If you're planning on going to college, or if you have a son or daughter who is, expect to be hearing a lot about "prepared access."
Those are the educational buzzwords used last week by University of Utah President Arthur K. Smith in a speech on undergraduate education. It means that if a student wants to be admitted to the college or university of his choice, he or she had better be prepared.Utah higher-education officials are struggling with ballooning college enrollments. For two consecutive years, more college students - thousands more - have enrolled in school fall quarter than had been expected. The state's nine public institutions, however, haven't received adequate funding to pay for the increasing number of students, while at the same time meeting the obligation to maintain quality programs.
Earlier this year, the state Board of Regents talked about enrollment caps on the institutions as a solution. That approach was discarded when Gov. Norm Bangerter told the regents in July "no caps."
The regents backed away from the enrollment caps but still faced a growing problem. So, the regents have adopted - in concept - a proposed weighted formula that will fund enrollment growth. This formula would allocate funds to the schools experiencing growth but would also distribute a quarter of the growth funds to schools according to their base needs, not new students.
To make this formula work, however, the regents and college presidents said that the colleges and universities need a better way to manage where the students go. They decided that the improved management should come in the form of tougher admission standards, or "prepared access."
All but two institutions - the University of Utah and Utah State University - have open admissions. The U. and USU use an index based on ACT or SAT scores and high school grade point averages to predict a student's success. Students who score below a certain level on the index are denied admission.
The U. also has a required list of high school courses for prospective students, while USU strongly encourages students to take certain high-school courses to prepare them for college.
This fall, the two universities denied admission to 200 students using this system.
Weber State University and Southern Utah University recommend high school preparation in certain subjects, but they don't deny admission based on a student's level of preparation. They require remedial work of unprepared students.
The five community colleges have open admissions. They will continue to have open admissions.
But, at the direction of the regents, the academic officers of the four universities recently evaluated admissions criteria, studying ways to toughen their admission standards while adopting common requirements. Friday, in a report to the regents, the officers are expected to report that they have reached an agreement to use a common admissions index like the ones in use by the U. and USU. The common index, based on ACT or SAT scores and high-school GPAs, will have different cutoff points for each school.
The implementation of the index is proposed for fall 1993.
The second component of "prepared access" will be uniform entrance standards requiring a more rigorous, college-preparatory curriculum for high school students expecting to attend college.
Weber State University President Paul Thompson told me last week that there is no agreement on the uniform courses yet, but any new standards will probably encourage more work in math, English and science.
Uniform entrance requirements could end - or at least greatly reduced - the number of remedial courses at the college level. Thompson said that 40 percent of entering WSU students need remedial English courses and 60 percent need remedial math classes.
Remediation wastes thousands of state dollars. The metropolitan/regional universities should not have to offer courses on material that the students had access to in high school.
Because of the need to give high school students enough lead time on new course requirements, new course standards probably won't be enforced for four years. But for 1996 freshmen, there's a word to the wise in the Boy Scout motto. Be prepared.