Beginning this fall, ASU will change its admissions policy to accept freshmen from varying levels of competency, leaving incoming classes a patchwork of abilities.
As part of a new University policy, students with a GPA of 3.0 or higher will be admitted with or without fulfilling competency requirements.
"For example, this change would apply to students who took math for all four years of high school and did really well, but perhaps didn't take all the right math classes to meet the admissions requirement," said Tim Desch, director of undergraduate admissions at ASU.
To equalize the problem of admitting students with academic deficiencies, the University has been developing, over the past seven months, a "University College" plan to provide a central location for academic advising, tutoring services, career advising and academic exploration to get lagging students up to speed.
"A lot of people are excited about the concept," Jones said. "But the devil is in the details, and that's what we're trying to flush out."
The concept is part of the Changing Directions plan to allow the state's universities to set their own admissions requirements.
Jones said University College would be designed to help not only deficient students, but also ambitious students who "just need a little more direction."
"University College will try to address a number of different student services," Jones said. "It's not just for students with deficiencies."
Jones said the committee of administrators is also looking at current advising and counseling programs to decide if University College is even necessary.
There "may be current systems in place" to deal with the goals of a University College, Jones said.
Jones said she didn't know when the committee would write a proposal- but said other options are still being explored.
Reach the reporter at meagan.pollnow@asu.edu.
