Ten years ago today, Duolingo launched a project called “Test Center.” Shortly thereafter, “Test Center” morphed into the Duolingo English Test. That test is now taken more than 800,000 times per year. That’s quite an accomplishment.
Many people think of the DET as a fairly new product, but ten years is a long time. When I write about the legacy testing firms being technologically far behind their competition (Duolingo and Pearson, mostly) I mean that they are more than a decade behind. It will not be easy to close that gap. It may be impossible.
Here’s a TechCrunch article from 2014 where the project was announced. The message of 2014 is similar to the message of today – testing monopolies are bad for test takers and are prone to fraud.
The success of the DET is mostly due to the work of some very bright researchers, engineers and psychometricians (former ETS employees, in many cases). But the single-mindedness of Duolingo co-founder Luis von Ahn seems to play a pretty big part. That guy does not like the testing monopolies at all.
The DET is now a major player in the admissions process for American universities. The monopoly once enjoyed by ETS in that market has come to an end. As recent reports have indicated, times are tough at ETS.
Currently, the folks at Duolingo are heavily promoting their test to students headed to the UK, Australia and Canada. These efforts are partly why IDP Education recently announced that IELTS test volumes will decline by 15-20% in fiscal year 2024.