Monday Messages

Admission and Graduation

Dear Colleagues:

For more than a century, KU has required of Kansans only one credential to be admitted-a degree from a Kansas high school.

In the fall of 2001, however, KU will require incoming students to have an ACT score of 21 or higher, a GPA of 2.0, or a ranking in the top one-third of their high school class.

Will this new policy, mandated by the legislature for the Regents system, affect enrollment at KU? Probably not, since most students admitted this year would meet such requirements.

The change in the policy, however, helps us focus on the kinds of students we recruit, and why everyone needs to be involved in their recruitment and retention.

For the past five years, KU has very actively recruited good students. Each year the incoming freshman class has had higher standardized test scores and higher GPA¹s. In 1995, the average entering ACT score for freshmen was 23.4. This fall it was 24.4 for a freshman class that included 116 National Merit Scholars and over 1500 academic scholarship winners.

It is fair to say, based on this measure, that the KU undergraduate student body is not only the highest qualified in the Regents system, it is also the best class in the history of KU.

Has KU achieved this effect by cutting the size of the entering class, weeding out large numbers of students? No. We have the highest total enrollment since 1993--28,329, and our freshman class of 4,208 is among the largest in history. (Many of you, both faculty and staff, have helped recruit these students by making KU a more hospitable environment, and the university owes you all a great debt of gratitude.)

What these numbers mean is that KU undergraduates have the ability to meet the university¹s academic standards, and because they do, their success becomes one of the key indicators of KU¹s quality. Simply put, better students challenge each other to work harder and reach higher, and they push us as faculty and staff to do the same.

If we know our students are better able to meet the university¹s rigor, then we have to raise our own expectations. For example, most students admitted to KU today are capable of earning a degree. We have to make sure, as faculty and staff, that we provide the challenge and the support to enable them to graduate.

Good universities like Harvard or Stanford, Michigan or Berkeley, operate on these same principles: admit students who have the ability to graduate, challenge them, and help them achieve their goals. They have graduation rates in the 75 percent to 95 percent range.

Currently, only about 56 percent of our entering freshmen receive a degree within six years. This graduation rate is by far the best in the Regents system, and is fairly typical for large state universities, but it is not good enough if we are to be a nationally competitive university. We have to continue to recruit strong students, do more to enable them to graduate, and strive for a higher graduation rate. Given the correlation between ACT scores and graduation rates, our figure should improve over the next few years, but there are other ways we can help as well.

The next time you see a student struggling with the material, or preoccupied by personal problems, reach out to them. Establish a human contact. Offer assistance. Graduating seniors identify faculty and staff who offered them friendship as the most influential people in their drive towards a degree.

We know KU students are capable. We know they will be held to academic standards. Let us work together to create the caring environment that enables them to reach the goal they held when they entered-a joyous stroll down Campanile Hill on a brilliant May afternoon.

I look forward to seeing you at the annual holiday reception this Friday from 3:30 to 5 p.m. at the Adams Alumni Center, followed by carols and a lighting ceremony at my residence.

P.S. Thanks for your responses about staff salaries. I especially appreciated hearing from classified staff, and I will plan a future Monday memo about the classified system.