The University of North Carolina moved a step closer to setting system-wide minimum admission standards at the Board of Governors meeting on October 11. Speaking at a policy session, Harold Martin, senior vice president for academic affairs, proposed to the board the following minimum criteria for entering freshmen in 2013: a 2.5 grade point average in high school and a minimum SAT score of 800 (out of 1600 total) or ACT score of 17 (out of 35).
Today, although each university campus sets its own admission standards, there is no statewide requirement, and some campuses in the UNC system have none. If approved by the Board of Governors in January, initial standards would start in the fall of 2009 with a 2.0 GPA and 700 SAT or 15 ACT, and increase incrementally until the 2013 levels are achieved. Martin added that the chancellor would always have the right to waive requirements for a maximum of 1 per cent of students.
The initial impact on applicants may be small. If the 2013 standards were in place today, said Martin, only 675 of the successful freshmen applicants for entrance in the fall of 2006 (out of a total of more than 77,000 applicants) would have been refused admission.
Martin’s presentation evoked both an abundance of questions and lots of spirited commentary. For example, the audience perceived a seeming anomaly in statistics gathered by the UNC general administration on graduation rates: students with less than a C average in high school (but an SAT score of at least 700) performed better in college than those with a C average or just slightly above (also with SAT scores greater than 700). Martin explained that one reason is that many students in the lowest category are athletes who get special academic guidance and support.
UNC President Erskine Bowles stressed that the minimum standards would be “a plus for the university and a plus for the kids.” They would initially affect the institutions that do not now have a minimum admission standard. These schools are primarily the historically black colleges with low graduation rates. They have been designated “focused growth campuses” because they have received special incentives to increase enrollment.
In an explicit statement criticizing that focused growth policy, Bowles observed that before he arrived the Board of Governors had “opened the doors” to unqualified students. “But they didn’t get support and they flunked out,” he said, adding that it was “a really bad deal” for both the students and taxpayers.
Bowles also indicated that the minimum standard would direct more high school graduates to community colleges instead of four-year institutions. He promised, as he has implied before, that at the next legislature he will support additional funding for the community colleges. Bowles has made greater communication with community colleges a high priority.
The effects on the students who are currently admitted to the UNC system but who currently fail to meet the proposed standards were also explored.
Charlie Nelms, the new chancellor of North Carolina Central University, which has just instituted a minimum standard starting next fall, said that in his experience people do meet the standards once they learn what they are. He also noted that “the best predictor of future success is a student’s grade in algebra.” Success in college depends on the “rigor of the courses,” he said. Patricia A. Sullivan, chancellor of UNC Greensboro, indicated that admission officers at Greensboro can predict how well a student will do often simply by knowing which high school the student graduated from.
Their comments led to a discussion of how high schools’ performance in preparing students for college is measured. When a governor asked whether the federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law is improving high school preparation, Bowles said the information was easily obtained by comparing the results of NCLB tests with the wealth of information available about the performance of high school graduates.
For instance, according to Harold Martin, the UNC general administration tracks every high school graduate in the state who attends a UNC campus unit. He also noted that the general administration sends this information annually to every school district in the state. Thus, the school districts know exactly how well they are doing in preparing their graduates for UNC.
The fact that this rich source of assessment information is not widely publicized induced observations of surprise and concern by the governors. One said that it should be labeled a “secret,” in order to stir up publicity about it.
Jane S. Shaw is the Executive Vice President of the John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy in Raleigh.