Diversity drama at the University of California

Black, Latino and Native American student numbers plunged when affirmative action ended. Now U.C. says they're back up -- but a close look at enrollment tells a more complex story.

By Pamela Burdman

Jun 24, 2002 | In the five years since the University of California regents banished affirmative action and implemented race-blind admissions policies, enrollment news has been fairly consistent: one headline after another documenting steep declines in diversity in the U.C. system, often with the spotlight on the flagship Berkeley campus.

The reversals began in 1997, when Berkeley's Boalt Hall School of Law revealed stunning news: a 65 percent decline in blacks, Latinos and Native Americans -- minority groups considered "underrepresented" at U.C. -- admitted under the new policy, and only one black student in its entering class. Then, a year later, despondent administrators announced the first freshmen admissions numbers under the race-blind regime: the proportion of so-called underrepresented minorities in the first group of freshmen admitted to Berkeley after the affirmative action ban had fallen by more than 50 percent.

Two months ago, much to the relief of university officials, the narrative changed. "Minority Levels Rebound at U.C.," wrote the Los Angeles Times. "Admission Up for Minorities in California," said the New York Times. "U. of California Admits More Minority Students," offered the Chronicle of Higher Education. For the first time in five years, the stories explained, the proportion of underrepresented minorities admitted to the U.C. system for the coming fall surpassed the pre-ban level of 18.8 percent, inching up to 19.1 percent.

Affirmative action foes say that the data prove diversity can be achieved without racial preferences. "It's really demonstrating that there are programs and practices that we can put in place of explicit preferences that will produce, for those who are concerned about such things, this racial and ethnic diversity as a natural consequence of the policies that are in place, rather than policies that engineer that outcome," exulted Ward Connerly, the regent who spearheaded U.C.'s affirmative action ban as well as Proposition 209, which also banned race-conscious decision making around the state.

With the Supreme Court poised to review a challenge to race-conscious admissions policies at the University of Michigan, expect more attention to U.C.'s progress in achieving diversity without affirmative action. But that attention may well produce more questions, because the reality of race in the nine-campus U.C. system is far more complex than the latest headlines, or Connerly's elation, suggest. For one thing, the drop in minority freshmen around the system was never as bad as at the selective UC-Berkeley and UCLA campuses. The modest system-wide dip of 11 percent garnered less attention than Berkeley's dramatic 55 percent plunge. So the current headlines about a return to 1997 diversity levels in the entire U.C. system - which didn't fall that much in the first place -- are a little misleading.

Racial diversity at Berkeley is a very different story. Though it has inched up, underrepresented minority enrollment remains 30 percent below pre-1998 levels. Among students admitted to the flagship campus for this fall, 17.5 percent were underrepresented minorities -- down from 25.3 percent in 1997. The decline is matched by an increase in white and Asian admissions: For this fall, 40 percent of admitted students are Asian American -- up from 35 percent in 1997, and another 33 percent are white, compared to 31 percent five years ago. (The remaining 10.5 percent are students who described themselves as "other," or didn't state a race or ethnicity at all.)

"I think the university is distorting what's happening," said Bob Laird, who retired in 1999 as admissions director at Berkeley. "I think they're doing everything they can to put things selectively and carefully in the best possible light. I don't think it's an accurate reflection of what's really going on."

The news is slightly better at UCLA, where underrepresented minority admissions declined from 21.2 percent in 1997 to 17.9 percent for 2002. Asian Americans amount to 42 percent of admits for the fall, and white students constitute 30 percent, slight changes from 40 percent and 31 percent five years earlier.

One reason the U.C. system has recovered its lost diversity is that California high school graduates have become more colorful than ever, mainly due to an increase in the state's Latino population. In fact, black, Latino and American Indian students are actually more underrepresented at UC, compared to their statewide numbers, than they were back in 1997. The percentage of high school graduates who are Latino, for example, increased by 8 percent in the last five years of the 20th century, but as a proportion of admitted freshmen, Latinos increased by only 6 percent.

"Latinos are going to grow fairly significantly ... simply because of the demographic changes of the state. African-Americans are a more difficult problem, because their population base is not growing," said John Douglass, a senior research fellow at the UC-Berkeley Center for Studies in Higher Education.

Black students' share of the admitted freshman class fell 11 percent system-wide during the 1997-2002 period though their proportion of high school graduating classes slipped by only 1 percent. And at UC-Berkeley, the proportion of black students is still down by nearly 50 percent from 1997.

The numbers have been even more dismal at UC's highly selective professional schools: The case of only one black student's being admitted to Berkeley's Boalt Law School in 1997 was the worst of it, but the downward trend has been clear: From 1994 to 2001, the number of African-Americans admitted to the three law schools on U.C. campuses declined 55 percent, and the number of Latinos fell by 33 percent, according to numbers compiled by the office of state Assemblyman Manny Diaz, D-San Jose.

Medical school numbers aren't much more encouraging: admission of underrepresented minorities to any medical school in California has fallen by 40 percent since its peak in 1994, according to a special report on medical school diversity. These figures aren't expected to rebound quickly, since U.C. applicants make up a significant portion of the overall med-school applicant pool. Public health officials are concerned, given that minority doctors are more likely to work in underserved communities.

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