Gov. Kathy Hochul wants to see the top 10% of high school seniors automatically accepted into public colleges and universities. But the plan, while well-meaning, has a problem.
“To ensure that high-achieving students have a home at New York’s world-class institutions, Governor Hochul is launching an ambitious plan to offer high-achieving students from the top 10 percent of graduating high schoolers direct admission to [State University of New York] and [City University of New York] institutions,” the Democratic governor’s office said in a summary of her 2024 agenda.
“SUNY will develop a direct admissions program that can reach across the state and help more students achieve their potential,” while “CUNY will work to expand its existing direct admissions program to further its mission of extending opportunity to students of all backgrounds.”
The governor’s office said these changes “will both increase equity for students and retain the best and brightest within New York State and its higher education institutions, ultimately creating an even more skilled workforce in the state.”
The problem is that every New York school is not the same — the top 10% at Staten Island Technical High School, one of the best in the Empire State, is not the same as Math Science Technology Preparatory School in Buffalo. This is not to knock any particular high school; Staten Island is a selective school.
But students do not benefit when they are pushed into colleges for which they are not qualified. In fact, being placed into universities that are above their skill level hurts them.
University of California Los Angeles Professor Richard Sander calls this “mismatch theory,” which is the idea that students incorrectly matched with a university will do worse than if they were placed into an institution better aligned to their academic skills.
Think of it this way: Someone who struggled with algebra in high school would probably flunk out of Harvard University’s intro to calculus class. But that student could do much better taking an intro to calculus class at a community college, where it is slower-paced and the classroom size is smaller, allowing for more help from the instructor.
Sander has found black and Hispanic students are more likely to graduate with STEM degrees when they attend colleges for which they are better qualified. This is presumably true for white students as well, but they are not often mismatched since affirmative action does not boost them into universities for which they are underqualified.
One possible way to strengthen the Hochul proposal is to add standardized test scores into the equation. Someone who graduates in the top 10% of their class and has an ACT or SAT score that is linked to college success could be automatically admitted. There is research that shows a correlation between ACT scores and college grades, though admittedly, there are studies that show the contrary.
No system is perfect, but it would seem clear the top 10% at some of the worst-performing high schools in the state cannot be compared to the top 10% at the best.
This is concerning. Even SUNY appeared to allude to problems with the plan in its statement on the governor’s announcement.
“We applaud Governor Hochul’s proposal to ensure that more of New York’s home-grown, high-achieving students attend outstanding selective SUNY campuses,” the university system stated.
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But there’s a caveat, whether SUNY intended it or not, that sums up a potential pitfall of the proposal: Students must be “college-ready and able to succeed in an academically rigorous environment.”
That qualification is fair — not just to the state’s top students but to those who need a little more help.
Matt Lamb is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is an associate editor for The College Fix and has previously worked for Students for Life of America and Turning Point USA.