The Evening Brief: Texas Headlines for Feb. 21, 2012
New in The Texas Tribune:
- Fisher v. Texas Headed to High Court: "University of Texas at Austin President Bill Powers has responded to the U.S. Supreme Court decision to hear an affirmative action case that argues the university's race-concious admissions policy violates the rights of white students."
- Perry Leaning Toward a Run for Re-election: "In his first extended sit-down interview with a Texas news outlet since leaving the presidential race, Gov. Rick Perry said Tuesday he is leaning toward running for re-election in 2014 and possibly another stab at the White House two years after that. He said ...
Comments (5)
Adam W Vanek via Texas Tribune on Facebook
If the University of Texas genuinely cared about diversity, it would acknowledge that it's deliberate and systematic annual tuition increases continue to build an overwhelming financial barrier for minorities from receiving a college public education. Similarly, UT lobbied to kill the Top 10% rule, which also promoted diversity.
Paul Underbrink via Texas Tribune on Facebook
UT is too popular for its own good!
Annette Gracy Juba via Texas Tribune on Facebook
I rarely enter political debates on fb, but... College admissions is a harrowing experience these days. I don't have a perfect answer, but I no longer believe that students are admitted to a university based solely on their academic merit. And the high school students (those outside the top 9% -- for 2012 h.s. graduates) who believe that increasing and excelling at their academic rigor will improve their chances of admission to UT are sorely misled. In my eyes, the concept of a "narrowly tailored holistic admissions policy" is semantics designed to hide the fact that outside of the aforementioned top 9%, UT creates a freshman class that will fit a certain ethnic/racial/athletic formula.
T D
@Annette
It's doubtful that you would want to attend, teach at, or hire students from a college made up exclusively of students who had been admitted purely on the basis of "academic rigor."
If your workplace was made up only of good test-takers, your business would fail.
Robiel Abraha via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Annette - I can understand that admissions policies should be based on merit, but how do you define merit? If you think GPA and test scores, then that will inherently create a system that will bar many minority students from accessing the opportunity to attend a university. As you may already know, public school education is highly stratified with students coming from majority minority school districts receiving a much worse education in comparison to their counterparts in higher income / predominately white neighborhoods. Moreover, the standard testing system is highly culturally bias. Therefore, an admissions policy that looks at merit will inherently disadvantaged minority students. So not only do we need to reform our k-12 education system to provide more equity in the educational opportunities, we also need to tailor our college admissions to allow minority students who may not look qualified based on paper but could benefit from the educational opportunity.