Dean Hubbard
Kansas City Star Editorial Advisory Panel Columnist

Tuesday’s (September 22) editorial in the Kansas City Star lamented the high dropout rate (20 percent) among freshmen at Kansas State University and suggested that raising admissions standards is the appropriate solution to the problem. I disagree.

Since KU is the example given, let’s review their policies and the qualifications of the students they admit. According to the editorial, Kansas public universities require “an ACT score of 21 or higher, a class rank in the top third of the graduating class, or a grade point average of 2.0 in the state’s pre-college curriculum.” On a 36 point scale, the average national composite ACT score is 21.1; the average Kansas composite score is 22. The average ACT score for students admitted to KU and the Med Center for 2008 was 24.8, well above the state and national average. So it is difficult to say that unmotivated or dumb students are the sole reason for the high rate of freshmen failure at KU.

I agree that the admissions standards in Kansas need fine tuning. First, it is difficult to interpret the significance of being in the top third of a class when so many students come from small schools. Also, a 2.0 in the state’s pre-college curriculum may, in fact, be below average. Nonetheless, I am troubled by the tendency to blame the customer and exclude tax-paying citizens from public institutions when there are steps that can be taken to improve freshmen success in college.

I spent 25 years at Northwest Missouri State University. In 1990 we had a first semester failure rate nearly identical to KU’s: ours was 18 percent, KU’s is 20 percent (our average ACT score was 21, lower than theirs). We made improving freshmen success a top priority and, as a consequence, in 2008 90 percent of freshmen successfully navigated their first semester and 73 percent returned the next fall, compared to 61 percent in 1990.

Students experience difficulty their first year in college for a variety of complex reasons. The editorial identified one major impediment to success: lack of adequate high school preparation capped off by a near useless senior year. There is a huge gap between the knowledge and skills required to succeed in high school and what is expected of college freshmen. There is also a yawning study habits gap coupled with a cultural gap. A good start for improving freshmen success would be for high school and college faculty and administrators to collaborate to narrow those gaps.

University professors also have a role to play in the classroom. Freshmen courses are rarely coordinated and little thought is given to requiring that the first courses a student enrolls in are freshmen friendly. For example, instead of weekly quizzes and tests with prompt feedback that allow students to adjust their study habits to match expectations, too many classes have high stakes midterm and final exams where, if a student blows it for whatever reason, it’s over. Peer (older) student tutoring and supplemental instruction in difficult courses have also proven to dramatically improve success rates.

Every teacher at all levels of education would rather teach bright, highly motivated students. Stay out of their way and do no harm and they will succeed. Unfortunately, there aren’t enough of them to go around. As a society, we cannot afford to jettison the rest. As a wise mentor once told me, “What you get is what you got, work with it!”