Panel calls for outreach reform
By Andrew Edwards
May 14, 2003 9:00 p.m.
SAN FRANCISCO ““ According to a University of California
review panel, UC outreach programs have made the UC more
accessible, but need to be reformed to effectively increase
academic opportunity across California.
A report written by the university’s Strategic Outreach
Review Panel was presented Wednesday to the UC Board of Regents,
which indicates that outreach has increased access to the
university for underrepresented students, though greater
cooperation is needed between the UC and K-12 schools to help more
students prepare for college.
The panel’s chairman, former Wells Fargo chairman Les
Biller, said UC outreach should focus on readying California
students, especially those belonging to underrepresented racial and
ethnic groups, to go to any college. This would change the current
practice of using outreach to enhance diversity specifically at the
UC.
“What we need to think about isn’t whether kids go
to the UC, (but) whether they go to college,” Biller
said.
Despite successes of some programs, Biller said in his
presentation that an “academic gap” persists between
students of different races, and on average, more whites and Asians
are eligible for the UC than blacks and Latinos.
This gap, he said, was “unacceptably high.”
The panel’s report indicated outreach programs have
increased the number of K-12 students eligible for the UC, and
recommended the university specifically define outreach as an
effort to aid underrepresented and disadvantaged students.
More substantially, the panel proposed the UC work closer with
K-12 schools, community colleges, and the private sector to help
more students go to college. The panel concluded outreach programs
have not closed the gap because they focus on prospective
UC-students, rather than a broader selection.
“You did have goals and objectives,” Biller said.
“They were simply the wrong ones.”
Winston Doby, UC vice president for educational outreach, agreed
that the way for outreach programs to achieve their goal of
increased diversity is to work with local schools to aid students
preparing for college ““ whether or not they plan to enroll at
a UC campus.
“If we achieve that more ambitious goal, our diversity
will take care of itself,” he said.
But improving education across the state is no simple job, Doby
said.
“It won’t be easy, it won’t be quick, and it
won’t be cheap. But it is essential,” he said.
The university has maintained outreach programs for over 30
years, and it became the UC’s primary tool to increase
diversity after the regents passed SP-1 in 1995, which eliminated
the consideration of race in admissions.
Regent Ward Connerly, who sponsored SP-1, said diversity is an
important goal for the university, but he disagreed that outreach
programs should focus on race.
“We need to stop looking at them as minority kids that are
under-performing. They’re kids that are not performing,
they’re just kids,” he said.
Though Gov. Gray Davis’ May Revise of his budget proposal
released Wednesday did not include any additional cuts for the UC,
the financial shape of outreach programs is not clear. The governor
has proposed a 50 percent cut in UC outreach, and though the
legislature will probably lower this amount, considerable
uncertainty remains regarding whether or not the programs will be
sufficiently funded.
Biller said after the meeting that cooperation between the UC
and K-12 schools is the most important partnership in improving
outreach, but Doby said whether they will receive enough money is
unknown.
There is “big doubt now,” he said.
