UC Must Adopt New Admissions Policy

The UC-wide faculty committee BOARS (Board of Admissions and Relations with Schools) has proposed a new UC admissions policy that includes eliminating the SAT II subject test requirement and the rigid use of other criteria to determine who is UC-eligible. If passed and correctly implemented, it would increase the opportunities of Latina/o, black, Native American, Filipina/o, rural and low-income students of all races attending UCs. The UC faculty and Regents must adopt this proposal now.

The UC system has grown increasingly segregated since the passage of Proposition 209, California's affirmative action ban. In 2007, UC Berkeley's freshman class was only 15.7 percent Latina/o, black, and Native American, while 43.7 percent of California's high school graduates were from these groups.

The BOARS proposal would give UC Berkeley more flexibility to reverse this trend. The proposal is modest, reasonable and long overdue. It would replace UC's rigid, mechanical eligibility formula, which uses academically-unsound criteria to automatically disqualify thousands of students, a disproportionate number of whom are low-income students or underrepresented minorities.

The UC system's own studies reveal that the SAT II (and the SAT I) do not correlate with UC college success and completion rates. In California, 62 percent of Latina/o and 65 percent of black high school graduates who complete UC's required a-g courses do not take the SAT II. This is due to the lack of counselors in segregated, under-resourced schools and racial stereotyping by counselors who do not prepare them for the UC application process. This arbitrary and discriminatory barrier must be removed.

The BOARS proposal would also allow UC to consider students who fall just short of UC's a-g requirements. Currently, 45 percent of California's high schools do not offer enough a-g classes to allow all students to meet UC's a-g requirements. Some fail to give the university the paperwork needed to certify their a-g courses. Disproportionately, the schools that do not offer these certified classes are majority Latino and/or black schools. Punishing students in segregated schools who do not meet these requirements is racist and unfair.

The BOARS proposal should be adopted, but two important amendments should be made to the proposal.

First, the proposal in its current form eliminates the guarantee of UC admission to the top 12.5 percent of California's high school graduates. The BOARS proposal must be amended to restore the 12.5 percent, both to prevent any counter-position of an increase in underrepresented minority student enrollment to this guarantee, and because the guarantee is a democratic gain that can benefit all California students, including its rapidly increasing Latina/o student population.

Second, the BOARS proposal would be more likely to achieve substantial rather than token increases in underrepresented student enrollment if it were amended to eliminate use of the SAT I as well. As the most widely used test for college admission, numerous studies have been conducted on the racist and economic bias of the SAT. The demand for eliminating the SAT I has been raised in the UC system for many years-including from former UC President Richard Atkinson, the ASUC, and the UC Latino Eligibility Task Force.

The SAT and other standardized tests do not measure intellectual ability or potential. They do, however, stigmatize minority and poor students while giving an unfair advantage to white students and those from privileged backgrounds. Eliminating the SAT is necessary to protect meaningful gains in underrepresented student enrollment from the threat of right-wing lawsuits and demagoguery.

The university continues to profess diversity, but its discriminatory admissions policies widen the gulf between UC and the changing demographics of California every year. The growing resegregation of the UC system has led to a dangerous trend in California of divesting from public education and decreasing opportunity for all. The BOARS proposal is an easy first step that the UCs can take to turn this trend around.

The UC will move forward only if students demand it. In 2001, the action of thousands of students from UC-Berkeley and the Bay Area forced the UC Regents to unanimously reverse their ban on affirmative action. The movement for immigrant rights that began in 2006 defeated HR4437, and made clear that Latina/o, immigrant, and minority people will no longer tolerate separate and unequal educational opportunities.

On March 13, 2008, students will take a stand again at UC Berkeley for a Day of Action to Increase Underrepresented Minority Enrollment and Eliminate the SAT. By fighting together, we can put the UC system and California back on the road to integration, equality, and increasing opportunities for all.

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