Entrance standards will be more stringent in 2006

TEMPE ÷ The Arizona Board of Regents moved a step closer yesterday to giving universities more control over who they admit, but decided to delay changes in the requirements until 2006.

That move would give current high school students more time to prepare for the changes, said Jack Jewett, board president.

Proposals originally asked that students entering in the fall of 2004 be the first class admitted under changed admissions standards, but in the end regents decided that any changes would begin for freshmen entering a university in the fall of 2006.

Regents said they were concerned that allowing changes by the fall of 2004 would give neither students nor administrators enough time to understand the complexity of the changes.

"Regents and universities need more time to work with high schools to prepare them," Jewett said, adding that a fall 2004 change would be too quick and possibly disenfranchise freshman and sophomore high school students.

The universities have proposed that the regents only guarantee admission to students in the top 25 percent of their high school class and allow the universities to evaluate everyone else on a case-by-case basis to determine whether or not they could be admitted.

Guaranteeing admission to only students in the top quartile gives UA discretion over 51 percent of all eligible applicants, according to regents' data.

Likins said he wants to use this flexibility to make the admissions process more individualized, evaluating applicants based on leadership qualities, ethnicity and other factors.

Randy Richardson, vice president of undergraduate education, said he was disappointed by the regents' decisions to delay the implementation of admissions standards because the goal of changing admissions standards soon is to give students incentives to succeed in high school.

"I want us to be able to encourage students to work hard," he said.

That incentive to work hard would come with the label of regent's graduate for those students who graduate in the top 25 percent of their class, according to the university's proposals.

The regents also voted yesterday to increase residence hall rates by an average of $215 to cover increased costs of operating the halls and to help pay construction costs.

At many residence halls, the increase is $179, but at Apache-Santa Cruz Residence Hall, which was recently renovated and outfitted with new furniture, the increase is $747.

The UA's Residence Hall Association supported the increase, which met with little opposition from dorm-dwellers.

The increase was partly due to the construction of the Del Puente Residence Hall, which will open in the fall as part of the Highland Commons project at UA's southern edge.

President Pete Likins said dorm residents pay for residence hall construction because it wouldn't be fair to ask all students to pay for construction projects when most students don't live there.

"When you build a new residence hall then all the residence hall rates go up a bit," he said.

Tuition at the College of Medicine will rise $909 next year, to $11,483, regents decided yesterday.

They voted 9-0 for the increase, which will keep medical school tuition at the 33rd percentile nationwide. Board policy dictates that tuition be set at that level annually.