Texas Southern University gave $2 million in aid to unqualified students, review finds

by Shannon Najmabadi, Texas Tribune


An external review of admissions irregularities at Texas Southern University found that the school awarded more than $2 million in scholarships to students who did not meet its academic admissions criteria from fall 2017 through 2019, according to an executive summary released Thursday.

A significant number of freshman students — 4,141 of 8,273 — were also admitted despite not meeting academic requirements and were instead accepted “based upon a variety of undocumented scenarios" during those years. The university enrolls about 10,000 students, with a freshman class of around 2,000. Many of the underqualified students are no longer enrolled at Texas Southern, the summary says.

The full report, also reviewed by The Texas Tribune, says an anonymous complaint was sent to the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board in November 2018, alleging that the university, one of the country’s largest historically black colleges, “tried to increase enrollment by encouraging staff to admit all candidates, regardless of whether the candidate met the university's academic admissions criteria.”

The university’s office of internal audit issued a report about six months later, including the number of admitted students who did not meet the baseline academic admissions criteria. The figures were markedly lower than those found by the external reviewers, who recommended that the university reissue an updated report to “reflect a more accurate analysis.”

Read more: https://www.texastribune.org/2020/05/28/texas-southern-university-gave-2-million-aid-unqualified-students-revi/