Texas developed a way to get around explicit use of race in admissions by crafting the Ten Percent Plan, which guarantees Texas high school students graduating in the top 10 percent of their class admission to public colleges and universities in the state.
Last month, the Texas Senate voted 24 to 7 to modify the law to remove the admissions guarantee and cap admissions at 50 percent. On Monday, the Texas House approved a compromise bill that would cap students admitted under the plan to 75 percent, effective 2011. The law expires after six years, so the legislature can examine the changes. (Source)
The Texas Ten Percent Plan was developed after a federal appeals court ruled that Texas colleges could not use race as a factor in admissions. In order to attract and admit more minority students, the state came up with a way to achieve “diversity” without using race explicitly. The only reason the plan is being modified is capacity problems. UT President William Powers recently complained that his school would run out of room for students not admitted under the plan. Will a 75 percent admissions cap alleviate the problem?
According to the Dallas Morning News, some say the 10 percent plan has caused a “brain drain” at UT, because students who may have had the grades and scores but didn’t land in the top 10 percent of their schools went to different colleges. To put it another way, underqualified students who placed in the top 10 percent of their high schools were admitted over more qualified students who did not, even though the latter attended high schools with higher academic standards.
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