UH Downtown drops open admissions

UH-Downtown took up the issue of adopting admissions standards last week.

“It’s time and it’s the right thing to do,” said President William Flores, who began advocating for admissions standards shortly after taking over as president in 2009. “We’re building the quality of our academic programs and the reputation of the university and student success is part of that.”

UH-Downtown became the only Texas university with open admissions this past fall, when the University of Texas at Brownsville introduced admissions standards. Texas Southern University ended its open admissions policy in 2008.

Under the UH-Downtown standards, which would take effect in fall 2013, students graduating in the top 25 percent of their class would automatically be admitted; those in the 26 to 50 percent group would need a combined SAT score of 850, a 2.5 GPA or an ACT admissions test score of 18.

A committee would review applications from students in the bottom half of their class and consider personal interviews, references, unusual circumstances, effort and potential as part of the criteria.

[…]

The new standards are designed to weed out students who are not ready for the rigor of a four-year college, and who often end up dropping out of school without a diploma and with a significant amount of debt.

Those students would be offered “joint admissions” to Lone Star College, Houston Community College or San Jacinto College, where they could transfer to UH-Downtown after successfully completing remedial courses and core credit classes.

On Wednesday, they made it official for the fall of 2013. I hadn’t realized that there were no other four-year institutions doing open admissions any more. I think this is a sensible move. As the story notes, UH-D’s current six-year graduation rate is 15%. Diverting some students into community college should benefit them by reducing their financial burden and benefit UH-D by boosting its graduation rate, which may wind up being tied to the amount of money the Lege appropriates to it.

On a side note, I haven’t heard anything further about the proposed name change for UH-D in over a year. I wonder if that subject will come up again after this change is made.

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