Everyone Needs Affirmative Action : UC Admissions Should Look Beyond Grades and Test Scores

Some Asian groups are arguing that the University of California’s admissions policies discriminate against Asians. They may be right. The problem for the university is that anything it does to admit students affects the admissions interests of some racial or ethnic group. The rise in Asian applicants to the UC system adds a new and startling dimension to the university’s problem: White applicants may need affirmative action in order to compete with Asians for admission.

Asian undergraduate applicants to the University of California generally out-perform all other groups, including whites, on the scholastic aptitude test (SAT), particularly its math portion. So any shift away from admitting applicants on grade and SAT numbers alone is to the disadvantage of Asians because it will reduce their admissions numbers in favor of all other racial and ethnic groups whose test and grade scores are not as high.

The university is shifting its undergraduate admissions policies away from an almost exclusive emphasis on grades and aptitude test scores. The university will now give more weight to criteria such as extracurricular activities and applicant essays. The objective is to gain a better measure of the whole person. The university is able to defend against a charge of Asian-based discrimination by pointing to the unquestionable legitimacy of that goal.

There probably is an additional basis for the new undergraduate admissions policies. Enormous pressures are almost certainly being applied in quiet but effective ways by parents of some present and future white applicants who have read published figures showing that white students are about to become a numerical minority on some UC campuses. Without directly discriminating against any Asian applicant, the university is able to admit more white applicants under the new standards. The result innocently reached is the admission of fewer Asians.

A university admissions policy based almost exclusively on grades and test scores is appealing. It not only appears to be a neutral standard for admission, it is also the least demanding way to admit students. A computer could do all of the work. Twenty years ago, if the state of the computer art had been what it is today, that would have been acceptable. But since then, conflicting interests of diverse groups of applicants have come into play.

Until the early 1970s, blacks and Latinos were seriously underrepresented on University of California campuses. Induced by organized black activism of the ‘60s, the university began to admit small numbers of black and Latino applicants who were qualified to succeed at the university, though not the most qualified of all applicants. As a result, lawsuits were filed by white plaintiffs who perceived the same kinds of harm to their interests as is now perceived by some Asian groups.

The U.S. Supreme Court decision, Bakke vs. University of California, agreed with the claim of a white applicant to the UC Davis Medical School that the school’s affirmative-action admissions policies discriminated against him on grounds of race. The court ordered Allan Bakke’s admission, but approved of race as a factor that a university could take into account, along with others, in its admissions decisions.

The complexity of the admissions problem at the undergraduate level is compounded at some graduate levels of education. For example, Asian student organizations favor affirmative-action admissions for Asians at UC law schools. There is no separate scoring for math on the law-school admissions test; verbal skills count for more. Asians are not outperforming whites to nearly the same extent on the law-school admissions test as they are on the undergraduate SAT. So law-school admissions on the basis of grades and scores alone do not favor Asians. As a result, Asian student groups argue for the same kinds of law-school admissions policies that would defeat their interests if applied to undergraduate admissions policies. They want a relaxation of strict law-school test and grade score standards and consideration of other factors, including ethnicity.

As a result of these unusual and perhaps unforeseeable trends, it seems that a new perception of the affirmative-action concept may be formulated among those who once viewed it as having the sole function of favoring the “unqualified.” That was the prevailing view when affirmative-action admissions policies worked to the advantage of a few minority groups.

Now that everyone needs affirmative action, the time has come to drop the term as applied to university admissions policies. By whatever name, everyone should welcome a university admissions policy that considers more closely all the indicators of applicants’ character and potential for success as students and useful citizens.