Less than a week after a Maryland Senate committee reviewed a proposal that would require four-year public colleges and universities to guarantee admission for first-year students, a House subcommittee discussed the same issue Monday during an overall review of higher education in the state.
One of the topics before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Education and Economic Development focused on direct admission, which allows high school students to go through a less rigorous college application process without formally applying to an institution.
Senate President Pro Tem Malcolm Augustine (D-Prince George’s) presented legislation last week that would require institutions to adopt a guaranteed admission process to accept Maryland high school students, from a public or private school, who are in the top 10% of their graduating class.
The proposed bill comes after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled last summer that affirmative action in the college admission policies at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill violated the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. The court’s decision effectively ended consideration of race as a part of the higher education selection process nationwide.