California’s public universities struggle with rising college eligibility

On August 17, 2017, EdSource reported, “California’s public universities struggle with rising college eligibility.” Here’s an excerpt:

California in many ways is a victim of its own success in preparing ever larger numbers of students for college.

That is one way to look at the recent flap over the revocation of admission offers to about 500 students at UC Irvine who had either not sustained their academic performance during their last semester in high school or had not submitted their final high school transcripts as required by university rules. …

What is clear is that there are no easy or quick fixes to meeting the need to educate California’s growing youthful population — and the rising percentage of students who are leaving high school eligible to attend UC or CSU.

In the future, administrators at individual UC and CSU campuses may be more successful in accurately anticipating what percentage of incoming freshman they should offer admission to avoid the debacles experienced at UC Irvine and Cal Poly.

But doing so shouldn’t obscure the welcome reality that efforts to better prepare students to attend college are paying off. Instead of backing off those efforts, it would be far more desirable to admit more California students, and for the state to underwrite the additional costs to allow its famed public universities to do so.

Read the complete article on the EdSource website.