<p>^??? Do you think there’s a shortage of qualified candidates?
I don’t think that’s a problem over at UMich, for example, where they have 40,000 self-selecting high stat kids, the majority of which they turn away ;)</p>
<p>But I think the incentive for the schools to do this isn’t strictly fiscal. It’s rankings and performance related. Folks who review aspects of a school certainly notice if the grad rate isn’t in the four-year range – and appropriately so since they shoulder the majority of the fiscal burden.</p>
<p>So I suspect it’s a strategy to ATTRACT more students/parents and elevate themselves in ranking criteria.</p>
Do you think these “lesser quality” people dont deserve a chance at a college education ? Is it more noble to allow students to use college as a kind of zen-find-yourself experience just because they started off with a better GPA ? No one is even saying they cant do that, just that they should pay more.</p>
<p>From what I saw, the “best and brightest” college students were the ones who graduated in 8 semesters (or sometimes fewer) of school (not counting co-op jobs and other non-school semesters off), not the ones who took 9 or more semesters of school because they did not follow the course plans needed for their majors, chose or changed majors late, failed some courses, etc… Indeed, four year graduation rates tend to increase as selectivity increases, even when restricting the comparison set to public universities.</p>
<p>If the extra 2,000 students are those who would benefit both themselves and others by completing a college education, then, from a state government point of view, it is certainly worthwhile to educate them over providing a possibly slightly enriched (but probably really just more accommodation for slacking off and failing courses, changing major late, not following one’s major course plan, etc. in most cases) experience for the other 10,000 students.</p>
<p>I do not believe there is a shortage of qualified candidates. However, I do believe that some qualified candidates are better qualified than others.</p>
<p>“Lesser quality” students certainly deserve a chance a chance at a college education. However, the best and brightest students deserve a chance at the highest quality education possible. A student who applies to the University of Texas but is rejected almost certainly is still going to attend college somewhere.</p>
<p>In my hypothetical example (a freshman class of 10k is expanded to 12k), there clearly will be minimal difference between applicant #10,000 (the final admitted student) and applicant #10,001 (the first rejected student). However, I believe there will be a significant difference between applicant #5,000 (the average admitted student) and applicant #12,000 (the final admit in the expanded class).</p>
<p>In my opinion, it is better to maximize the experience of the smaller class than to water down the experience by forcing more through the system. Don’t increase numbers at elite public schools simply to gain revenue or add prestige.</p>
<p>Yes, but the students then displace other students at the other colleges, and then on down the line as one goes down to less selective colleges, until some students are displaced out of colleges altogether. Note that many less selective public universities have similar policies (e.g. the existing reward for graduating without excess credits attempted at all Texas public universities, or San Jose State’s policy that high unit seniors can only take courses required to graduate as quickly as possible).</p>
<p>I don’t know how it’ll work with this new incentive, but for the existing tuition rebate, son and some of his friends found they were automatically out of the running due to AP and dual credit classes in high school even with the first 9 hours not counting. The problem lay in the fact that the AP and dual credit classes offered at most of our area’s schools are in the humanities meaning most kids have English, History, Government, Economics, Foreign Language etc, but those kids planning to major in engineering and computer science fields did not need 12 hours of English, etc… and their degree plans had no elective spaces for using many of those courses, but they counted toward that requirement. It’s not a very flexible policy, allows for almost no classes beyond those called for your major even if you take a heavier load and still graduate in the same number of semesters. I haven’t seen any statistics, but I would guess only a very small percentage of Texas’s total college students wind up getting the rebate and due to stories I’ve heard from parents with kids at UT Austin, A&M College Station and some impacted majors at other state schools, graduating in 4 years is not possible because the kids can’t get the classes they need each semester. With increasing enrollment and state funding cutbacks, I don’t see that situation improving. A&M already pushes kids to the Blinn community college option, and UT Austin offers some freshman students a program where they start at UT San Antonio and a couple of the other satellite campuses and depending on their grades, they might have the chance to transfer to UT Austin their 2nd year. So neither school has the space as it is, much less the space and classes to offer the majority of the kids a realistic chance to finish in 4 years. So it sounds good, but I’m not sure how many students will actually benefit.</p>
<p>rmldad, not necessarily. UT, the University you cite is required to admit all those in the top 8% of their class. There is ALREADY great inequality in the quality of students in that top 8% from high school to high school. I don’t think there’s going to be a huge difference between #5000 and #12,000. I just don’t. And if every school admits more students every year, there will be more college grads, so more educated people in society - everyone wins.</p>