Point

A former IU trustee had this to say the other day in the Indy Star:


IU's goal misses the mark Ray Richardson

Indiana University has focused great effort on increasing the average SAT of its incoming freshman class on the Bloomington campus. IU officials recently announced that some increase had occurred: 25 points of a total of 1600.

But there is a very serious downside to this effort that has not been publicized. It was achieved by replacing, when fully phased in over four years, 3,500 graduates of high schools in Indiana with 3,500 graduates of out-of-state high schools who have higher GPAs.

To get those out-of-state students, IU has had to pay $20 million to them in scholarships -- money that could have been used to reduce overall tuition or to help less-affluent Hoosiers through school. Another serious downside is that those 3,500 students from out of state are much more likely to leave this state after graduating than native Hoosiers would be. Our state ranks 44th in the percentage of residents with college degrees. The decision by IU to educate fewer Hoosiers can only make that ranking worse.

Should it not be one of the obligations of a state school to assist the economic well-being of the state? If there was a hope that the Hoosiers denied admission to the Bloomington campus would enroll at one of the seven other IU campuses, that did not happen; the total enrollment at those campuses remains the same.

Did IU decide to educate fewer Hoosiers because they were concerned about their ability to graduate from the Bloomington campus? That has not in fact been a problem, since the 72 percent graduation rate at Bloomington was high enough to receive bonus points in the U.S. News & World Report ratings.

So what could have been the motivation for denying admission to 3,500 Hoosiers? It was likely this very U.S. News ranking of colleges. Perversely, the Bloomington campus will now receive extra points for denying admission to students. Bloomington will now also receive points for the somewhat higher GPAs. So IU decided to spend $20 million to attract out-of-state students with higher GPAs, while ignoring the cost to the state's economy, not to mention the devastation caused to the denied students.

Focusing exclusively on a goal without paying attention to the side effects can cause great collateral damage.