UC faculty have mixed feelings on admissions

UC faculty have mixed feelings on admissions

About half support special criteria, favor equal opportunity

By Rachanee Srisavasdi

Daily Bruin Contributor

Though the majority of University of California faculty support
the use of special criteria in admissions, they also strongly favor
an equal-opportunity admissions policy that does not use
preferences, according to a recent report.

A five-minute telephone survey of 1,000 UC faculty members found
that about half favored using race, religion, sex, color, ethnicity
or national origin as criteria for admissions, while 34 percent of
faculty opposed the criteria.

Yet, the survey also found that faculty favor a preference-free
admissions policy. When asked to choose between a policy that
grants admissions and employment preferences to women and certain
ethnic groups versus an equal-opportunity admissions policy without
preferences, 48 percent of faculty supported the latter, while 31
percent thought that race, religion, sex, color, ethnicity or
national origin should be considered in admissions.

These findings cast doubt on the resolutions of several Academic
Senates, which voiced strong opposition to the regent’s affirmative
action ruling. Last November, Academic Senates at UCLA, Berkeley,
Davis, San Francisco, San Diego, Santa Cruz and Santa Barbara
overwhelmingly passed resolutions that asked the regents to rescind
their affirmative action ruling.

Some faculty members said the Academic Senate resolutions do not
accurately reflect the entire faculty’s opinions.

"Those Academic Senate meetings are attended by true believers
of affirmative action," said Martin Trow, a public policy professor
at Berkeley who presented the survey’s findings to the regents at
the last meeting. "It is hard to be a dissenter at the meetings.
The survey shows that there are deep differences of opinion among
faculty."

Some Academic Senates are taking action to get a more thorough
consensus of faculty opinion on the affirmative action ruling. Both
the UCLA and San Diego Academic Senates are taking private mail
ballots to faculty members. Results of the UCLA Academic Senate
ballot will be released in late February.

Some faculty members said that the survey only allowed for
limited answers, leading to biased results.

"There were no contingencies allowed. You had to answer yes or
no," said Charles Lewis, chair of UCLA’s Academic Senate. "The
survey bagged together six criterions. For example, anyone who
opposed using national origin as a criteria, would have to say
(he/she) opposes all preferences."

Other faculty members disagreed, saying the survey questions
were not slanted.

"The questions were designed to reflect the resolutions of the
regents," Trow said. "No one can fault the survey because it did
not allow for subtle differences of opinion."

The survey also asked faculty to define affirmative action.
About 43 percent of faculty defined it as "promoting equal
opportunity for all individuals without regard to their race, sex
or ethnicity." Conversely, 37 percent chose to define affirmative
action as "granting preferences to women and certain racial and
ethnic groups."

The study was sponsored by the California Association of
Scholars, an organization of faculty members, administrators,
trustees and graduate students at public and private colleges in
California.

The Roper Center for Public Opinion Research at the University
of Connecticut, which conducted the survey, randomly chose faculty
members from all nine university campuses, from instructors to full
professors. The survey’s response rate was 80 percent.

Women faculty were more likely than men to favor using race,
religion, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin as a criterion
for employment, the survey also found. In addition, associate
professors were more likely to favor using this criteria in
admissions, as opposed to full professors or assistant
professors.

The Roper Center stated there were no distinct majority of
faculty who support using preferences in admissions.

"Our conclusion is that people’s feelings on preferences are not
clear cut," said Jila Salari, a researcher at the Roper Center who
helped conduct the survey. "Yet from these survey’s findings, we
don’t think a large majority of faculty support affirmative
action."Comments to [email protected]