness assessments.

Last fall it launched FutureNav Compass, which allows students to complete assessments of their skills—including hard-to-measure soft skills, like communication, resilience and ability to collaborate—and present a “skills-based transcript” to employers. This spring, ETS also announced that it will play a role in developing assessments for the forthcoming Khan TED Institute, which aspires to soon offer an artificial intelligence–focused degree that’s cheaper and faster than similar degrees offered at traditional colleges and universities.

ETS’s acquisition of ACT this week is yet another signal that there’s growing demand for more detailed, candidate-specific assessments, said Michael Nettles, a professor of psychometrics at Morgan State University and former chair of policy evaluation and research at ETS.

“The SAT and ACT scores can be useful because they may tell us something generally about candidates,” he told Inside Higher Ed, noting that some colleges have recently rescinded their test-optional admissions policies. “But colleges, universities and employers want to know more information about candidates—their commitment to learn and how they learn—that will help make decisions in matching people with places.”