Commissioner on Higher Education Kim Hunter Reed
The Board of Regents approves, for the first time, use of unspecified financial penalties for schools that do not comply with admissions requirements for incoming students.
Higher Ed Commissioner Kim Hunter Reed says a school will be flagged for review if they allow too many students in who do not meet requirements like minimum GPA, or ACT.
“We will flag those institutions that exceed the exceptions, we will communicate with our management board the expectation that they will be compliant, but at the day there are graduated penalties for the board to consider,” says Reed.
Specific penalties were not laid out, rather the policy notes they will be implemented to the degree the Board “deems appropriate”, “In accordance with the degree, repetition, and/or nature of the violation” per the AP.
LSU’s adoption of holistic admissions under former President Alexander saw the school push far past the limit of only allowing in 4% of incoming high school students to not meet ACT and GPA criteria.
“The violation of the policy by LSU is certainly cause of the sequence of events that led to auditing of all of the information and a comprehensive review of the policy,” says Reed.
Alexander argued the policy is in place at 80% of other flagship universities and touted the results of freshmen classes admitted under it.
The changes provoked concern the Board was increasing enrollment standards. Reed says that misunderstanding was evident in an Advocate headline claiming standards were going up.
“The headline was not accurate in terms of increased standards, we hold to our existing standards,” says Reed.
She says LSU still has a minimum 25 ACT and 3.0 high school GPA requirement for admission.
