Wednesday, September 25, 1996

New Education Chair Mulls One-Stop Shopping for Students

By PEGGY FIKAC
Associated Press

AUSTIN - Would-be college students could find one-stop shopping at university systems under an idea floated by new Senate Education Chairman Teel Bivins.

Under the idea he's considering, students would apply to the University of Texas System rather than UT-Austin, for example. While students could mark a preference for a particular campus, the system would tell them which of UT's campuses around the state they would be eligible to attend.

Bivins, R-Amarillo, said Tuesday he's not ready to offer the idea as a legislative proposal. But he said he's looking at it as a potential way to make the admissions process more efficient and student-friendly.

"If a student applies only to UT-Austin today and is rejected, they have no knowledge of whether they might be able to attend school at (UT) Pan American or UT-Dallas," he said. "If you let the student know that he would be accepted at one or more of the institutions within the system, it would be helpful for the student."

Currently, students who wanted to apply to all the UT System schools, would have to send an individual application to each one, Bivins said.

"One of the things I'd like to do is try to put the focus on the student and assist the student not only in getting into a higher education institution but also matriculating through that institution," he said.

Bivins said it's likely that Texans considering UT may focus on the Austin campus "and less attention is paid to the other schools, many of which are doing a fabulous job."

Teri Flack, spokeswoman for the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, said she isn't aware of a university system currently using such an admissions process for undergraduate or graduate school programs.

"Admissions decisions pretty much are left at the local level, at the university level itself," she said.
UT System spokesman Monty Jones said,"As far as we know, the UT system has not yet seen a proposal for a centralized admission plan. If such a proposal were to be brought forward, of course we'd be interested in reviewing it and we'd give it very serious attention."

Jones said the UT system does have centralized admissions for its medical and dental programs, in which the system informs the prospective student which health-related institution they can attend.
In addition, he said, UT-Austin refers the names and addresses of applicants who aren't admitted at that campus to other system institutions. Those institutions then can ask for the applicant's OK for UT-Austin to forward the application file.

"In the real world, it's likely that for a lot of students, their first choice might be UT-Austin and their second choice might be (Texas) A&M, and the other way around. ... They are roughly comparable in stature and they have similar admissions standards and similar programs," Jones said.

UT-Austin and UT-Dallas have similar admissions standards, he said, but there is a "significant difference" between their admissions requirements and those of some other UT institutions that fulfill different missions and roles.