AUSTIN, TEXAS -- During a meeting of the Senate Education Committee on February 18, Senator Royce West amended a bill that would require that university systems adopt a common admission application.

Senator West amended this bill so that in addition to other information requested by these common applications, the Higher Education Coordinating Board would by rule require each institution using these applications to collect information regarding gender, ethnicity and date of birth as part of the application process and report this information to the board.

"It is imperative that we are able to capture this information for tracking and evaluation purposes," said West.

State institutions are required to collect and report information to their respective systems, the Higher Education Coordinating Board and the federal government through the Integrated Post Secondary Education Survey (IPEDS).

The IPEDS is required by the U.S. Department of Education pursuant to section 106.B of the Department of Education requirements in compliance with the implementation of Title VI (Civil Rights Act) of 1964.

"In lieu of the recent Hopwood decision and its expanded opinion by Attorney General Dan Morales, many expressed concerns that collecting this information would violate the Hopwood decision. "It will not affect Hopwood because the information is being collected and reported for informational purposes only," added West.

"The information will not be used for admissions purposes. "All sorts of information appear on college applications that do not impact admissions like the applicant's address and whether the applicant has a family member that attended the college being applied to," said West.

"We must be able to accurately identify and track who is and who is not applying to our institutions of higher education," ended Senator West.

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