Proft Calls For Merit-Based Opportunity Admissions for University System

Illinois Republican gubernatorial candidate Dan Proft today proposed a new admissions policy for the University of Illinois, calling the current system which favors applicants of the politically-connected another example of a government system that is fixed.

Sadly, we must add our great state university to the long list of Illinois systems that arent broken, but fixed, said Proft, speaking to reporters at the Chicago Hilton.

Proft criticized politicians who are calling for top administrators at the University to resign. If anyone should have to resign, it should be those who applied the pressure, not those who succumbed to it, he said.

Arguing that such calls miss the point, Proft said that our focus should be on how to end this shameful practice and guarantee to future applicants to the University of Illinois that the bar for admissions is based on merit, achievement, and hard work not on who you know.

Rather, Proft said, the goal should be to remove the incentive to influence the admissions process. Calling his new policy a Merit-Based Opportunity standard, Proft proposed that all applicants names be replaced with identification numbers.

All that an admissions official will be able to discern from an application is the students academic and extracurricular achievements as it should be, said Proft. This proposal means that even if a politically-connected individual demands special consideration for a particular applicant, the admission officials would be unable to comply.

The policy in place now, said Proft, allows politicians to use the threat of reduced funding to force university administrators to accept unqualified applicants with political connections. Simply getting rid of university officials who went along to get along will not do that. It is not fundamentally a personnel problem. It is a system problem, he said.

Under my vision for admission policy, the phrase Straight from the G no longer carries any influence at our great university, said Proft, referring to one released university law school e-mail that revealed the request to admit an unqualified student came from former Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

Proft compared his new policy to the way the Chicago Symphony Orchestra conducts its auditions by having musicians perform from behind a curtain.

This removes any incentive a judge might have in considering anything other than a musicians ability, said Proft. There is no reason why we cannot apply this policy for university admissions.

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