TRANSPARENCY: Should PUBLIC universities be required to reveal basis for rejection?

Parent Cafe
1

<p>Since a substantial amount of taxpayer money is being spent by public universities, and since university employees are public servants, should there be greater transparency in how a public university awards the spoils?</p>

<p>There are other major public spending activities which rely on competitive bidding: the awarding of vendor contracts. Contractor selection is not based on one number (the cost of the bid), but on subjective quality criteria too. So the contract awarding process shares some decision-making similarity to competitive college application screening. </p>

<p>Connecticut shows a lot of initiative in making contract awards transparent:
Connecticut</a> Transparency Website

[quote]
State law requires purchases of, and contracts for, supplies, materials, equipment, and contractual services to be based "when possible" on competitive bids. This does not apply to gas, water, and electric utility services. Competitive bids must, by law, be awarded to the lowest responsible qualified bidder, who does not necessarily have to be the lowest priced bidder. A bidder's skill, ability, and integrity in performing the work that will be required is evaluated in terms of past performance on contracts and experience (or lack thereof) in delivering goods or services of the size for which the bid is invited. A bidder's financial responsibility must also be considered, however no specific criteria are provided in law or regulation. The law also requires that, “all other factors being equal,” preference must be given to Connecticut companies that manufacture or assemble the required commodities or equipment or originate and provide the required services (CGS § 4a-59).

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Generic examples of other transparent gov't decisions:</p>

<p>If a person fails the Drivers Test, he/she is informed of the reason for the failure: too low score on the written exam; cannot parallel-park.</p>

<p>If a homeowner fails a home inspection for a renovation project, the building inspector tells the homeowner precisely what the shortcoming is: improperly wired electrical outlets.</p>

<p>You may think these gov't activities are trivial, but they are not in countries with a high level of public corruption. </p>

<p>Public universities rate applicants to make their admissions decision. Different universities across the nation share a similar process of assigning applicants an Academic Achievement score (based on GPA, SAT, rigor of coursework) and a Personal Achievement score (based on EC’s leadership, community service, athletics, legacy, etc.), so they already have the data in their files.</p>

<p>In the interest of transparency, should public universities be required to report to the applicant his/her Academic Achievement score & Personal Achievement score, so the applicant can understand why he/she was rejected?</p>

2

<p>No.</p>

<p>10 characters</p>

3

<p>I would rather that my tax dollars go toward educating students rather than giving denials a reason to further obsess over their rejection.
Perhaps if we bought them all big girl pants.</p>

4

<p>No. </p>

<p>Anyway, I wouldn’t go down the “our tax dollars are paying for it” road or you will start to see admissions treated in a political way depending on who is in power.</p>

5

<p>

</p>

<p>It is not like it is not already politicized.</p>

6

<p>never mind</p>

7

<p>No.</p>

<p>There is really no point. Besides, transparency is really just the buzzword of the year in politics and business. I’d rather have truth than transparency.</p>

8

<p>No </p>

<p>10 char</p>

9

<p>In some states, the GPA/test scores/class rank that guarantee admission for in-state applicants are posted right on the universities websites. Often there is a note to the effect that the applications of in-staters who don’t meet those criteria, OOS applicants, and internationals will be evaluated individually.</p>

<p>If you would like your state Is to take up that kind of policy, contact your state legislator about it. Two state models to look at to begin with would be Texas and Iowa. Both have certain well published criteria for auto-admits, but their criteria are different.</p>

10

<p>No. Just another bureaucratic chore unrelated to education. </p>

<p>But…</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>This doesn’t seem wildly unreasonable. The potentially negative side effects would have to do with class rank: whether it is determined at all, how it is determined, and so forth.</p>

<p>From what I’ve heard here and elsewhere, the “top 10%” rule has the potential to shut out excellent students from more competitive school districts. (And I’m not sure how it applies to private/parochial school students at all.)</p>

11

<p>UCLA received nearly 100,000 applications this year. They accepted around 16,000.</p>

<p>It’s unreasonable to expect an explanation to go out to 80,000 rejected students, especially when the reason is “too many qualified students for the space available.”</p>

<p>If it ever became law that the universities had to explain their rejections, it wouldn’t be long before they stopped taking applications after they reached a certain number- whatever number they were able to process, now including a reason for rejection.</p>

12

<p>Like this?</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>[UW</a> regents get hands-on lesson from admissions director | Seattle Times Mobile](<a href=“http://mobile.seattletimes.com/story/today/2021184679/track-.-.-./]UW”>http://mobile.seattletimes.com/story/today/2021184679/track-.-.-./)</p>

13

<p>No. The examples the OP cites all refer to programs where the applicant is entitled to participate based on certain criteria. That is different from a process whereby an agency has the right to pick and choose among multiple applicants. </p>

<p>In any case, what is that you think you would get? If there was a policy requiring a “reason”, it would be easy enough for the ad coms to supply one. Right now an unsuccessful applicant can expect to receive a letter that says that there were many highly qualified applicants and someone else was chosen. You want a reason? It’s easy enough to add a checkbox for ad coms to mark off everything they see as a weakness in an application. Do you think it would make a student feel better to get a rejection letter from a university saying that he was turned down because his essay was dull? or that they decided against her because of the C she got in algebra back in freshman year?</p>

14

<p>I should have said that if you have a rough idea what admissions is based on, can’t the student figure it out themselves?
Students need more incentives to move on, IMO, not get hung up on why they were waitlisted or denied.</p>

15

<p>ucb, some states’ education systems are perhaps more politicized than others. Just this week our governor withdrew the appointment of a student representative to the university system’s board of regents because he had signed a recall petition against the governor two years ago.</p>

<p>[Scott</a> Walker pulls student’s regents appointment over recall petition](<a href=“http://www.jsonline.com/news/statepolitics/scott-walker-withdraws-appointment-of-student-regent-who-signed-recall-b9933118z1-211395241.html]Scott”>Scott Walker pulls student's regents appointment over recall petition)</p>

<p>For those of us living in states like this it’s not hard to imagine a world in which ideology becomes a factor in admissions decisions.</p>

16

<p>It is an interesting concept, but if implemented I don’t think it should apply to out of state or international applicants. In our state, even though there isn’t published minimum GPA and minimum ACT scores, it is fairly well known what it takes to get admitted to UofM and MSU. Most kids who hit those marks are accepted. I could envision a system where if a student meets those minimum GPA and ACT scores there could be a series of reasons in a checkbox formula to tell an instate student why they were rejected. I’m not yet convinced it’s a good thing, but I also could envision how it might not be a bad thing.</p>

17

<p>

I’m all for transparency, but … no. This flies in the face of common sense, which I also favor. </p>

<p>How finely tuned are these academic and personal achievement scores? How much time can adcoms, at public institutions especially, spend distinguishing between candidates A and B? How objective can these scores be, considering the great disparities in curriculum and grading practices amongst our high schools?</p>

<p>And finally - if these scores were made public, then what? Is there going to be a grievance procedure for students who contest either score? That sounds like a bureaucratic nightmare waiting to happen.</p>

18

<p>What problem are we solving? 80% of first time college applicants are getting into their first choice schools. Now you wanna institute a layer of bureaucracy into a heavily unfunded system for a few top publics (UM, UVA, UCLA, UCB, etc) to tell a bunch of entitled kids why they weren’t admitted?</p>

<p>Can you imagine the s**tstorm it would take to draw up this checklist? This is a stupid solution to a “white peoples” problem.</p>

19

<p>There’s a couple of differences between college admissions and the examples cited:</p>

<p>1 - drivers licenses and home inspections do not have a limit to the number that can pass. If you meet the qualifications, you pass. If you don’t you fail. If 200 people pass their license test today, they all get licenses. If 2,000 pass they all get licenses too.</p>

<p>2 - in both cases, the person applying can remedy the situation and reapply quickly. The student who “remedies” their deficiencies still isn’t guaranteed a spot in the following class. They will still have to compete against a new set of applications.</p>

20

<p>

Are you saying that first time college applicants are qualified to be admitted and non-first time college applicants are not?</p>

<p>

The schools have already rated the students with a score. It is a mere electronic copy-n-paste to add the extra verbiage in the decision letter. </p>

<p>I don’t follow why it is a “white peoples” problem. Can you expand on this?</p>