Reminder that CC isn’t a debate society. Please feel free to take the back and forth to PM. Thank you!
I can’t imagine why the wealth of your county or your personal wealth matter at all for this. The auto admit isn’t measuring wealth. It is measuring a student’s achievements…and really that matters. And yes, there are counties in your state where students who might have been denied otherwise will now have an auto admit.
This has been the way things have been done in Texas for a very long time and they don’t have any issues reportedly with students at UT Austin who are auto admit achieving in college.
This is giving a good chance for admission to any student in your state who can meet the bar for this auto admission. I say…good for Tennessee for doing this.
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If looking at it through the eyes of an in state taxpayer, I would think it far better than some of the auto merit schools approaches.
The big auto merit schools draw kids from out of state, subsidize their education with in state tax revenues only to then have many of these kids move away upon graduation. In practical terms that subsidy could be better spent (from the perspective of a taxpayer) on an in state kid that might not have had the advantages to perform up to NMF standards in 11 grade but would benefit from an instate educational opportunity and might even remain in state post grad and contribute to the local economy.
I would find it particularly disturbing if these subsidies were going to OOS families that had significant financial resources at the expense of those with real need in state.
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The top 10% number here is what is interesting. When you look at rural or inner city Memphis high schools, that could be a big deal. The average ACT in Memphis-Shelby County Schools is a 19. So, this could open a path for many students.
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But if they were top 10% they were getting in anyway. That was all my initial point was.
I don’t see this making a change. I wasn’t really making any other point.
Due to distance, I’m guessing the attendance rate from Memphis to UTK is less than the central ahd eastern part of the state.
I think a lot of states will be changing things up if they are trying to keep diversity up and need a way to comply with the Supreme court rulings. This 10% rule works for Texas, so why not try it? Another state might want a model more like California where there are the A-G requirements, or the Cal States that have geographic areas where a student might get a preference.
Different states are going to have to try different things if they want to continue minority enrollment levels. If they care.
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There are two possible cases here:
- The new auto-admit criteria are higher than the competitively determined thresholds that the school otherwise uses (i.e. auto-admit students would be admitted anyway without the auto-admit policy). In this case, the only real effect is to give assurance before application that the school is an admission safety for those who meet the new auto-admit criteria. I.e. an increase in transparency from the point of view of prospective applicants.
- The new auto-admit criteria could admit some applicants who would not otherwise meet the competitively determined threshold that would otherwise be used. In this case, there would be an effect on which applicants get admitted or not, in addition to the increase in admission transparency.
The question is, which of the above scenarios is likely to be the one that applies to each campus with new auto-admit criteria?
UT Austin does spend tens of millions of dollars for students in the top 6% who aren’t college ready and need remedial classes/related academic support. I expect some of the TN publics already do this to some extent, but that might have to be on a greater scale if the proposal passes. To be clear, I don’t think UT Austin making that investment is wrong, at all.
Separately…and generally, I don’t love auto admit (based on GPA/rank) because of the behaviors it can create at the HS level. Behaviors like a high level of competitiveness among students (rather than incenting collaboration), grade grubbing, overloading on dual enrollment classes to juice GPAs, etc…all things that are currently present in many Texas high schools, especially the more well resourced ones.
I do understand the desire to keep strong students in-state…I live in Illinois which has negative net student migration, and research shows that students who leave the state for college tend to not return after college. Tennessee has positive net student migration. Where are students moving to attend college? - USAFacts
Often the reason that students leave their state is because of money…strong students might be able to get a lower cost option elsewhere, and instituting an auto admit policy doesn’t address that problem. In TN, college affordability is likely a greater impediment to enrolling some stronger in-state students (whether they leave the state, or don’t attend a 4 year residential college at all), than is the issue of acceptance to any of the TN publics for the top 10% of each high school’s graduating class. I do wish every state would replicate TN’s free CC model.
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Is this due to auto-admit per se, or because Texas uses class rank, which is the admission credential that is most competitive?
I edited my post to clarify auto admit based on HS GPA/Rank.
One advantage of having more OOS kids enroll is the higher tuition rate that they pay, so long as you don’t give lots of merit money to OOS admits; some schools have this as a business model (see University of Michigan, for example).
I do have concerns about increasing the on-site student population at UTK, based not only on a housing shortage for non-freshmen, but also on the quality of educational experience for all the “live” students (as opposed to online students). The dollars to pay for all this aren’t unlimited; and I don’t want a WVU meltdown in the future for UTK.
I really wouldn’t mind a limit or cap on the residential and commuter students at the UTK campus. I think that the good students who might get shut out of UTK would find their way as overflow into the other UT system campuses (such as UTC or UT-Southern), or the THEC schools (such at ETSU, University of Memphis, or Tennessee Tech). Could be a win-win for higher education in the state.
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Technically, Tennessee Promise is like a scholarship program with some conditions attached: TN Promise . Main one is to start community college immediately after high school and maintain continuous enrollment of at least 12 credits per semester with satisfactory academic progress. Not difficult for full time traditional students, but could exclude those who can only attend part time due to work or family obligations.
Average Cost of Community College [2023]: Tuition + Fees shows the in-state (tuition and fees) cost of community college by state, not including the effect of scholarship programs like Tennessee Promise or any other financial aid.
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U of South Carolina will admit top 10% of in-state students beginning this application season (for Fall 2024 enrollment):
The article doesn’t give any numbers or projections, but I expect this might decrease the OOS acceptance rate.