He said medical schools are turning away hundreds upon hundreds of candidates "who meet all the standards, who are scoring in the 90th percentile" on the medical-school entrance exam.

WSJ: Secret Admirers Give University $100 Million

Fifty-five percent of New York students met the English Language Arts proficiency standards in 2012 by scoring at least a 3 on a scale of 1 to 4, and 65 percent scored at least a 3 on the math tests.

WSJ: Some NY parents to boycott new, harder state tests

But, says Antonio Carlos Ronca, the rector of Sao Paulo's Catholic University, the provao has forced slacker institutions to improve standards, or risk a tide of student defections to higher-scoring universities.

ECONOMIST: Latin American universities: Under examination | The