Prometheus 6

University of Texas President William Powers complains that the 10% rule has come to dominate the admissions system. In the next freshman class, it will account for 81% of the students, making it harder to recruit promising students at high-achieving high schools, including minorities, who fall below the 10% line. Powers wants to recruit only half the incoming class through automatic admissions.

I had to find out what Powers was complaining about. The only complaint that holds water is

If the trend continues unchecked, we will be required to admit more than 100 percent of our class under this rule. Other state schools, particularly Texas A&M, will be in the same situation in the future.

We simply do not have the capacity to expand enrollment so that we can accommodate these students.

Sounds like they should have spent more on capital improvements. And the program required racial imbalances in public schools to maintain diversity in UT. And letting in part of the qualifying cohort opens things up to the sort of, shall we say, questionable judgement calls that made the program necessary in the first place.

So instead of limiting the admissions under this program to 50% of the class, I suggest accepting the top 5% of each school. And get to expanding. If they had built colleges like they built prisons they'd have no capacity problem.

Texas' 10% admission could teach colleges a thing or two

Ten years ago, after a federal court blocked Texas colleges from considering race as a factor in admissions, the state, with George W. Bush as governor, came up with an innovative alternative. In an attempt to make affirmative action colorblind, the top 10% of graduates at each of the state's high schools was granted automatic admission to state universities.

While politically popular, the law was met with skepticism by many experts in both education and civil rights. Some educators feared that even the best students at inner city and rural high schools would never survive academically at the University of Texas. Civil rights leaders complained that the law was rooted in cynicism because it achieves integration in college by relying upon continued segregation of Texas high schools.

Ten years later, we know a little more about the law: It works. Maybe even a little too well, given that the president of the University of Texas asked the Legislature last week to scale it back.

Examples of its success at the University of Texas at Austin include:

* Students admitted under the 10% rule get better grades than other students. Plus, they graduate at higher rates. 

* Racial diversity at the Austin campus improved. The number of Hispanic students has risen by 29% and the African-American student population by 32%.

* Economic and geographic diversity improved as well. Before the law took effect, the Austin campus drew from 616 high schools. Now it draws from 853 schools.