Community colleges new foray: as more two-year colleges begin to offer bachelor's degrees, higher education officials ponder benefits, possible pitfalls - related article: taking a stand on the movement

Black Issues in Higher Education, May 22, 2003 by Kristina Lane

"We lost students when the standards were raised. But since that initial loss, our enrollments have gone up," Mason says.

Dr. Edward Jackson, the chancellor of Southern University in Baton Rouge, says the move from open admissions to selective admissions resulted in an expected enrollment drop at the historically Black school. The selective admissions went into effect due to a 1994 desegregation court order. Grambling State University, the other historically Black campus in Louisiana, has not yet been subject to changes in its admissions policies.

"We lost the bottom 15 (percent) to 20 percent of our freshman class when we went to selective admissions in the fall of 2001. We believe many of those students went to the Baton Rouge Community College," Jackson says. Baton Rouge Community College opened in 1998.

Jackson is optimistic that Southern will see an increase in the number of freshman students enrolling this coming fall. Total enrollment at Southern has fallen from 9,027 in fall 1999 to 8,575 in fall 2002.

"We've stepped up our recruitment and the students in the high schools know what we require. Enrollment has started to rise," he says, referring to spring 2003 enrollment figures.

Jackson believes Southern is better off in the long run as a school with selective admissions rather than as an open admissions institution. The school will be better positioned to develop new academic programs and attract high-quality faculty members, according to Jackson. He says that Southern will experience higher retention rates, citing the fall 2001 to fall 2002 freshman to sophomore retention rate was 72 percent. Freshman to sophomore retention from fall 2000 to fall 2001 was 64 percent, according to Jackson.

"Our graduation rates will go up," he predicts.

--By Ronald Roach