Seniors face higher bar for entering universities
McKinley High School senior counselor Gerri Vaughns reviewed toughening college admission standards with students Thursday, but she also emphasized that it’s ultimately up to them as to whether they will rise to meet the higher bar.
“They put more into it when they realize now there’s no open admissions anymore,” Vaughns said. “I think students are more prepared.”
Vaughns said she sees a shift occurring with more students starting in two-year colleges. “A lot of the students are saying, ‘I’ll go to community college for two years, get my grades up and transfer’ ” to a university, Vaughns said.
Starting this year, high school seniors applying for admissions to state universities need to meet stricter standards to gain entrance.
Proponents contend that, for too long, Louisiana has placed ill-prepared students into universities. The state has the South’s second-lowest college graduate rates.
Critics say the mandated standards hikes are coming too quickly and could dramatically affect university access for the state’s lower-income and minority students who have access to fewer educational resources.
Southeastern Louisiana University President John Crain supports stricter standards, but he believes the lack of leeway may be too harsh.
“We’re talking about people and their lives, and you don’t want to limit their access (to college),” Crain said. “We’re not just moving chess pieces around.”
One eye-popping statistic from the Louisiana Board of Regents showed that 87.4 percent of new freshmen at Southern University at New Orleans in 2009 would not qualify for admission under the new standards. The same applies to 33 percent of the 2009 freshmen at Southern University in Baton Rouge and 11.3 percent at LSU.
The biggest changes are that universities will only consider “core curriculum” grade-point averages, rather than overall GPA, and will not accept students who need any developmental or remedial classes. Extracurricular classes will no longer pad GPA scores for students.
The absence of remedial courses is starting now for LSU, Louisiana Tech University, the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and the University of New Orleans. The change will go into effect for the other four-year colleges in 2014.
Louisiana universities mostly started moving away from open admissions in the past 20 years largely because of the establishment of community colleges in Louisiana.
The case for change
While some university enrollments are sure to start decreasing this year, Theresa Hay, Regents associate commissioner for strategic initiatives, said the goal is not about funneling as many students into universities as possible.
“It’s not about increasing enrollment. It’s about increasing (college) completers,” Hay said. “When you set the bar at a certain level, people will rise to that bar.”
Initial “bumps in the road” are inevitable, she said. But the state is moving in the right direction.
Students must now complete an extra social studies class and an additional math or science course. Class rank can no longer be used to help accept more students. The GPA considerations only count the “Core 4 Curriculum.”
Some confusion may be inevitable until 2014, Hay said, when the “Core 4” fully aligns with the standards to achieve merit-based TOPS scholarships — Taylor Opportunity Program for Students — that pay college tuition and some fees for in-state students.
“As is human nature, a lot of people don’t pay attention until it affects them,” Hay said.
LSU and Southern have an April 15 application deadline for the fall, while others like Southeastern Louisiana have an extended July 15 deadline.
LSU’s flagship campus already reviews applications based on needing a 3.0 GPA in core classes like math, science and English. But most colleges used overall GPA. The change, however, hinders “holistic” admissions review, which LSU also uses, that considers more than just GPA and ACT scores.
Other colleges’ minimum core GPAs range from 2.0 to 2.5, out of a 4.0 scale. Minimum ACT scores range from 20 to 25 — out of a possible 36 — although lower standardized test scores can be offset by high GPAs.
More than 80,000 students enrolled last year in community and technical colleges in Louisiana, which accounts for about 35 percent of all undergraduates in public Louisiana colleges.
Gov. Bobby Jindal and other state officials have pushed toward more of a 50-50 enrollment balance between two-year colleges and traditional universities. That ratio is more common in some regional states.
State Commissioner of Higher Education Jim Purcell said the idea is for students to start in the college that is best suited to help them succeed, which often is a community college.
Concerns and questions
Southern University New Orleans Chancellor Victor Ukpolo said the average ACT composite score for black students in Louisiana is a 17.3 over the past five years. Last year’s state average for all students was a 20.2 composite ACT.
SUNO now has a 20 ACT score minimum for acceptance, with some exceptions. In 2014, SUNO will not be allowed to accept any students with sub-scores lower than 18 in English or 19 in math.
Ukpolo is optimistic about stabilizing the enrollment the next couple years because of increasing recruiting efforts. But he says he sees a lot of question marks about 2014 and beyond.
“Of course we don’t like it,” Ukpolo said. “But as an administrator, we just have to implement what we’re told to implement.”
Ukpolo said he is concerned that countless “under-served minority students — smart kids” will be forced into community colleges, where statistics show they rarely graduate. The whole point of SUNO is taking students who started life with fewer advantages and helping them catch up and earn degrees, he said.
Just a little more than 6 percent of students graduate from Louisiana’s community colleges within three years, according to the Board of Regents. Purcell said that is because many find jobs or transfer to universities before graduating. He said it also is a matter of the state’s community colleges being so young and growing quickly.
“That’s just the nature of history,” Purcell said.
Southern University System President Ronald Mason Jr. said he fears the changes will create a greater “wealth divide” in Louisiana by funneling a much greater percentage of minority students from universities to community colleges than their white counterparts.
The debate also is far from just a historically black college issue.
University of Louisiana System President Randy Moffett, for one, fundamentally believes students are more likely to succeed by starting at universities than community colleges.
“If a student is eligible for a four-year school, I think he’s better off at a four-year school,” Moffett said. “The sooner you get into the environment you want to proceed in, the better off you might be.”
UL-Lafayette President Joseph Savoie said all of these changes are being pushed through at a time when state operational funding for colleges has been axed by close to 30 percent over three years.
“All institutions are becoming more reliant on (student) tuition and that’s dependent on student enrollment,” Savoie said.
Savoie supports toughening college admission standards, but he said it is happening too quickly and too harshly in terms of not allowing any developmental classes on the university level.
“It’s not uncommon to have a student who’s brilliant in mathematics but who struggles in English composition,” Savoie said. Such a student would be forced into a community college, he said.
UL-Lafayette is expecting about a 20 percent dip in new freshmen this fall, which Savoie said can be offset somewhat with bringing in more nontraditional adult students and more community college transfers.
The UL System’s colleges started moving to tougher admissions before it was mandated by the Board of Regents, which coordinates higher education in Louisiana, as new state policy. Still, Moffett also believes the changes were approved without enough analysis on the impact on students and college funding caused by rapid enrollment shifts away from universities.
UNO, which is new to the UL System, is still recovering from Hurricane Katrina and enrollment losses. Without making recruiting adjustments, UNO could lose one-third of its incoming freshman class this fall, according to Regents projections.
In the trenches
In the high schools, counselors like Vaughns and Broadmoor High School senior counselor Jeana Womble said many of their students are better off starting in more affordable community colleges.
Some students are struggling with having to take an extra math or science class and there is some “whining and moaning,” Womble said, but most are doing the work.
“Unfortunately, a lot of kids don’t see the light until it’s late,” Womble said.