Texas Ed Spectator

Top 10 rule limits UT-Austin, says school president | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle

On Wednesday and in testimony before a House panel a day earlier, Powers said the university could attract a more diverse student body if it was not forced by the state, under a decade-old law, to accept every student with a high class rank.

I’m still amazed that the man wasn’t struck by lightening during his testimony. As the article points out:

Top 10 rule limits UT-Austin, says school president | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle

Limiting the law has been a tough sell for Powers, particularly in long-neglected areas of the state. UT-Austin’s minority enrollment is higher now than at any time since the law was passed.

As I’ve posted here before, UT Austin’s own statistics show that “top 10 percent students have higher grade point averages, higher retention rates and higher graduation rates than those not in the top 10 percent.” In other words, class rank is a better predictor of college performance than the SAT. Doing well on the SAT simply means you do well on the SAT. Everyone seems to want a more “objective” standard than class rank because everyone knows that you can take less difficult classes and get better grades. Or you could live in a district that doesn’t offer the same quality of courses. Fine, what’s your “objective” standard and it can’t be the SAT because it’s meaningless in terms of predicting student success although it may do pretty well in predicting income.

Students have commented that it’s not fair that they have gone out of their way to challenge themselves and now have a lower class rank than those who took the easier courses. So what should they do, not take more difficult courses? First, life’s not fair. There are people with perfect SAT scores who will not get into their first choice schools. Second, ask any college admission councilor which is better, straight A’s or AP classes and they’ll tell you both.

Finally, if this was only about race and “affirmative action” the law would have been overturned years ago. The problem is that rural schools are benefiting as well. For some odd reason, UT had been drawing students from a limited number of feeder schools–could they be in the Dallas and Houston area? Now, the students are coming from all over the state, including those inferior rural schools and their legislators plan on keeping it that way.

The real solution is to invest in other state schools in Texas but the state couldn’t even come up with the $1,500 to give to any top 10 percent student who went to some other school than UT or A&M. As for investing in other public institutions of higher education, forget it. The same people complaining to their legislators about the “unfairness” of the top ten percent rule, would vote them out of office for raising taxes for education.

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