PlayerRep said:
tnt said:
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Are the increased admissions standards in effect yet? It was my impression that they were not yet in place. It's my understanding that MSU decided not to increase their standards. Thus, when effective, MSU will have some recruiting advantage in this regard.
I don't agree with your statement about UM being in danger regarding the increased ncaa APR standard. What's kept UM's 4-year APR down a bit for the past 4 years, is the very low score 4 years ago. That year will be out of the average next year, and UM's APR is like to jump considerably.
It wouldn't take much to skew that number pretty quickly. Something that is not likley with Mick around. All right, I'm going to do something I rarley do. No sarcasm, no chain pulling, no devils advocate stuff. Whether the admission standards are in place or not they should be. each school has had its own method of dealing with students coming in not prepared for college lacking either math or writing skills.
MSU had the simplest method. They simply flunked them out by having their basic math courses required for every major. The problem is their basic math courses required a mastery of at least 4 years of high school math. They keep the trend going throughout four years of college.
For U of M business majors, the most feared (and repeated) course is finance. The biggest reason is that its math intensive, requiring not only a good base of statistics but calculus as well. There are a lot formulas graphing etc. Walking into an exam, students are handed a formula sheet with every formula used up to that date, and allowed to use a business calculator that has the "math" built in. You simply need know which variables are necessary and plug them in. (if you don't have a basic understanding of the math you can't do it.
At MSU however, students can cram as much information as possible onto a 3 X 5 card. Thats it. NO business calculator. You have to do all the math and know all the formulas. In a recent experiment the two schools traded exams. The MSU students did well on the UM exam, but it wasn't quite so good the other way around. Its not that one school has a better business school that the other (UM is still better) its just that one eliminated students earlier than the other. Finance and IT at UM is often the end of a Business degree for many (2-3 years into college.
U of M's approach has been to teach high school classes to incoming students and have them as numbered courses so a student can make academic progress (and retain financial aid.) Those days are over. Budgets don't allow it. At one time these courses could be taught by graduate assistants, not any longer. accreditation standards require an ever increasing number of courses be taught by full time tenure track faculty (it is even limiting the number of classes taught by adjuncts.) Simply put the U of M can't afford to pay college professors to teach High school classes.
U of M also has another eliminator. Most Departments grade on the curve and structure exams over time from statistical analysis to make it less apparent. (there is a reason most exams are scantron and it isn't to speed up grading)This isn't the curve we had, that could make a bad performance good. This is a tough school at the upper division level and has no guilt in flunking out a senior.
The approaches have been mirrored in the schools APR rates. MSU has struggled, we have not. UM has been successful in turning high school level students/athletes into college students, MSU hasn't bothered. In the future budgets wion't allow prep work, thats why the emphasis has been put on the 2 year schools and 4 year colleges, At some point these schools can have students prepared to transfer to University.
So PR what I'm saying is increasing standards at not only the NCAA level, but at the Univesity level WILL present some very significant challenges in the future.
You and I were Honors college students at fairly presitigous Universities, where the dumbass sitting next to us was a High School valedictorian, so it may be hard to understand that there are a lot of kids coming in to a University such as ours, that simply aren't prepared. No longer can the Universities prepare them and call it academic progress. If they can't hit the ground running, they are done.