St. Louis CofCC Blog

USA Today:

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.

(snip)

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.

A student at the 90th percentile at a black school could very well be as dumb as rock in reality, but have a polished transcript because of grade inflation and course title inflation.  A student at the 89th percentile at a white suburban school could probably run circles around the former when it comes to brain pans and other academic accomplishments, but W thought that the former was more worthy of automatic admission to state schools than the latter.

And ten years on, note that of the three things USA Today are most proud of, two of them involve diversity.