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Ten public four-year universities in Michigan announced Wednesday that they will guarantee admission to all in-state students with a high school grade point average of 3.0 or higher starting this admissions cycle.
The coalition, which has taken on the title Michigan Assured Admission Pact (MAAP), is composed of two-thirds of the state’s public institutions, including Northern Michigan University, the University of Michigan at Flint and Eastern Michigan University. The state’s two flagships—the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and Michigan State University—are not included in the pact.
College enrollment has fallen precipitously in the state in recent years—the third-steepest decline in the country since 2019, according to data from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. And that drop could get worse as the demographic cliff approaches: the high school graduation rate is expected to decrease by more than 11 percent over the next 15 years, according to a press release accompanying the announcement of the pact.
Daniel J. Hurley, chief executive officer of the Michigan Association of State Universities, said that the MAAP—along with a new state scholarship that covers more than a third of tuition for in-state students at public universities—is part of a broad strategy to boost enrollment and encourage more high school graduates to apply to college.
“We think with that affordability and the assurance of being admitted to these universities, it will motivate students to consider enrolling at a public university next fall, and we really hope that will turn around enrollment,” Hurley told The Detroit News.
The news comes as other states implement similar guaranteed admission plans; Tennessee recently decided to automatically accept the top 10 percent of each high school’s graduates to its public institutions, which is itself a recreation of a decades-old policy in Texas.
