If there’s one thing you can count on from the Elko Daily Free Press, it’s that it’ll point you in the general direction of something really annoying…

RENO (AP) - NAACP and American Civil Liberties Union officials have expressed concern over tougher admission standards at Nevada’s two universities, citing a report that shows they have caused a drop in minority enrollment.

Lucille Adin, president of the Reno-Sparks National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said a further increase in the minimum grade point average from 2.75 to 3.0 this fall could discourage minority students from getting a higher education.

“We try to get these kids to go to college, and they make it so difficult by raising the grade point average and the tuition,” Adin told the Reno Gazette-Journal.

First off, let me begin by noting that, yes, this is an AP article, and I suppose that, as a blogger, I’m supposed to be boycotting them or something.  That’s nice. Unfortunately, noting this requires me to go on a tangent that I probably should save for another time, but, as the French say, c’est la vie.

I’m not into ideological purity.  I don’t care if it’s free software, Libertarianism, or whatever - I don’t believe that any single ideology can or should define my personal behaviors.  Life is far too complicated to be properly covered by a finite set of rules and regulations.  That’s not to say that a person shouldn’t have a broad, defining philosophy to guide their actions; failing to have one is a good way to drift around aimlessly.  However, attempting to be a “good” insert movement of choice here, whether that’s Christian, Atheist, Muslim, or conservative blogger, is a pointlessly limiting exercise.  In short, don’t add more rules and requirements in your life than you need in order to live your life productively without compromising somebody else’s ability to do the same.  This is why I’m not too concerned about the AP boycott - if they feel like calling me up and saying, “Hey, stop quoting our material,” fine, I’ll honor that.  Until then, I do think it’s unfortunate that the AP is being difficult with certain bloggers, and it’s unfortunate that they’re encouraging Estate 4.1 to use a different media service to meet their editorial needs, but, if that’s the choice they wish to make, well, it’s certainly within their rights to do so.

Back to the article at hand, though…

I can see how increased tuition would be unpleasant for everyone involved.  I was a college student in the University of Nevada system, and, though it was quite affordable (roughly $1800/semester for tuition for 15+ credits each semester I went there, not including books), I can definitely relate with the fact that a minor tuition increase is felt very sensitively against many college students there.  Since it’s a public university system, especially not a particularly well-renown one, many students there are self-supporting; put another way, you’re not seeing a whole lot of students whose parents are footing the bill.  That said, a 3.0 in high school is not too much to ask in order to attend a university.  If you can’t pull off a 3.0 in high school, you probably shouldn’t be going to college. Heck, I had a 3.7 in high school and, without getting into specifics, let’s just say my college GPA was not that high.  There are a lot of distractions once you go to college - nobody’s forcing you to show up to class, you probably have to do something on the side to pay for your existence, there’s minimal parental supervision, and there are a lot more social events.  If you’re doing such a poor job of handling the pressures of high school that you can’t even pull off a 3.0 there, well, how well do you think you’re going to handle college, hmm?

This brings me to Ms. Adin’s statement regarding the effect a higher GPA requirement affects minority enrollment:  Which is better for our minorities - letting them slip into college without sufficient preparation, so they’re up to their noses in student loan debt with nothing to show for it, or telling them that, sorry, they’re not prepared for college yet?  As someone with far more than I should have in student loan debt, I can tell you straight up that encouraging people to amass the kind of debt many poor students would need to accrue to successfully handle the financial pressures of college when they’re nowhere near ready or, at that time, capable of finishing a college education is morally bankrupt.  You’re staring someone in the eyes and saying, “Don’t worry about high school - you’ll be fine in college, regardless of whether your past experience has encouraged you in your abilities to handle further schooling.  It’s not like you’ll be saddled with crippling debt or waste years of your life that would have been better spent in a vocational program or anything.”  In short, if a student, minority or otherwise, can’t handle the educational pressures of high school, why should our publicly funded universities pay for that student’s education, in whole or in part?  It’s not a good investment for the student and it’s not a good investment for the state.

Besides, it’s not like the numbers for minorities are that bad:

The University of Nevada, Reno, reported a 35 percent increase in black students and a 10.6 percent decrease in Hispanic students.

Remember, folks, according to the new math, an increase in the number of a minority group’s enrollment is a sign that their ability to enroll is being threatened.  This, of course, is probably a shining example of the kind of logic one learns when you go to college without proper preparation beforehand.

On an entirely unrelated note, teens driving into a deer is newsworthy.  The more you know…

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