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The Texas Legislature is debating a bill that puts stiffer course requirements on college-bound high school students. As Jim Bell reports, it is aimed at students who are guaranteed college admission because they are in the top 10% of their class.

Under this bill, high school students heading for college would have to take four years of recommended college preparatory courses to qualify for automatic admission under the top ten percent rule. The sponsor says it is needed because some students take easy courses in their senior year to make sure they finish in the top 10%.

Ed Apodaca is associate vice president for enrollment at the University of Houston. While he thinks this is a good bill, he does not think it is going to affect very many high schoolers. Apodaca says students who take the easy courses are not going to four-year universities with high admission standards. He says most of them go to open enrollment universities or two-year community colleges where they have problems anyway because they are not as ready for college as they might have been if they had taken harder courses in high school. © Copyright 2012, kuhf