It will be harder for some high school students to enter UTC this fall, since officials plan to ratchet up admission standards.
Next year, the minimum grade point average will jump from 2.0 to 2.3, and the ACT score requirement will increase from 17 to 18.
UTC Chancellor Roger Brown said the change will improve UTC's freshman retention rate, which now is the lowest in the UT system at 61 percent.
"We are more likely to have students who will succeed," Dr. Brown said. "It will help us bring in a more manageable freshman class."
UTC officials sought approval for an increase in academic standards just as the UT board committees convened to approve proposals for significant cuts to academics and administration.
Although federal stimulus aid will float the UT system in the short term, UT board members are preparing to face cuts of more than $90 million in the next two years.
To weather an oncoming shortfall, the board is proposing 13 academic program cuts and consolidations, a 7 to 9 percent tuition increase on campuses and a $5.6 million cut to system administration.
Trustees will make a final vote on the proposals today.
Dr. Brown said the vote Tuesday was only the first step in improving admission standards at UTC.
Officials plan to recommend increasing the minimum grade point average and standardized test requirements for the next few years.
The move, he said, will improve freshman retention rates by admitting only qualified and well-prepared students. Also, he said, it will stunt enrollment growth.
UTC is awash in applications for the fall and already has filled its on-campus housing. Dr. Brown said administrators are expecting to admit 300 to 400 more freshman than last year.
"Within the last eight years the size of the freshman class has nearly doubled," he said.
If the standards for this fall would have been in effect last fall, 120 of the 2,000 entering freshmen would not have been admitted, said Phil Oldham, UTC provost.
Forty percent of that number would have been minority students, and 50 percent had a grade point average below a 2.0, he said.
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Staff Photo by Tim Barber UTC campus
Dr. Brown said he wants to make sure that higher standards don't make higher education inaccessible for certain groups.
"It's a constant juggling act -- high quality and access," he said. "We try to keep a balance."
Tyler Forrest, a UTC senior and student trustee, said he thinks increased admissions standards can improve the quality of education at UTC.
"I really think it is a positive move, because we get to get on par with other institutions," he said. "Anytime you raise standards you are going to exclude some people, but I don't think you will be cutting out any particular class or group of students. You are just creating a better institution."
While UTC will have new standards, the criteria are not absolute, Dr. Oldham said.
Students with a grade point average or standardized test score that fall below will be put on a waiting list. Their applications will be reviewed holistically, and they will be admitted based on space. Some of the students could begin in the spring term when capacity isn't as tight, Dr. Oldham said.
Joan Garrett has been a staff writer for the Times Free Press since August 2007. Before becoming a general assignment writer for the paper, she wrote about business, higher education and the court systems. She grew up the oldest of five sisters near Birmingham, Ala., and graduated with a master's and bachelor's degrees in journalism from the University of Alabama. Before landing her first full-time job as a reporter at the Times Free Press, she ...
It is about time they raised the standards at UTC. A lot of the people admitted to UTC have no business in college. They are wasting their time and money because they do not take the time to do their studying. A lot of them cannot understand the material either and slow down the pace of the class. This holds the other students back.
More like...subpar students wasting financial aid that could be used by deserving students who actually want to learn!
It's not like the new requirements (18 ACT and 2.3 GPA) exactly guarantee stellar students, anyway. As a UTC professor I would like to see the standards raised significantly higher than this. (Yes, from a classroom perspective, poorly prepared students have a strong tendency to hold everyone else back.) But it's a start.
Of course if you are a football player with a 15 ACT and a 1.8 GPA, there is still the "holistic" admissions process to make sure you get in the door. You still won't win many games, but at least you will get to go to school free for four years. A lot of academically better qualified students wish they could get one of those 63 full-ride scholarships. But that's the way the cookie crumbles....
For the 2008 fall semester,110 athletes had a 3.0 or better. 24 of them were football players, who were not walk-ons padding the numbers. (That was also their busiest training semester.) That's about a third of all athletes and even better for the football team. I don't know the percent for the non-athletes of the student body, but I doubt that it is any higher.
How many incoming freshman football players were admitted with less than a 2.3 GPA/18 ACT? What is the percentage of football players in that category vs. the student body at large? Just curious.
Also, not all 2.3 GPAs are the same. How many football players are majoring in engineering, computer science, math, physics, chemistry, pre-med, pre-physical therapy, or other "hard" science majors, vs. the percentage of students overall. And how many are majoring in P.E. or elementary education? Again, just curious.
Good ole (UTC Professor) Mountain Joe, still taking shots at the football team...what a surprise.
Why don't you go down and spend a little bit of time talking to new head coach Russ Huesman. If you, for just a moment, would remove your gigantic bias against the football team, you might just be proud (or at least respect) the academic standard Huesman is trying to set for the future of Mocs football.
BTW...I do agree with the push for higher admission standards. They should be no less than UT-Knoxville (matter of fact, academic admission parity is yet another promise broken by the UT System in relation to UofC joining the UT in 1969).
Joe, why don't you spend some of your time directing your ample fury at Knoxville. Lay off the football team and see what Huesman (a Chattanooga Alumnus) can do with the program.
Oh, and you can THANK another UTC football alum (John Murphy) for the 1.5 MILLION DOLLAR donation he (and his wife) just made to the business department...a donation that would have not been made WITHOUT a football program at UTC.
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