An evaluation of various admissions procedures and the 1970 Ford Foundation Program in relation to the Mexican American and the American Indian student at the University of Utah

A crisis for colleges and universities in America today is that of meeting the educational needs of various ethnic minorities. The University of Utah has recognized the need to implement educational programs and to reassess admissions procedures in regard to minority students. In the summer of 1970, the University of Utah, through the support of the Ford Foundation, sponsored a special eight week summer program designed to prepare 40 Mexican American and 20 American Indian students for successful endeavors at the University. This study attempted to (1) evaluate the effects of the 1970 Ford Foundation Program; and, (2) Test the predictive validity of various admissions procedures in relation to the Mexican American and the American Indian student at the University of Utah. os involved in this study were broken down into an experimental and a control group. The experimental group consisted of those Mexican American and American Indian students who participated in the 1970 summer quarter Ford Foundation program as first quarter freshmen and who returned to the University of Utah during the academic school year following the experimental program. Control Ss consisted of those Mexican American and American Indian students who entered the University of Utah during the fall quarter which preceded the summer program without any special treatment as first quarter freshmen. An analysis of covariance design implementing AGPA as the dependent variable and repeated measures-tests using intellective and nonintellective measures related to academic success were implemented in an attempt to evaluate the experimental program. Results suggested that the control groups performed significantly better than the experimental groups while the Mexican American groups performed significantly better than the American Indian groups. No significant interaction effects were obtained. Results of the repeated measures t-tests suggested that those experimental Ss who participated in the treatment program and prepost testing had shown positive differences on intellective measures while displaying negative differences on non-intellective measures. Intercorrelation and stepwise multiple regression equations were implemented to test the predictive validity of various admissions procedures in relation to the Mexican American and the American Indian student. These procedures were conducted separately for each ethnic group and separately for control and experimental groups. Results of these procedures question the predictive validity of the ACT, HSGPA and PGPA in relation to the Mexican American student. Further investigation in the use of non-intellective variables in attempting to predict academic success for this ethnic group was suggested. Results of these procedures for the American Indian experimental group suggest further investigation of the predictive validity of the ACT, PGPA and SCAT in that significant correlations were found between these predictors and the criterion. Results further suggest the need to evaluate and implement educational programs for the American Indian student at the pre-college and college level.