Alabama accepts about half of its applicants. And since half of those admitted are from OOS, the quality of AL K-12 is less relavant. Furthermore, most of the instate students are from the bigger cities where the schools are fine. If they weren’t the state’s cutoff for NMSF would be low, yet it’s not. It’s not high. It’s sort of in the middle.
But again, grad rates at public univs can be a problem simply due to a number of the reasons listed above in post 40 and others. It is also not uncommon for students at publics to work full-time or near-full-time to help put themselves thru college.
Bama has increased its merit awards for instate students, providing larger amounts for lower scores.
I would support a lottery or similar to help fund more aid for instate students.
Also, I don’t know if there’s any “forgiveness” if the additional time is due to co-ops. If so, that shouldn’t be.
As for the lower ACT scores in the bottom quartile. Bama consistently enrolls about 12% of black students. Unfortunately, the average score in the USA of a black student is an ACT 17. That likely impacts the reporting numbers.
Unlike the whiners in Calif that insist that they need lots of taxpayer dollars so that students can skip past their local quality CSUs and UCs and go to sleepaway schools somewhere else in the state, Alabamians seem to be very pleased with nearly all/all of their public universities. In the 20 years I’ve been here, I’ve never heard someone say, “I went to X public U, but would have gotten a better education if I had gone to Y public U.”
That said, you used the word “equal”. Nothing is ever equal. The STEM students at UAH have closer access to Cummings Research Park. The prehealth students at UAB and USA may have greater or closer access to opportunities related to healthcare. That doesn’t mean that attending another Univ hogties them. Opportunities are there, just different. This is everywhere. The opportunities at UCLA aren’t equal to those at UCB or even UCSD, yet I don’t see the UC system doubling those top 3 so that various Californians aren’t made to attend “lesser schools”. No. Common sense tells us that students at all of these schools can achieve their dreams. It’s really on them.