Minorities Soon Could Be Majority at UC and UCLA

Black, Latino and Asian students entered UC Berkeley and UCLA this fall in such large numbers that “minority” students could soon become the majority population at the two largest campuses of the University of California.

At UCLA, which has by far the largest minority population in the UC system, minority groups made up 44.7% of the freshman class, compared to 43.8% in the fall of 1983. At UC Berkeley, which has experienced the largest increase in minority representation of any of the UC campuses in recent years, minority group members made up 36.7% of this year’s entering freshman class, up from 34.9% a year ago.

At both campuses, Asian students accounted for the largest portion of the minority groups in the freshman classes. Asians are not considered by UC as “underrepresented” in comparison to their numbers in the general population. However, those minority students who continue to be underrepresented--Latinos, blacks, Filipinos and American Indians--showed the most sizable gains of any groups this year. At UC Berkeley the underrepresented minority population has nearly doubled in the last five years and now stands at 21.5%, up from 16% a year ago. At UCLA, the underrepresented groups comprised 28.7% of the freshman class this year, up from 26.91% a year ago.

The gains at the two campuses stand in striking comparison to other universities, including many Ivy League colleges and some state university systems, which have reported a leveling off and, in some cases, a decline in minority group enrollment.

And increasingly, at both UC Berkeley and UCLA, the minority students who enroll are no longer admitted through special programs but are fully qualified under California’s standard admissions requirements.

Overall, minorities now make up 35.5% of the undergraduate enrollment at UC Berkeley and 36.6% at UCLA. Minorities make up approximately 33% of the state’s population.

Officials at UCLA and Berkeley credit the gains to aggressive recruitment programs that involve students and alumni and special education projects that seek to identify and encourage potential students early in their school years.

‘Seeing the Fruition’

“Basically, we are now seeing the fruition of programs that have been in place for some years,” said Rae L. Siporin, UCLA’s director of undergraduate admissions and relations with schools.

Of particular importance to UCLA’s success, she said, has been the university’s placement of students and interns in junior high schools, where they are able to provide assistance and encouragement to minority students who might not otherwise consider college.

“I think we are doing a bang-up job,” Siporin said.

Watson M. Laetsch, Berkeley’s vice chancellor for undergraduate affairs, said that Berkeley had not spent a great deal of additional money on recruiting minority students. Rather, university officials “had spent many hours simply making certain that the ‘machinery’ of the campus worked as it should . . . (so that) minority applicants didn’t fall through the cracks.”

For example, he said, when minority students apply and are accepted, they are no longer required to wait weeks or months to hear about financial aid or housing. What is more, Laetsch said, the university has used the “private college model” in aggressively pursuing students who are interested in attending UC Berkeley.

“In a very few years, white students who have been the majority on campus are going to become the minority, they are going to fall below the 50% mark,” Laetsch predicted.

The one potential drawback to the minority enrollment success, he noted, is that there could be some “backlash. . . . This could become a political issue for the university. . . .”

One problem the university may face, for example, is in fund raising.

In the past, minority group students who have graduated from UC Berkeley have not contributed significantly to alumni fund-raising drives and “that could be a problem because the university is increasingly dependent on alumni for its (financial) support,” Laetsch said.

But, he added: “I’m amazed at the lack of static we’ve gotten so far. Certainly there may be concerns. You’re not going to have this sudden change without having a lot of questions arise.”

Even more encouraging than the enrollment trends among minority groups are the latest retention figures, which show that minority students not only enroll at UC Berkeley and UCLA but they are nearly as likely as white students to continue their education. About 82% of Berkeley’s underrepresented minority freshmen last year and 83% of their UCLA counterparts returned this year as sophomores. That compares to 89% of all freshmen who returned.

University officials credit the rising retention rate to an increased number of summer programs that help disadvantaged students make the transition from high school to college, as well as improvements in counseling for students who have academic difficulties while they are enrolled in college.

The retention figure for minorities is considered especially high because it includes disadvantaged students who were admitted through “special-action” programs, which take into account educational and economic hardships. Increasingly, however, minority students at UC Berkeley and UCLA are meeting all of UC’s standard requirements for admission. At Berkeley, 76% of the underrepresented minority group students in the freshman class were fully qualified for admission, compared to 68% three years ago. At UCLA, this year’s figure was 83%, compared to 77% last year and the year before.

Surprising Decline

Although the numbers of most minority groups are rising at UC Berkeley and UCLA, there has been a surprising decline in the percentage of Asian American students, after a number of years of dramatic growth.

While Asians made up 18.7% of Berkeley’s freshman class last year, they now comprise 15.9% of this year’s class. At UCLA, the figure has dropped from 18.8% to 15.2%.

No one seems to be certain what the reasons are for the decline, although task forces are being mobilized on both campuses to look into the situation.

MINORITIES ON CAMPUS Minority students as a percent of all freshmen enrolled on two University of California Campuses, fall, 1983, and fall, 1984. UC BERKELEY

YEAR 1983 1984 “Underrepresented” Minorities Amer. Indians 0.4% 0.6% Black 5.7% 7.4% Latino 6.1% 8.8% Filipino 3.8% 4.7% TOTAL 16.0% 21.5% Minorities Not “Underrepresented” Asians* 18.8% 15.2% All freshman minorities 34.9% 36.7% All undergrad miniorities 33.8% 35.5%

UCLA

YEAR 1983 1984 “Underrepresented” Minorities Amer. Indians 2.4% 0.7% Black 8.5% 8.3% Latino 11.7% 13.9% Filipino 4.3% 5.8% TOTAL 26.9% 28.7% “Minorities Not “underrepresented” Asians* 18.7% 15.9% All freshmen minorities 43.8% 44.7% All undergrad minorities 35.0% 36.6%

*Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai ancestry