Good morning, and welcome to Tuesday, August 6. Rick Seltzer wrote today’s Briefing. Julia Piper compiled Comings and Goings. Andrew Mytelka submitted the Footnote. Get in touch: dailybriefing@chronicle.com.
Direct admissions gains steam
More and more students are poised to learn they can succeed in college without really applying.
Direct admissions is having a moment. Think of it as pre-qualification, where colleges screen students’ academic records and admit them before they’ve formally applied. The decade-old practice has recently grown more popular, both for equity reasons and as institutions worry about enrollment.
- At a large public university system: The University of Wisconsin system started sending its first direct-admissions offers last week. The notices tell rising high-school seniors which of 10 system institutions offered them early slots, The Center Square reported.
- For community-college students: The University of Maine system guaranteed admission to students who graduate from several programs at the state’s community colleges. The university system is expected to contact eligible students halfway through their associate degrees, according to Maine Public Radio.
- At private colleges: Bellarmine University touted automatic admissions for high-school students in Louisville, Ky., where its campus is located. Students with a grade-point average of at least 2.75 can fill out an online form — estimated to require less than five minutes — to be automatically admitted.
Platforms like the Common App and Niche are wind in the sails of direct admissions because they allow colleges to take part in the practice, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported. Missouri institutions including the University of Missouri at St. Louis, Maryville University of St. Louis, Northwest Missouri State University, the Missouri University of Science and Technology, Southeast Missouri State University, and the University of Central Missouri are all starting on Niche, and some also use the Common App and work with high schools.
Direct admissions offers colleges hope of widening their new-student pipelines at a time when many are struggling in the face of shrinking high-school graduation classes. It’s long been pitched as a way to prevent students who aren’t sure if they can go to college from walking away from higher education.
But results are mixed. So far:
- Enrollment increased at Idaho’s public institutions, especially two-year campuses, after the state pioneered direct admissions in 2015, researchers found. But enrollment of students who received Pell Grants — a proxy for low-income status — changed little.
- Direct-admissions offers encouraged more students to apply but didn’t influence where they enrolled, according to an August 2023 study, which found that other barriers to access, like affordability, are key.
The bigger picture: It can get messy as states, systems, and companies adapt elements of direct admissions to their own ends. What works well for some students and in some states could very easily end up as just another lead-generation product pitched to enrollment-starved institutions.