Is the 15% those who graduate period, those who graduate in 4 years or 5, etc? That figure sounds really low, so I am assuming it's the latter. You must remember that schools like TSU exist to provide college opportunities for students who traditionally would not have them. This could be because: - someone has no $$ (which is why it would take them longer to graduate) - someone didn't take school seriously until they got out of high school - someone was stuck in a poor environment where they had to work to help the family and couldn't always be at school or really focus on grades - someone was stuck in a crap school just because they lived in that area, and it may be a little harder to learn while you are dodging bullets In either case (and there are many more), those students wouldn't have the opportunity to go to college and better themselves. And just because a person doesn't have the best grades doesn't mean they should be forced to go to a trade school or work if they do have higher ambitions. So are you saying these types of students don't deserve the opportunity to try and continue their education?
the top 10% rule is stupid. I went to a top 10 Houston area high school (Clements). I have friends who went to other schools within the district. My friends GPA was the same as mine. However Clements is very competitive, so I did not get into into the top 10%, while my friends, at less competitive schools ,did with the same GPA. Get RID of the Top 10% rule.
My understanding is that it's the former: http://www.jbhe.com/preview/winter07preview.html http://www.blackcollegesearch.com/texas-colleges/texas-southern-university.htm TSU is amongst the handful of worst graduation rates in the country. I'm suggesting that a state university that is graduating 15% of its students has a major problem. Either it's an incompetent university, or it needs to re-evaluate it's admissions processes that are accepting mostly students who should not be there. The purpose of a state university is to prepare students for the real world - if that's not happening, then it's a terrible use of tax dollars and is not providing a good service to the students that it's supposed to be helping. The goal should be to place students at a place where they have a reasonable opportunity to succeed - that's not happening in the case of TSU.
Used to be, they have recently added a third section, worth another 800 points (pushing the total to 2400), although most collages still look at the math/reading scores predominantly. Obviously, there are problems with the 10% rule. Added to that, UT seems to be trying to slim down its undergrad classes, as they are admitting less than 7,000 freshman a year now. The obvious solution to springs to my mind would be to cut the 10% to something around 7-5%, which would still reward excellence in high school while giving the university a chance to select students by its own standards as well.
Thanks for those links. Did you read your link on reasons why these students aren't graduating: To sum it up, a lot of these kids don't finish because they don't have the $$, the school doesn't have $$ to give them, or they come to school unprepared for a wide variety of reasons that I went over earlier (some their fault...some the states, etc). For comparison, the graduation rates at my alma mater Morehouse, arguably the top black school, is only 55%. I guarentee you 45% of students there aren't dumb or poor students. The school costs over $20K annually and most of the guys who graduate leave because of financial reasons. It's one of the reasons HBCU's are starting to lose a lot of students to other top schools with large endowments that are waiving their tuition if their families incomes aren't above a certain level. TSU is a lot less expensive, but you will be suprised how many of it's students are scraping $$ together semester by semester. College is expensive.... So again, if a kid is broke, went to crap schools all his life or isn't wanted at top schools like UT (which is why the top 10% rule exists in the first place)....are you saying these kids should not have the chance to go to college? Some kids underperform because they are lazy, and some are byproducts of being in some pretty bad situations. So again, should we not afford those in the latter with a chance to get a college education? You say a school like TSU should evaluate it's admissions process to not accept students who "shouldn't be there"....when in reality one of the reasons TSU exists is to give those type of students a place to go if they choose to go to college. It's even in their mission statement: http://www.tsu.edu/pages/2153.asp The bolded part is basically the states way of saying "we know we are messing up and really underfunding public schools in urban areas...yet these kids have to go somewhere...so this is one of the places where they can go because we surely aren't letting them into UT...unless they are top 10% of course, lol". Edit: And to clarify, I'm not saying TSU is a great school or that it doesn't have it's fair share of problems. But you say these students should be placed at a place where they can succeed. Well for most of them that isn't possible for a wide variety of reasons. So if there were no schools like TSU, then these kids would not be in college.
i knew people in high school who would transfer to a bad public school for their last semester of their senior year so they would be boosted into the top 10% even though they had grades that should not have gotten them into UT
Deckard, So what is your solution to ensure that the states premier public school has students that represent the state? This goes from those in urban communities to those in rural ones...... Forgive me if I missed a solution that you offered somewhere in the thread.
Here's the crux of the problem though. Are these kids well served by spending two years in college and having to drop out after having spent $20,000 there? Or would they have been better off being steered into community college or a trade school that's much cheaper and actually getting a degree out of it? The 15% that DO end up graduating could be steered to other universities as they are the ones that apparently had all the pieces to succeed in a college environment. I agree with your first part that these schools are designed to help alleviate other problems like a lower quality primary education - but I don't think having 85% of your students drop out for whatever reasons is helping that problem at all. Ultimately, you're setting them on a path that, history suggests, leads to failure for the vast majority of them. I'm not talking about HBCU's in general, but specifically TSU, which is amongst the worst of that bunch of schools at graduating kids. When you're trying to remedy a past problem but failing 85% of the time, the remedy isn't very good and might be just pushing them down an even more problematic path. I guess the really useful question would be what happens to these kids after they drop out. If that year or two of school is helping their future, then that's very different from if they are just following the same paths as kids who never went to college.
A school like TSU exists to help people who all kinds of problems. there are people for whom it takes eight years to graduate undergrad, for all kinds of reasons, from not being prepared for school, to not having the financial means, to people who have families and are just taking a couple of classes of year or for whatever reason. the goal for some of them is to simply be able to say they graduated from college. and yes, as icehouse indicates, a tsu and prairie view is very different from a morehouse or a hampton, which is also very different from a howard.
How about looking at the data a little more closely? From the report by UT 10/28/08: Code: All freshmen Top 10% Non-Top 10% 1998 6110 2513 or 41% 3597 or 59% 2008 6322 5114 or 81% 1208 or 19% From Bill Powers's report: Number of TX top 10% HS graduates: 1995 18,214 2005 24,951 2010 28,080 I don't know where you got your figure of 94% from? The report above shows 81% and that percentage has risen over the year mainly because there are many more HS grads, hence more top 10% vs the total freshmen slots available at UT.
First off, I don't trust the 15% figure. The link that you provided seems to cover a base of 6 years. I know many TSU students who take a longer time to graduate because they have no $$, are going part time, working, have families, etc. Secondly, kids aren't spending 20K in two years at TSU. Now I'm sure what they are spending is a lot to them, but it's not in the $20K range. As far as are they better off going to a community college or a trade school, the state of TX seems to think they aren't. Or shall I say, the state seems to think that if these students want the option to go a different route, then there needs to be a place for them to go since they can't go to other schools (i.e. UT) for whatever reason. Again, you are ignoring why TSU exists in the first place. Even the 15% that graduate probably didn't have the opportunity to go elsewhere, for whatever reason....
A little more data from the report by UT 10/28/08: Code: All applications All Freshmen All Freshmen(TX) Top 10%(TX) Non-Top 10%(TX) 1998 16,797 6744 6110 2513 or 41% 3597 or 59% 2008 29,501 6715 6322 5114 or 81% 1208 or 19% The 1st 2 columns include students from out-of-state The last 3 columns are numbers for TX HS only
That certainly could be - the only graduation figure I've seen is 15%, but I don't know what exactly that measures. http://www.fafsaonline.com/FAFSA-school-codes/school/TX/Texas+Southern+University Estimated Student Expenses at Texas Southern University Based on 2005 data provided by IPEDS and NCES. Contact Texas Southern University for the most accurate expense information. * Total tuition, room, and board: $10,472.00 * Percentage increase in expenses, year over year: 12.1 % * Estimated cost of attendance in 2013 : $16,536.82
That was the number I was given by contacting people in the administration. If the numbers have changed, it's the first I've heard of it.
That cost includes room and board. IIRC correctly, TSU only has one male and one female dorm. Basically, the majority of their students live at home. I don't have any concrete numbers for this, but I live right behind the school and know many students that have attended. Every day my neighborhood becomes a parking lot due to all of the off campus students. Additionally, that tuition number is for a full courseload of work, assuming you can afford that. I also know many a TSU student taking 1 or 2 classes a semester/year because that’s all that they can afford...be that with their money or with their time. That's primarily why I don't trust the 15% number. I respect your opinion. So my question is where should these type of students go to college, or are you saying they shouldn't have the opportunity to go? Which HBCU's are you referring to? I ask because the major HBCU's in those states don't have the same purpouse as TSU and they don't basically have open admissions policies (LA-Xavier, Dillard, Southern, Grambling....AL-Tuskegee....MS-Jackson State). Not all HBCU's basically have an open admissions policy like TSU does, or used to (unsure if it has been changed or not with all the recent developments with the school). You have to make sure you are comparing apples to apples. Comparing TSU to a school like Southern, Grambling, Morehouse, Spelman, FAMU, etc is not a valid comparison. That's like comparing Sam Houston to Rice.
That's your solution for the states premier public school to have a representation of the state of Texas?
and welcome back good ole favortism, nepotism and racism . . . I'm sure there will be plenty of Euphemisms and 'other reasons' why the student body will have less and less minorities . . . but at the end. . . the results are the student body will have less and less minorities What would you suggest to counter this? or should we not even try? Rocket River
