Updated, 5:30 p.m.: UT-Austin President Bill Powers issued a campus-wide email this afternoon acknowledging his receipt of the task force’s recommendations to boost the school's four-year graduation rate to 70 percent by 2016.

“Some of these, such as mandatory freshman orientation, will be implemented immediately,” he wrote. “Others will need additional input from faculty and staff.”

Early reviews of the report from various sides of higher education reform issue have been positive.

Thomas Lindsay, the director of the higher education center at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative think tank that has previously called for ...

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