Open-Admissions Policies in Higher Education

College for All?

During the late 1960s and the 1970s, many colleges and universities experimented with an open-admissions policy—one that would allow any high-school graduate to matriculate. Although many state universities in the Midwest and in California had for generations accepted all applicants from within a given state, applicants generally faced stiff entrance requirements. Open admissions in the 1970s was different. The primary goal of these programs was to increase minority enrollment, to provide equity in education to that segment of the population which had been traditionally underrepresented in higher education. One of the most ambitious programs was undertaken by the City University of New York (CUNY) system, which offered free tuition, changes in grading and coursework, and remedial and compensatory services in 1970 to any secondary-school graduate who enrolled. Fully one-fourth of the thirty-five-thousand-member...

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