Officials Explore Options for Expanding Access in Admissions

Faculty and administrators are looking to reform the UC admissions process, 10 years after Proposition 209 banned affirmative action amid ongoing disparities in access to California’s elite public higher education institutions.

Officials say the combined effects of the affirmative action ban, rising tuition, insufficient aid and inadequate K-12 preparation have limited accessibility to a UC education.

“Prop 209 is like the canary in the mineshaft,” said William Kidder, senior policy analyst at the UC Davis Office of the Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs. “The rate of access for African Americans, American Indians and Latinos at UC is exasperated by Prop 209 but is part of a systematic non-inclusiveness.”

For students applying to the UC system, admissions follows a two-step process. Applicants must first meet SAT scores and GPA requirements to be deemed eligible, and are then guaranteed a spot at a UC school.

Campuses then make their selections using comprehensive review, which takes into account the opportunities available to students.

“This first filter is a very simple construct based on SAT and GPA, whereas comprehensive review is a very elaborate consideration of the entire application, including the context in which the academic achievement was had,” said Mark Rashid, UC Davis professor of civil and environmental engineering and chair of the Board of Admissions and Relations with Schools, which oversees UC admissions policies.

Because the narrow definition of eligibility excludes many applicants from even being considered, a panel of faculty and researchers suggested at a recent campus conference to determine eligibility as part of comprehensive review.

Rather than be weeded out solely based on test scores and GPAs, all applicants would be guaranteed a read-through, thus broadening the application pool.

“We think that a decision of this importance shouldn’t be made on a simplistic formula,” said former UC associate president Patrick Hayashi.

The faculty-composed Admissions and Schools Relations Board is currently reviewing and reforming these eligibility

constructs. A reform plan, which they hope to submit by the end of June, would then be submitted to campuses and the systemwide Academic Senate before review by UC President Robert Dynes and the UC Board of Regents.

The process of actually changing the eligibility requirements could take more than six months from the time the board presents its report, Rashid said.

“Using a more robust version of comprehensive review would serve quality and diversity,” Kidder said.

Some campuses, including UC Berkeley, already read all the applications received without first filtering ineligible applicants, but a change in the quantitative definition of eligibility would allow other campuses to take a broader look at students, officials said.

“It is a small private school model at a major public university,” said Walter Robinson, director of undergraduate admissions at UC Berkeley. “That is our institutional value and our commitment to opportunity.”

While officials do not expect dramatic increases in underrepresented students, they agree that reforming eligibility is the first step in increasing opportunity for all students.

“There are large numbers of students who are technically ineligible and who are well-qualified and would do well in the UC,” Rashid said. “There is a good chance that currently underserved populations would stand to benefit because the overall admissions process would be more fair and would better account of context factors.”

The faculty group also proposed increasing the percentage admitted through the Eligibility in the Local Context program. The program currently admits the top 4 percent of seniors at each California high school, given that they take the SAT, and aims to reach out to students from across the state.

Faculty and officials agreed that a combination of policies such as increased outreach, faculty diversity and community college transfers, in addition to eligibility reform, is necessary to help increase representation of underserved students.

“Everyone is looking for the silver bullet, the single thing that will make a difference, but there is no single thing,” Robinson said. “There are a variety of things that can be done across society to assist Berkeley to make the education available to all citizens in the state and that is something that we have to continue to work for.”

Tags: