The Texas minority recruitment and retention program is ready to be examined by the U.S. Civil Rights Office, the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board said last Friday in its regular quarterly meeting.
"We are delighted that the number (of minorities enrolled in colleges and universities) has increased and the graduation rates have increased," said Betty James, assistant commissioner for the Access and Equity 2000 division of the coordinating board.
After looking at the results of the Access and Equity 2000 program, the Civil Rights Office will determine how successful it has been and whether it is adequate in scope.
For the last fall semester, Hispanic students represented about 17.6 percent of the total enrollment for state-funded universities in Texas, up from 16.7 percent in fall 1993, according to coordinating board statistics. Black enrollment remained at a constant 8.8 percent during the same time period.
Texas has not been reviewed by the Civil Rights Office since the state was required by the U.S. Supreme Court to form a minority recruitment and retention program in 1983.
The University of Texas black and Hispanic enrollment figures indicate that the university is on its way to meeting its goal of enrolling 1,761 black students and 6,003 Hispanics by fall 1996.
But Tito Garcia, co-director of the Minority Information Center, said the progress will not be complete until the problems causing small increases in black enrollment are identified on a campus-by-campus basis.
"That's when the goals that Access and Equity 2000 set will be met," Garcia said.
James said that the continued progress of the plan will be helped if the Texas Legislature approves funding for two scholarship programs designed to increase minority participation in higher education.
The Minority Doctoral Incentive program would receive $296,800 of state funding to aid post-graduate minorities.
The Minority and Disadvantaged Grants and Scholarships program would be funded at its current level of $517,000 per year in the Senate appropriations bill. A bill to increase funding for the program by an additional $1.5 million is currently being considered by a conference committee.
The coordinating board also changed the requirements for exemption to the Texas Academic Skills Program test.
According to policy set by the coordinating board last year, students scoring higher than a composite of 29 on the American College Test and 1,200 on the Scholastic Assessment Test were exempt from taking the test. The coordinating board set the standard to exempt 10 percent of entering students from taking the test, but the guidelines only exempted 5 percent to 6 percent of the students.
In order to achieve the 10 percent goal, the board lowered the minimum score on the ACT to 27 points.
Ray Grasshoff, spokesman for the coordinating board, said that the SAT score will stay the same because the scores were recentered.