The News-Gazette.com: President White defends track record on admissions

President White defends track record on admissions

By Christine Des Garennes

Saturday, May 30, 2009 1:30 AM CDT

University of Illinois admissions officers appear to have been pressured to admit underqualified students, but such instances were "very rare," according to University of Illinois President B. Joseph White.

White spoke to The News-Gazette on Friday following the publication of a Chicago Tribune report that found university trustees and Illinois politicians, including former Gov. Rod Blagojevich, pushed for the admission of certain students to the state's flagship university.

There's nothing wrong with the university tracking applicants recommended by legislators or trustees, White said, but "what is wrong is inappropriate pressure to admit an unqualified applicant or to jump a less-qualified applicant over more-qualified applicant."

"It does appear admissions officers came under pressure," White said Friday. The university president said he has never participated in such a process and the extent to which that has happened at the UI, "I will put a stop to it."

White's office released a communication about the issue to the university community Friday afternoon.

"The extent that there have been a small number of failures in the process, we will correct them going forward," White said.

Several months after White became the UI president in January 2005, White said, he received a message that Blagojevich was "interested in the admissions of two candidates I had never heard of before." That message was forwarded to campus.

"I have often forwarded such messages whether they are from another university president or alumnus or political official. There is nothing wrong with doing that," White said.

When White does such a thing, he said, he is not expressing any view about the merits of the candidate.

"I just forward the message," he said.

In the four years White has been UI president, he said, he has never been subjected to pressure to admit an unqualified candidate or jump a less-qualified candidate over a more-qualified candidate.

"I've never received such pressure from the governor, the chair of the board of trustees, trustees or legislators," White said. "I've had many people express inquires. I have never been pressured. And I would never succumb to such pressure."

UI Chancellor Richard Herman on Friday also said he felt no undue pressure from constituents to admit certain students, nor did he exert any pressure on admissions officers himself.

He allowed that the UI may have made some mistakes, given that it processes 26,000 applications each year.

"Do I believe in some instances we get additional data, we take a chance on a kid? Yes. But our track record is pretty good," he said.

Since the story was published on the Chicago Tribune's Web site Thursday night, White said, he has been receiving e-mails from people expressing concerns about the admissions process.

"My big concern about that story is its ability to undermine confidence in the fairness of the University of Illinois admissions process. The public and parents and applicants can be confident in the fairness of the process."

The Urbana campus receives about 26,000 applications a year; about 18,000 are admitted and 8,000 are not admitted, he said.

"Every highly competitive institution receives many, many inquiries during the admissions seasons of the status of applications, about whether there's anything a person can do to urge admission of a particular person. Every institution like ours maintains a list of those inquires," White said.

The Sun-Times dubbed the list a "secret clout list," although White said "there's nothing secret about it" and the university has never hidden it.

During his four-year tenure as president, White also said, "there are fewer of these instances than I've seen elsewhere. At top private universities which have even more rigorous admission standards, the number of alumni, donors and friends who advocate on behalf of candidates is very, very large," White said.

The admissions process is "not a science," Herman said, and all sorts of factors are taken into account, not just test scores and grade point average.