The University’s new “holistic” admission standards are harrowingly reminiscent of the holistic underwriting standards that subsequently encouraged subprime mortgage loans, created a housing bubble, skyrocketed mortgage default rates and triggered a global financial crisis.
Much like the University will deemphasize objective standards in admissions, so too had pre-financial crisis banks deemphasized objective standards, albeit in that instance to determine creditworthiness. In both cases, the justification for lowering standards is to promote diversity and inclusion, which is a laudable goal, but poor policy nonetheless.
While the University’s initiative lacks the gravity and ramification of failed housing policies, there will certainly be a price to pay either through higher attrition rates or compensatory grade inflation. High school GPAs and standardized test scores are objectively good predictors of academic performance in college, and admitting prospective students who don’t meet the bare minimum of a 22 ACT score or a 3.0 GPA is a disservice to those students who would be more likely to succeed at another state university with lower academic rigor. Prospective students who don’t have the prerequisite academic qualifications to simply turn their academic under performance around in college is a rather cruel justification for taking their tuition money, which is indeed what this initiative is all about.
Although, that isn’t a particularly contentious assertion considering the University’s publicized financial issues resulting from the state government repeatedly slashing higher education funding, in spite of significant public outrage, to plug budget deficits. It’s also not a stretch to assume that because the University needs money, grade inflation is a likely result of the lower admission standards than higher attrition rates because having students drop out is missed revenue.
As if it was not bad enough to have history professors assert that the Civil War was an act of Northern aggression, these lower admission standards will most likely cause the educational quality and rigor of this University to decrease further than it already has in recent years.
This is all to be expected from University President F. King Alexander, who writes books on financing public schools and thinks little of preserving educational quality. However, that may also explain why Alexander had the audacity to increase student fees amidst a budget shortfall and allocate those funds toward a lazy river instead of decreasing class size, but I’ll reserve delving into that subject for another time. What bothers me most about these new admission standards is how Alexander obfuscates the truth. Amidst recent criticism, including from members of the Board of Regents, Alexander defiantly defended the University’s new admission policy, doubling-down on his claim that it will not lower standards.
Furthermore, in a letter to the editor published in The Advocate, he asserted that because the mean ACT score and the mean GPA for the incoming freshman class stayed the same as last year’s incoming class, the new admission standards had no statistically significant lowering effect on the quality or academic achievement of the incoming class.
The statistical mean is merely an average, and unlike using a standard deviation, one would not be able tell whether a more academically qualified top percentage of the class offset a lower performing bottom percentage. Moreover, it could take a few more incoming classes for a drop in the mean GPA and ACT scores. It could be that the attrition rate rises or it could be that grade inflation increases.
In other words, there exists a permutation of possible explanations that would assume reasonable doubt to which the certainty of Alexander’s explanation is downright misleading, deceptive and an unabashed obfuscation of truth. I would otherwise be remiss to jump to an explanation considering the inconclusive evidence if not for the fact that the justifications for policies such as these are nothing new. We’ve been here before. It triggered a financial crisis and yet, the unlearned lesson persists in the University’s new lower admission standards.
In fact, this year marks a decade since the financial crisis, political hack jobs on the left still propagate the patently false narrative that the deregulation of the financial industry is the sole cause. However, that’s a blatant revisionist history that ignores the government’s housing policies beginning in 1977 with the Community Reinvestment Act.
Between the CRA, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government encouraged banks to underwrite mortgage-backed securities comprised of increasingly risky mortgage loans to lover-income Americans who just wanted to achieve the American Dream. Not only did regulators fail to curb risky mortgage loans, but also many outright supported banks extending loans to Americans — some of whom didn’t have any reported job or income — with horrible credit histories.
Admitting prospective students into this University without the minimal GPA or ACT score is going to either increase attrition rates or increase grade inflation. It’s a lose-lose situation when more students drop out or the quality of education decreases.
The University’s new admission standards are well intentioned, but having lived through the 2008 financial crisis, there is no excuse for justifying an initiative that is doomed to backfire on unintended consequences. We can’t let such a valuable lesson go unlearned. Let us not repeat history.
Patrick Gagen is a 21-year-old mass communication and finance senior from Suwanee, Georgia.