New proposal aims to make UCs more accessible

By Benjamin Parke
Daily Bruin Reporter

An admissions plan UC President Richard Atkinson proposed last
year is encountering a few shoals it will have to navigate ““
particularly at UCLA ““ before its implementation.

Partly as a way of meeting the demand for higher education in
the state ““ partly as a way of increasing the diversity of
the UC student body ““ Atkinson’s proposal is now under
consideration by faculty organizations.

The idea was to provide another way to offer UC admission to
public high school graduates who didn’t make the cut in
either of two other possible ways: being in the top 12.5 percent of
their class statewide, or being in the top 4 percent of their own
high school.

The latter method, as proposed by Gov. Gray Davis, was recently
adopted as a way of admitting students from low-performing high
schools.

Atkinson has proposed capturing the remaining top 12.5 percent
of public high school graduates school-by-school.

Those students would receive an offer of admission to a specific
UC campus, contingent upon completing a course of study at a
California community college.

UC already admits transfer students from the California
community college system, but not with such an offer right out of
high school. It is the very strength of UCLA’s transfer
programs that is posing a hurdle for the proposal at this
campus.

“There’s a bunch of complexities which flow from the
fact that UCLA runs the biggest and most successful transfer
program in the system,” said Stephen Yeazell, chair of the
UCLA division of the Academic Senate ““ the faculty body that
shares governance with the university.

UC Spokesman Terry Lightfoot said the president’s office
is taking that into consideration.

“Clearly we would try to take advantage of those existing
structures,” Lightfoot said.

Currently, the campus enrolls 2,800 junior-level transfer
students each year. It also has the distinction of admitting
transfer students by major, requiring applicants to meet the
criteria for the course of study they choose.

As an example of something he said needs to be worked out in the
proposal, Yeazell posed a situation in which an applicant is
granted provisional admission to UCLA for the business and
economics major ““ which is highly impacted and requires a
high GPA.

Suppose, Yeazell said, that the student did pretty well in
community college studies, but not enough for the major’s
requirement.

“Should, or can that student be redirected?” asked
Yeazell, who forwarded similar UCLA faculty concerns to Michael
Cowan, chair of the UC Academic Council and faculty representative
to the Board of Regents.

In announcing his proposal in September, Atkinson had asked
Cowan to obtain faculty input from all the campuses. Those
responses led to a series of changes in the proposal.

The UC Academic Council has endorsed the concept in principle,
Cowan said. He added it would possibly be taken up by the UC
Academic Assembly in May.

Atkinson cited several reasons for introducing his proposal,
such as accommodating Tidal Wave II enrollment growth ““ the
expected 60,000 additional students by 2010 ““ and improving
relations with California community colleges.

“Most importantly, it will send a clear signal to students
all over the state, from urban and rural schools, from all ethnic
groups and all socio-economic groups, that they have a clear path
to a UC degree,” Atkinson said in a statement announcing his
initiative.

According to his office, preliminary calculations indicate that
34 to 36 percent of students eligible for dual admissions would be
underrepresented minorities.

Regent Ward Connerly has not come to a conclusion as to the
merits of the proposal, but said it would conform to SP-1 and
Proposition 209 based on what he’s seen so far. Those two
policies ended affirmative action on the university and state
levels, respectively.

“As long as it’s race-blind, it would comply,”
Connerly said.

He did question whether dual admissions would adversely affect
the quality of the student body, widening access while lowering
standards.

Connerly said he wasn’t sure what Atkinson’s intent
is, but said policies designed to increase minority enrollment can
be “sugar-coated” with other stated aims.

He wondered whether the purpose of this policy is to make the
university more accessible to African American and Latino students
who aren’t academically prepared.

“If they were equally competent, we wouldn’t be
going through this, would we?” said Connerly.

Yeazell acknowledged the significance of the proposal’s
affect on diversity.

“Were it not for 209 and SP-1, this would not be a
proposal that would have the kind of steam behind it that it
does,” said Yeazell.

The response from UCLA faculty stressed that UC estimates of
minorities in the dual admissions pool were “very
preliminary.” Yeazell said a full analysis would require a
list of the targeted students in every California public high
school.

“There’s a kind of chicken-and-the-egg problem
here,” said Yeazell, adding that the high schools won’t
produce those lists until there is a reason to do so.

UC Faculty Representative Cowan said the number seems fairly
small. The figures he has seen indicate that 2,000 applications
from underrepresented minorities could be expected each year, and
the numbers enrolling would be even smaller.

The proposal has to be seen in the context of all of the
university’s outreach efforts, Cowan said. Dual admissions
might be thought of as a “shorter-term strategy.”

“I think this would be one more tool in a whole range of
tools to create a more diverse student body,” Cowan said.

PLAN WOULD SUPPLEMENT OTHER PATHS TO UC In
addition to the top 12.5 percent of California public high school
graduates as a whole, UC now recruits from the top 4 percent from
each of those schools. Dual admissions would expand that to 12.5
percent — the new pool of students being routed through California
Community Colleges. SOURCE: UC Office of the President Original
graphic by VICTOR CHEN/Daily Bruin Web adaptation by JUSTIN HONG
and TIM MIU