Opinion
 

Staff Editorial

                            Matt Dulin    Barrett Goldsmith    Zach Lee 
                Jim Parsons            Christian Schmidt           Blake Whitaker

Be big

This is the first in a series of editorials about the future of UH that will appear every Monday.

The number of applications for admission to UH is growing. Administrators say they expect to receive 20 percent more this year than last year, and the trend will likely continue in the future.

That means UH, which has capped freshman enrollment at 3,400 students, should get better students. Some worry that means the University will stop being the people's university, a place where anyone can come to get an education.

For some time now, UH has been toeing the line - half major research institution with increasingly higher standards and increasingly better students and half working man's university where first-generation college students and others who might not get a chance elsewhere can attend.

The concerns that UH benefactor Hugh Roy Cullen articulated in the 1930s aren't as important as they were then. Houston high school students have many places where they can receive a good education -- Houston Community College and UH-Downtown among them. 

It's time to end the ambiguity. It's time for UH to become the university it should be. What the city of Houston needs now is a prominent research institution, the type of university that Houston's business community already thinks we are. The people of Houston and Texas need to know that UH is a great university, and accepting better students is the first step in that process.

If some students aren't accepted as freshman, make a deal with them; if they finish certain core requirements and have a good grade point average they will get automatic admission to UH as juniors. That gives all worthy students a chance to get a UH education and makes UH students even better.

This isn't about excluding students because of who they are. It isn't about abandoning what UH represents. It's about UH becoming the best university it should be.

 Send comments to dccampus@mail.uh.edu