From the better-late-than-never files, this news from The University of New Mexico: The board of regents voted Monday to raise admissions standards.

Lest this shock the sensibilities of educators more concerned about students' sense of self-worth than about actual learning, they should be glad they got a reprieve: Then-president Louis Caldera proposed back in 2005 that UNM defer entrance to freshmen flunking entrance exams in English, math and writing skills. Those would-be university students would have to take remedial courses at a branch campus or at one of New Mexico's many community colleges.

At the time the prexy floated that notion, one out of six frosh couldn't pass any of those three prerequisites for the presumably tougher courses to come. This wasn't necessarily the end of their academic careers: Most campuses, including the Albuquerque one, offer noncredit courses such as that once known as "dumbbell English" before political correctness eliminated the pejorative adjective. But with so many kids failing three basics, Caldera figured that their time might be better spent, at a cheaper tuition rate, in a junior-college classroom.

Oh, and for good measure, he wondered aloud, how 'bout some serious talk of raising the high-school grade-point average required for admission?

They were good ideas, but they weren't the regents' ideas — so nuts to that, came the response from the board; should've run it by us first ...

Admission standards weren't the only thing that got the Harvard-educated Caldera fired — controversy seems to stalk him — but a few months later, he was replaced, first by David Harris, now by David Schmidly.

Schmidly lost little time arriving at conclusions similar to Caldera's — and for a couple of years UNM has been tiptoeing back toward raising the admission bar.

By the fall of next year it'll be higher: The high-school grade-point average for UNM admission will go from 2.25 to 2.5. That's still pretty soft for a state's flagship school; in some parts of the country, including neighboring Oklahoma, it takes a 3-point.

And UNM might still let students in with worse grades — if, say, their standardized-test scores make up for a goofed-off high school career. And the university also has "gateways" to admission through nearby Central New Mexico College and community colleges around the state.

What seems most promising about the new admissions standards is that they might narrow the odds of graduating: Today only half of UNM's student body graduates within six years. For a four-year school, that's pretty awful — and, for parents or for people working their way through college, it means half again as much in tuition, fees and books. For those beyond commuting distance, it's also that much more room and board.

The better prepared they are for university life, the more likely students are to thrive on higher education. We salute the UNM regents on this decision.