Diversity drama at the University of California

"My sense is that there's really a crisis," said Laird, who is writing a book about the affirmative action battles at U.C. "For African-American students at Berkeley and UCLA and UC-San Diego, I think the situation is extremely serious. I don't see the longer-term prospect of repairing that."

Berkeley linguistics professor John McWhorter, who is African-American, strongly disagrees. A harsh critic of affirmative action, he says black students' numbers at Berkeley and elsewhere in the system will rise over time, as they meet the U.C. system's high standards.

"We're not at the point where the numbers are where they were before. But the reason why the numbers were where they were was a disabling, condescending policy that was making a lot of people feel good but was not really fixing the system," McWhorter contends.

As McWhorter points out, Berkeley's fall has been a windfall for other U.C. campuses -- particularly Riverside -- which are now enrolling more minorities than they were under affirmative action. Administrators who foresaw that pattern made a point of trying to keep their minority numbers up by encouraging applicants to consider Riverside and other less prestigious campuses. They told kids that they would get a fine education at any U.C. -- and even started a "referral pool," so that qualified students declined by one of the competitive campuses could be admitted to another campus, even if they hadn't sent in an application.

All eight undergraduate campuses (UC-San Francisco is devoted to the health sciences) share the same minimum requirements. The prestigious Berkeley and UCLA campuses, however, turn away roughly three students for each one they admit -- far more than their sister campuses. And more of the students those campuses admit actually decide to enroll than those admitted to their sister schools. For instance, 46 percent of students admitted to Berkeley and 41 percent of those admitted to UCLA last year enrolled. But at UC-Riverside, only 19 percent of students admitted by the campus enrolled last year, meaning eight of 10 chose to go elsewhere -- such as another U.C. campus or, in many cases, a private school.

In a cascade effect, the other campuses are now admitting and enrolling minority students who, in the past, might have been accepted to Berkeley or UCLA thanks to affirmative action. In fact, only one campus has actually admitted a higher proportion of underrepresented minorities: UC-Riverside, a fast-growing school that, unlike some of the other campuses, is able to accept 100 percent of applicants with the minimum qualifications. But when it comes to enrollment of those who are admitted, minorities who in the past would have turned down Riverside or Irvine to go to UCLA, for example, now don't have that option. The result: Riverside, Irvine, Santa Cruz and Santa Barbara have higher proportions of enrolled minorities without affirmative action.

"What we've seen is a reshuffling," says McWhorter. "It's not like all these kids have to go out of state or to community colleges. The idea that reshuffling is a horror seems to imply that those second-tier U.C. schools give you a raw deal."

"There is, of course, a correlation between going to a Berkeley or a UCLA and going on to graduate school in professions that are very high paying or high status. But the correlation isn't as high on the brand-name institutions as people think," said Douglass.

But others at Berkeley say that even if students can survive without attending Berkeley, the declining diversity is damaging the campus itself: "It's ridiculous for U.C. to say we have met our diversity requirement system-wide, so we don't have to worry about Berkeley and UCLA," said ethnic studies professor Ling-chi Wang. "We do have to worry about it, because the quality of education is going to go down. Academic excellence is linked to diversity. I have visibly seen [the number of] minority students declining in front of me each year. It's very, very disheartening."

At Riverside, about 26 percent of the students admitted for the fall are underrepresented minorities. That's where Berkeley was in 1997, but no one is venturing a guess as to when -- or whether -- those numbers will return at the flagship campus.

Even if it hasn't paid off yet at Berkeley and UCLA, university officials have reformed the admissions process to try to reach more of the underrepresented, without affirmative action. Without these reforms, it's clear that such students' numbers would have plummeted even more dramatically.

The university has de-emphasized SAT scores, for instance, in favor of the SAT II achievement tests. Some argue that the policy favors students who speak another language, such as Spanish, at home, because those students typically earn perfect scores on foreign-language achievement tests. Next month, the regents will decide whether to discard the SAT altogether or to use a new version that was revamped to U.C.'s specifications.

U.C. now also conducts a "comprehensive review" that looks at a student's entire application, not just grades and test scores. It has also adopted a "4 percent plan" that guarantees admission to a U.C. campus for students in the top 4 percent of their high school class, as long as they take the right courses and tests. This helps ensure that kids in the top 4 percent of inner-city high schools, who tend to be low-income and minority students, get into the system alongside kids from elite prep schools.

"How much of an influence have some of these changes had on the racial mix?" wonders Douglass. "We don't know for sure."

Many of the top "4 percenters" would have applied and been admitted to U.C. without the program, but a university analysis suggests that the 4 percent program stimulated an additional 2,000 students to apply for the fall 2001 freshman class -- out of a total of more than 48,000 applicants. The major beneficiaries of the policy appear to be Latino and rural students. For example, about one-eighth of the Latino applicants in 2001 wouldn't have applied without the new program, the study concluded.

And the move to "comprehensive review" seems to have changed admissions patterns on some campuses as well. Until last year UC-San Diego, for example, used a numerical formula to enroll students. Under the new comprehensive-review policy, the campus admitted 32 percent more underrepresented minorities than last year. It still hasn't hit pre-209 levels, but it's getting close: While 15.3 percent of admissions to that campus were underrepresented minorities in 1997, this year's proportion is 14.4 percent. The number of Asian-Americans rose slightly, from 38.1 percent to 38.7 percent, while the number of whites declined from 39.9 percent to just 36.5 percent of those admitted.

Next Page: But U.C. does a great job of enrolling lower-income students

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