Louisiana's college admissions standards toughened by board

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — A month after delaying a decision, Louisiana's higher education policy-making board voted Wednesday to bolster its minimum admission standards for public universities by adding the threat of financial penalties for campuses that disobey the requirements.

The Board of Regents approved the adjustments to the state's existing, 15-year-old admissions standards without objection, after weeks of behind-the-scenes negotiations to get board members comfortable with the changes.

Most of the rewrites were modest. But the penalty provisions represent the first real effort to force compliance with the policy. The board has never penalized schools for not complying with admissions criteria.

Still, financial penalties won't be automatic for campuses that violate the admissions criteria, and the threat of reduced funding doesn't come unless a school has breached the policy for two consecutive years. The Board of Regents, which divvies up most state financing for public college campuses through its funding formula, would have vote to strip some dollars from a school.

“Today’s policy improvements retain the Regents’ steadfast commitment to have students admitted where they can be most successful,” Commissioner of Higher Education Kim Hunter Reed said in a statement after the vote.

Reed and her staff spent months working on the adjustments to the minimum admissions standards after LSU sparked criticism for breaching the requirements and granting more exceptions than allowed.

When the changes came up in January for review, regents members postponed a decision, saying they wanted more time to comb through the suggested tweaks and hear from Louisiana's public university system leaders. By Wednesday, members appeared comfortable after adding language that spelled out a regents vote would be required to...