Group reviewing state university admission wants more transparency

A group charged with reviewing a five-year-old scoring index for applicants to Iowa's regent universities will meet later this month to discuss changing the system to make it more equitable and transparent.

The discussion comes after concerns were highlighted by a consultant hired by the Board of Regents to assess the efficiency of operations at University of Iowa, Iowa State University, and University of Northern Iowa. Those concerns include how the scoring system applies to the growing number of applicants who are not given a class rank in high school.

Board of Regents Executive Director Robert Donley also recently criticized the 'Regent Admission Index” for its shortcomings and called for a review - noting specifically that UI excludes from its scoring system applicants without class rank.

'On the other hand, Iowa State University applies a statistical formula to calculate an RAI for all applicants,” Donley wrote in a guest opinion for The Gazette on Aug. 1. 'The ISU model has been refined over time to ensure it works well as a predictor of success and it provides, in my opinion, the most objective method of determining student admissibility.”

Donley said he discovered the discrepancies in how the universities calculate scores for students without class rank in June, following media reports.

The Gazette reported that the UI in 2013 admitted 20.8 percent of its applicants with scores below 245 - the threshold for automatic admission - while ISU admitted 36.9 percent of its low-scoring applicants, and UNI admitted 79.6 percent, according to regent documents.

Donley told The Gazette that his office looked deeper into the numbers and discovered the 'sophisticated statistical methodology” that both ISU and UNI use for students without class rank.

In a June 19 email obtained by The Gazette, Board of Regents Academic Program Officer Jason Pontius told Donley that the UI numbers for students admitted with scores below the 245 threshold are 'artificially low.”

'However, we don't know how much higher they are in reality,” Pontius wrote in the email. 'I doubt even Iowa really knows.”

In his guest opinion, Donley said his office looks at retention and graduation rates to make sure universities aren't simply admitting as many students as possible - including those with low index scores - to bolster their enrollment numbers.

Donley points out in his piece that one-year retention rates of resident undergraduate students in ISU's last two freshmen classes 'were slightly higher than at the University of Iowa.”

'Similarly, the six-year graduation rates of ISU resident undergraduate students are also slightly higher than at the University of Iowa,” Donley wrote.

The opinion piece was emailed to members of the Board of Regents before publication. Regent Bob Downer expressed concern over the tone of Donley's message.

'I am opposed to the publication of this op ed piece,” Downer wrote in a July 28 email to the board office. 'I believe that this selectively uses data. ... This is continuing to stir the pot and create division among our universities which is becoming worse than I have seen in 50 years.”

Downer told The Gazette that part of the reason he took issue with the guest opinion was his push toward graduating students in four years. UI has the highest four-year graduation rate in the state - it reached 51.1 percent in the most recent report issued earlier this year.

'I have been probably painful, as far as other people have been concerned, in my demands that there be an emphasis on four-year graduation rates,” Downer said. 'It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that if you're in school for six years, it's going to cost more than if you're in school for four years.”

Downer said he wants the scoring index, in part, to set high expectations for students once they're admitted.

Emil Rinderspacher, director of UI admissions, said that will be part of the discussion.

'Whoever we admit, we want to be successful while they're here - academically and personally,” said Rinderspacher, who is on the study group charged with looking at the scoring index. 'So it's really important that we get this right. We are not just recruiting a warm body.”

The consulting firm that suggested the Board of Regents review its admission index found that class rank increasingly is not being provided. About 31.6 percent of all freshmen across the three universities in fall 2013 didn't have class rank, for example.

Rinderspacher said the study group will look at a variety of solutions in hopes of making the scoring system more relevant. That could include an essay, and it could mean different standards for each university, he said.

'That would give the universities more control over what they want to become - from a diversity standpoint,” Rinderspacher said. 'But we are going to do all this research to decide what our admission standards should look like.”