ABSTRACT
Mention the words “open admissions/’ and all kinds of visions are conjured up, depending upon the background of the audience. To some the words mean the automatic lowering of all standards, not just admissions requirements. To others they mean opening the floodgates to permit certain ethnic and minority groups into previously reserved territory, whether or not they deserve entry. To a few they are the means of solving all or most of society’s most pressing problems, economic, political, and social. To a different group they are merely a euphemism for another “rip-off” by the establishment, an empty promise for the true equality of opportunity that those in power have no intention of fulfilling.
