The curtain is descending on the time when K-State admission was only dependent on graduating from a Kansas high school.
The K-State Office of Admissions machine is packing its equipment - its slide shows, its information packets, its cardboard cutouts of Willie and the Powercat - to begin the recruiting tour for the students of the class of 2000 and the early birds of 2001. In that group of early birds there will be a few students who can't come to K-State. They will not meet admissions requirements. The new era of qualified admissions is upon us.
|
|
The class of 2001 will not be able to skate into the university as easily as we have.
They will be required to complete a college preparatory curriculum set by the Kansas Board of Regents and obtain a grade point average of 2.0 on a 4.0 scale or have above a 21 composite on their ACT. They will rank in the top third of their graduating class or fit within a 10 percent conditional window, where the university can waive the admissions requirements.
Or they will not come to K-State. There are students at K-State now who would not have met these criteria.
"This is a significant change for the state of Kansas," said Pat Bosco, associate vice president of institutional advancement and dean of student life. "The state of Nebraska had a similar change, and the University of Nebraska had a 500 student decrease their first year."
So what does that mean for K-State? Will students be turned from the university for fear of inadequacy?
The university has been trying to prevent that sort of backlash.
"The reason they had such a significant decrease is students just didn't feel they could meet the criteria," Bosco said. "They're being encouraged to apply."
K-State has changed the direct mailing strategy to include high school sophomores, parents and high school counselors, and it is finding counselors are the key to making qualified admissions work. After all, counselors are in the best position to usher high school students along the track to college.
Whether they choose to make that commitment, of course, is up to them.
Since qualification for college soon will be dependent on high school curriculum, there is a rather troublesome, looming problem. Only half of K-State's minority freshmen last year met the requirements of the regents' plan.
Michael Lynch, associate vice president for education and personal development, said he thinks there are several factors to blame for the disproportionate numbers.
"One is that a smaller percentage certain of the minority population tend to complete the ACT," Lynch said. "In some cases, the decisions to attend college might be made later and the way the regents curriculum is set up, you need to be thinking about college as far back as middle school."
Little is being done by state educators to target minorities and to keep them thinking about going to college - despite the fact that the regents community knows there is going to be a problem with minority enrollment, and such an effort might solve it.
Perhaps the greatest failure of the state education system is its dependency on standardized tests. An ACT can make or break opportunities for scholarships at K-State - it weighs in as one of the most critical parts of the merit-based system. It also is the area where minorities in the state most frequently slide through the cracks.
"A higher than average number do not complete the ACT," Lynch said. "At this point in time, it looks like probably 50 percent would qualify on the basis of ACT."
When Gov. Bill Graves signed qualified admissions into law in 1996, there was a limited amount of criticism over the effect it might have on enrollment, let alone enrollment of minorities. Most of the support was based on the fact that qualified admissions would limit the number of students who leave college or are academically dismissed after their first, second or third semester.
"It could potentially have an impact positive on our retention rates," Bosco said. "We have an above average retention rate on our freshmen and sophomores."
According to an article in the Oct. 8 edition of The Chronicle of Higher Education, schools with highly selective admissions processes generally have remarkably low dropout rates. Accordingly, schools with open admissions policies have, on average, dropout rates of more than 40 percent. There is some indication that selective admissions encourage students to make a greater investment in their school and in their academic success.
There also is the financial benefit of not offering as many remedial classes to educate students who come to K-State unprepared. The clear advantage of qualified admissions is that it forces students to consider taking more rigorous classes if they are intent upon college.
However, according to Bosco, the average ACT score for K-State students is 24, which means many of the students who withdraw from the university over the course of their first three semesters meet the scholastic requirements the regents have decided upon.
If some of the students already meet the requirement and still are dropping out, the requirements will have a limited effect on retention rates.
Furthermore, the pennies K-State might save by not offering remedial classes are likely to be saved by the state, not by the university. As long as state funding is dependent on enrollment, decreases in the number of students - regardless of their caliber - will not win K-State more money.
So what is the benefit?
Well, there is some shade of silver lining. Qualified admissions will improve our national ranking as a university, after all.
But there are other, less tangible benefits - like the 10 percent window. The window takes education administration away from the class acts in Topeka and places it back in the hands of the people who actually work with students. K-State is trying to see which students have not met the regents requirements but have had success in college. They're hoping such information will help them frame how to weigh students applying to fit in the 10 percent window. Perhaps K-State will discover a quality that binds its most successful progeny more than what the ACT gurus think makes a good student.
After all, it is disappointing to see a standardized test take the lead in any decision-making process, since it appears that it leads us blindly.