Texas senators mull eliminating Top 10 Percent Rule
For the past two decades, one accomplishment has guaranteed students a spot in the University of Texas at Austin: Graduate near the top of your high school's class and you're in.
On Wednesday, state senators discussed repealing that promise at a hearing of the Senate Higher Education Committee. Black and Hispanic leaders touted the rule as perhaps the most important tool in trying to level the playing field for minorities in college admissions. But some senators and school officials cast doubt on its usefulness in 2017 and questioned whether the Legislature should be mandating university admissions at all.
"The Top 10 Percent Rule is a blunt instrument," said UT-Austin President Greg Fenves, quoting a recent legal opinion authored by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy.
The rule is simple. Graduate in the top 10 percent of your Texas high school's class, and you get into any public university in the state. The one exception is UT-Austin, where the sheer number of top 10 percent applicants once threatened to overwhelm the school. In 2009, the Legislature amended the rule to cap the number of automatic admittees to the Austin school at 75 percent of incoming freshmen. That usually means that students in the top 7 or 8 percent get in automatically.
