REGENTS ANNOUNCES STATEWIDE AUDIT OF COLLEGE ADMISSIONS
Official Press Release of Louisiana Board of Regents Follows Below:
Meg Casper Sunstrom
Deputy Commissioner for Strategic Communication
Nikki Godfrey
Assistant Commissioner for Public Affairs
Louisiana Board of Regents
(225) 342-4253
September 26, 2018
REGENTS ANNOUNCES STATEWIDE AUDIT OF COLLEGE ADMISSIONS
Louisiana approaching 20-year anniversary for minimum admissions standards
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
BATON ROUGE, La. - The Louisiana Board of Regents today announced an audit of all four-year universities aimed at measuring compliance with the state's minimum admissions standards.
In 2005, Regents established minimum admissions standards to focus on enrolling students at institutions where they could be most likely to achieve academic success. The audit program will begin as soon as campus data is available for this fall semester and will include a review of admissions exceptions.
"Given the heightened interest in admissions standards and the role of the Board of Regents in enforcing standards and expectations, now is clearly the time to take a deep dive into our institutions' compliance," said Regents Chairman Robert W. Levy. "Additionally, this audit will drive our discussions moving forward in terms of where we've been and where we are going in terms of access and success for students who choose to go to college," Levy emphasized.
"As we set a new vision for higher education and enhance our focus on talent development, it is appropriate for us to analyze the Regents admission standards and its impact on student completion." said Commissioner of Higher Education Kim Hunter Reed." This is step one in an important process of accountability and policy review." Reed said.
In the 2001 Master Plan, the Board of Regents established minimum admission standards for Louisiana's public four-year institutions giving the campuses, and high school students, four years to prepare to meet the changes. The new standards took effect in 2005. The Regents' admissions requirements include completion of a college prep core curriculum plus a certain GPA OR a certain ACT score. The GPA or ACT cut scores were graduated (by institution and type) with LSU (as the flagship) having the highest minimum standard. In addition, the minimum admission standards restricted admission of students requiring remedial education to statewide and regional college campuses (i.e., all but LSU) based on ACT English and Math subscores.
Staff anticipates the audit process to begin in January with a report to the Board for their action in the spring.