When it comes to the state admission standards for attending a public college or university, schools should follow them and not accept a slew of students that fall short of those expectations.

Schools that ignore those standards certainly aren’t doing the students any favors. Plus, it’s more likely that a students won’t have a successful path if they attend a college that is beyond their academic reach.

Those ripple effects could end up lowering a college’s graduation rate. They also hurt smaller state schools that could have offered a better option for students that couldn’t attend the larger universities.

Louisiana State University has come under fire for its “holistic” approach when admitting incoming freshmen. It began last year when F. King Alexander was still university president. He resigned in December and has since moved to Oregon State University as its president.

Instead of turning away students that failed to achieve a high enough ACT score, Alexander said the holistic approach was based more on things like essays and recommendations. He said this way of admissions was being done by leading universities throughout the country.

There were several problems with LSU’s approach. For starters, it disregarded the standards set by the Board of Regents. University donors with deep pockets weren’t happy about it either.

All that has changed with the Board of Regents’ recent approval of the Statewide Minimum Admissions Standards Policy. Kim Hunter Reed, commissioner of higher education, told The Advocate that the goal was to make sure “management boards were involved” in the process. She added there is a “section that says we will have accountability.”

Under the policy, students that don’t meet the minimum admission standards for a certain university, such as grade point average or ACT score, may get in under a few “exceptions.” Students who don’t meet the minimum standards can make it up with a summer school session. Schools that allow too many “exceptions” could be fined.

One state lawmaker isn’t pleased with the policy. Sen. Cleo Fields, a Democrat from Baton Rouge, filed legislation that attempts to remove the fines for schools that violate the standards. Fields is chair of the Senate Education Committee.

From the looks of it, the debate over admission standards is far from over. We’ll see how things play out once the Legislature meets for the spring session March 9.

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This editorial was written by a member of the American Press Editorial Board. Its content reflects the collaborative opinion of the Board, whose members include Crystal Stevenson, John Guidroz, Jim Beam and Mike Jones.admission standards graphic