FREEPORT—In an effort to increase students’ knowledge and skills, the Illinois Board of Higher Education has devised a plan to use as a guideline for admission requirements to colleges.

The object of the plan is to improve standards in high school, IBHE Executive Director Richard Wagner said. He said the plan is not substituting the suggested requirements for the current ones. Rather, the admission requirements are to be used as guidelines for admittance to a university, he said.

Part of the plan includes changing high school curriculum to better prepare high school students for college, Wagner said. Many curriculum changes must be made before the program will become effective, said Jack Corbally, task force chairman and former president of the University of Illinois.

Board member Rhonda Ruttman said some of the admission requirements are “particularly absurd” to many students.

uttman quoted from the report several admission requirements high school students consider absurd. These included “structures and functions of the political systems in the United States and Illinois,” and “cognates, contextual and visual cues, etymological principles and other word-analysis strategies to comprehend written materials.”

uttman said students realize all goals are guidelines, but they are concerned the goals will become requirements for admission and that the guidelines are unpractical.

Corbally said the program will change high school courses so that students must take core courses. High school students who took their core academic classes performed 3.7 scale points better on the ACT in 1987 than did students not taking their core courses, Wagner said.

The average ACT score for students who took core courses was 21.6, while those students who did not take the courses scored an average of 17.9, Wagner said. Universities use ACT scores in a variety of ways for admission, he said.

“High school students need to open as many doors as they can with their career,” Wagner said. Much of the difference in a student’s career depends on which doors are open and which are closed, he said.

IBHE Chairman William Browder said, “Even if a student does not go to college, the program will be equally valuable to them. It is obvious they are getting a better education.”

With the continuing coordination between universities and high schools relative to this issue, the plan should be implemented by 1993, Wagner said. He said the program was supposed to be implemented by 1990, but some high schools needed more time to alter the curriculum.