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When George W. Bush, then governor of Texas, signed legislation in 1997 that automatically admitted to a public university the top 10 percent of graduates from each high school in the state, he hailed it as a race-neutral way to diversify enrollment.
Once he was in the White House, his administration cited the Texas law in a legal brief before the U.S. Supreme Court opposing the use of racial preferences in college admissions in two landmark cases that involved the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. The Supreme Court eventually ruled that institutions could use race- conscious admissions, although in a limited way.
Now many in Texas, including the current governor, Rick Perry, a Republican, are questioning whether the class-rank law is still needed. No fewer than 12 bills have been introduced in the Legislature this year to repeal or amend the law, including measures to cap automatic admissions at a certain share of the entering class or to limit the benefit to the top 5 percent of high-school graduates.
Opponents argue that the need for the law has been superseded by the Supreme Court's decisions. And they say the law has had unintended consequences, particularly at the University of Texas at Austin, the state's premier institution, where nearly three- quarters of the admissions offers to Texas seniors for this fall's freshman class were made on the basis of class rank.
Critics say the influx of top-10-percent students at the University of Texas -- and to a lesser extent, at Texas A&M University at College Station, the state's other flagship institution -- risks crowding out other qualified students, especially graduates of academically competitive high schools who did not rank in the top of their class. They point to SAT scores for freshmen at the Austin campus as cause for alarm, noting that in both 2003 and 2004, students outside the top 10 percent outscored their higher-ranking classmates on the test.
"There is great concern expressed to me by alumni about the dumbing down of the University of Texas," says State Sen. Jeff Wentworth, a San Antonio Republican who has introduced a bill to eliminate the law.
But supporters of the class-rank plan say standardized exams are a poor predictor of college success. Top-10-percent students...