UT President William Powers asked the House Committee on Higher Education Monday to allow the University to limit the portion of the student body it admits under the top 10 percent law.
The nine-member committee heard testimony for eight bills that could change admissions policies for Texas universities.
Committee Chair Rep. Geanie Morrison, R-Victoria, said the committee would hear the testimony and leave the bills pending, so the committee could draft a compromise bill they could agree on. Attempts to cap admission under the top 10 percent law - at 60 percent and 50 percent - failed in 2003 and 2005.
Powers was the first to testify and spoke on behalf of Morrison's House Bill 1186, the first introduced to the committee. Under HB 1186, half of the freshman class would be admitted under the top 10 percent law and the other half under holistic review. Holistic review factors in student awards or leadership roles to increase geographical and economic diversity and enrich the student body, Powers said. Students not admitted to UT-Austin under the law would be eligible to attend any of the other UT campuses until those reach the 50-percent mark.
"It would help our diversity efforts if we have more capacity for holistic review in a larger part of our class," Powers said. "What we would like is relief that does not do away with the top 10 percent rule, but has about 40 to 50 percent of our students coming through the top 10 percent rule. That would give us the advantages."
Powers was joined by UT Vice Provost and Director of Admissions Bruce Walker, Texas A&M Interim President Eddie Davis and Alice Reinarz, A&M's assistant provost for enrollment.
The state's top 10 percent law grants automatic admission to a Texas public university to any student that graduates in the top 10 percent of the graduating class of an accredited Texas high school.
The law is a by-product of a 1996 ruling by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals against race-based admissions in the Hopwood v. Texas case, citing equal protection under the 14th Amendment.
In 2003, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the University of Michigan could not assign points to ethnicity as part of their admissions policy, yet allowed ethnicity as one factor for schools to admit a more diverse class. That ruling essentially invalidated the Hopwood decision.
UT re-introduced an affirmative action model of admissions with the 2005 class, according to the most recent report prepared by the Office of Admissions.
Powers said when the Hopwood law was passed, 45 percent of UT students were in the top 10 percent of their high school class. He said new legislation would help the University return to a more mixed and holistic evaluation of students that included qualifications other than grade-point average.
Powers said that while he was dean of the UT law school, minority enrollment quadrupled through the school's extensive recruiting, despite restrictions on race-based admissions under the Hopwood decision.
Last June, almost 24,000 students qualified for enrollment to UT under the top 10 percent law, Powers said.
UT and A&M are the most popular Texas universities, and the most likely to be affected by the change to a 50-percent-admissions rule introduced by the bill. UT is currently the only Texas university with more than half of its students admitted from the top 10 percent, though Davis said Texas A&M was close to reaching that mark.
Luis Figueroa, a legislative staff attorney for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund of San Antonio, said the top 10 percent law should remain intact in its present form.
"Holistic review would be ideal if our students were all coming from equal places," Figueroa said. "We have different schools which offer different levels of advanced placement honors programs, different levels of opportunities for students at different high schools, and as a result, there are many students that are coming from a huge disadvantage."
Figueroa knocked UT's concerns of being overwhelmed by students that finish in the top 10 percent of their graduating class.
Figueroa said the nation's more prestigious universities admit more than 90 percent of their students finishing in the top ranks of their class,
"We are committed to a diverse student body as a highest priority," Powers said. "We've had our most diverse class in history enrolled as freshmen this year."
Powers said one of four students admitted this spring were Hispanic or black, but UT will have difficulty raising that percentage if the law is not adjusted, and the overall student population would begin to climb again.
Hispanics and blacks are the state's largest minority groups and represent more than 47 percent of the population, according to August 2006 estimates released by the U.S. Census Bureau.
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