There are some major trends in California Higher Education that mandate the development of new criteria for college admissions. These trends include higher accountability for performance for educators, budget deficits that have resulted in major educational funding cuts, low college graduation rates and increasing admissions, and strong nativist sentiments opposed to giving preference to minorities in admissions processes. As such, new college admission criteria need to be based on performance and merit. The only fair way of developing admissions criteria is to devise criteria that rewards merit and gives available admissions slots to the highest performing and most qualified applicants.
The higher standards of accountability on educators are the direct result of ôàthe unusual level of politicization in CaliforniaÆs system of public educationö (Maasik and Solomon, 2005, p. 175). Educators often teach to the test, a phenomenon stemming from the risk of potentially losing their jobs if performance measures among students are not high. As such, since all colleges in the California Higher System of Education could be filled with 4.0 students who also have high SAT scores, merit should be the overriding criterion in college admissions.
Enormous budget deficits in California have been responsible for both severe educational funding cuts as well as increasing tuitions rates. Such increases in tuition are in opposition to the 1960 California Master Plan for Higher Education, which ôfirst promised a tuition-free college education for every citizen of Californiaö (Maasik, et al., 2005, p. 176). Since tuition increases are on the rise, it is even more imperative that college admissions are based on merit rather than other criteria. This is because such students often have the means to pay for education because they are from affluent or well-off backgrounds.
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