Colleges Try to Increase Enrollment by Admitting Students Who Didn’t Apply
“higher education institutions identify students based on their academic achievements, location, and other factors – and offer them admission to the school”
You know things are bad in higher education when schools have to get this creative to find new students.
The College Fix reports:
Colleges aim to increase enrollment by admitting students who didn’t apply
To combat a downward trend in college enrollment, some universities are offering admission to students who have not applied.
Through the new direct admissions practice, higher education institutions identify students based on their academic achievements, location, and other factors – and offer them admission to the school, no application necessary.
Washington and Jefferson College, a private institution in Pennsylvania, saw positive results after it began direct admissions two years ago, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports.
Tracey Sheetz, vice president of enrollment, told the newspaper the college adopted the new method to “meet students where they are today.”
“They’re no longer the students who are going to sit and fill out a five-page paper application with pencil. We’ve got to make it a smoother process and more accessible,” Sheetz said.
Others, including Robert Morris University, Point Park University, and Allegheny College in Pennsylvania also offer direct admissions to some students, according to the report.
University of Wisconsin-Madison Professor Taylor Odle told the newspaper that the practice boosts enrollment and saves money both for the student and the school.
“When we think about the application as a structural barrier, it reduces that barrier for students who are most likely to fall prey to that barrier…” the education policy professor said. “It also is empirically shown to increase enrollments. If you make it easier to get into college, we should expect that more people will enroll in college.”
A number of colleges are reporting lower than expected applications and enrollment, including Harvard University. Others say they expect the same this fall and blame recent problems with the Free Application for Federal Student Aid form, according to The Columbus Dispatch.
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Comments
They’re just following the Democrat election model.
When they fully embrace it, they’ll just enroll the students without their knowledge, and claim government tuition loan funds in their name.
This is a great idea! And think of the savings; a classroom full of non-attending students doesn’t need an instructor, or for that matter an actual classroom or building! We can build massive virtual universities with no attending students, no professors or staff (other than those to process the government paperwork and cash the federal checks), and no campus. You may have just solved higher ed’s financial crisis!
Do the students have to pay the tuition?
What a sad day
sop:
same way people vote dem from the grave
I did ok in High School back in the early 80’s. My Asvab scores were high enough to be offered every MOS every branch had including Nuke stuff. I committed to Army because I wanted to jump out of perfectly good aircraft and to follow family footsteps but I remember getting letters from several Universities encouraging me to apply so this has been going on for some time
Remember the good old days, when you could make a bit of pocket change selling headlines just like this one to the Babylon Bee?
So the students they are chasing after don’t have the ability to focus and concentrate and understand enough to fill out an application. Can they possibly lower college standards any lower? Truly idiot factories….
>> “They’re no longer the students who are going to sit and fill out a five-page paper application with pencil.
Heavens. You really can’t expect students to sit still for 15 minutes and write down answers on paper.
What’s next? “Direct graduation”?? After all, when you think about tests and attending class “as a structural barrier,” you can “reduce that barrier” by just mailing them all diplomas.
new batch of airline pilots coming through
I believe Harvard did this (in a more directed fashion) in the 1970’s. They would send admissions reps to the best high schools with the largest percentages of Black students and try to skim off the best Black students in the country.
In most cases, this worked out well for Harvard, and they got the numbers they wanted, But for some of the Black students (especially mismatched premeds) this worked out very badly. But that’s another story.
UCLA School of Medicine significantly reduced their acceptance and graduation requirements for black students. As a result UCLA went from number three in the U.S. to number eighteen.
Been going on a long time. I was admitted to UMass, my backup, in 1964 after including them as a recipient of the SATs. Didn’t apply; didn’t go.