Colorado entrance requirements get tougher
Taylor Nelson reported on Colorado.com that the Colorado Commission on Higher Education refused to postpone the new requirements, which will start with the high school graduating class of 2010. But commissioners agreed to ease up slightly on their rigor – dropping one of two years of foreign language and removing the stipulation that all four years of math be advanced.
Students will have to take four years of English, four years of math, three years of science, three years of social studies and one year of a foreign language to get into a university or four-year state college.
School districts, especially rural ones, don’t have the money and can’t find the teachers for extra foreign language and math courses, they said. And students who don’t realize until their junior year that they are college material will not have time to fit in all of the requirements.
Many students who will enter college next year will not even meet the requirements the commission set in 2003 for the high school graduating class of 2008. Those include four years of English, three years of math, three years of science and three years of social studies.
College admissions directors said stricter requirements would eliminate some of their leeway in deciding who to accept and could decrease the number of minority and first-generation college students admitted.
Under the new policy, courses such as statistics or accounting will count as math. The original policy required four years of advanced math – algebra, geometry, trigonometry and calculus, for example.
The commission also agreed to create a waiver process for students attending school districts that cannot offer all the required courses or can prove they’ve mastered the material another way – such as through SAT scores or being bilingual.
