Summaries | NCRVE Home |
Site Search |
Product Search
The View from Higher Education: Public Universities Respond to Educational
Reform (MDS-913)
A. C. McCormick, M. N. Alt, S. Geis
Higher education plays an important role in determining the
prospects for adopting and institutionalizing educational reform.
Specifically, higher education is seen as endorsing or rejecting changes at
the secondary level through the admissions process. The history of
educational reform is replete with accounts that portray higher education
as unsupportive of reform and as obstructing reform through inflexible
admissions standards. In the present reform climate, higher education's
role is as important as ever, but there has been little systematic inquiry
into how colleges and universities are responding to reform.
This report presents findings from a 50-state survey of how public
universities are responding to selected educational reforms in the
admissions process. The survey consisted of structured telephone interviews
of personnel in state higher education agencies and at flagship
institutions in the 50 states.
This study provides valuable information for policymakers and
reformers in government, secondary and postsecondary education, and
independent education policy groups. It identifies reforms that pose
challenges to conventional admissions practices, discusses the realities of
the admissions process and the practical difficulties involved in
accommodating these reforms, provides empirical data on how flagship public
universities are responding, and reports on the extent to which formal
policies have been adopted or are being developed to address these reforms
in the admissions process.
>
The full text of this publication is available online.
Summaries | NCRVE Home |
Site Search |
Product Search