UC Ponders How to Gear Its System for Blacks

While total undergraduate enrollment in the University of California system has soared to more than 114,000 in the last decade, the number of black students and professors has grown at a much slower pace, and the number of black graduate students has declined, administrators said Friday.

The decreasing black enrollment in California and across the nation, social problems affecting black students on predominantly white campuses, and strategies for attracting black faculty and staff were among the topics addressed by about 50 administrators, educators and students from across the state during a daylong conference Friday at UC Irvine.

“We started holding this conference last year when we began to notice the number of blacks was decreasing at the University of California (at Irvine). Because this was critical, we decided it was important to draw people together from all segments . . . to develop strategies for turning them around,” said Christine Moseley, president of the Black Faculty Staff Assn. at UC Irvine. The group co-sponsored the two-day conference with UCI’s Black Student Union.

Compared to other university systems throughout the country, California ranks high in black student enrollment, but it still has a major problem in diversifying the faculty, according to Joyce Justus, director of educational relations for the UC system.

During the past 10 years, the black undergraduate student population in the UC system has risen from 3,344 in 1977 to 5,170 in 1987, the last year for which data was available, Justus said. The percentages increased from 4.1% to 4.6%.

The number of black faculty members increased from 117 in 1977 to 131 in 1987, she said. In 1987, there were 57 black full professors, representing 1.3% of the total UC faculty, and 44 associate professors, who made up 3.2%. During the last decade, however, the number of black assistant professors decreased from 55 to 30 and the number of black graduate students dropped from 1,107 to 961, she said.

The reason for the decline in graduate students, Justus said, is that universities are recruiting graduates in the fields of engineering and physical science, two areas that have not attracted many blacks. And those who do go into those fields often are lured into the corporate sector where they can earn higher salaries, bypassing graduate school.

The decreasing numbers of black graduate students pose a problem for the university, Justus said, because it is projected that by the year 2000, the majority of the current faculty at every major university will be retiring and new ones must be recruited. UC will need to recruit about 7,000 new faculty members at that time, she said.

“The university will have to make a much more concerted effort in attracting black students and nurturing them on to graduate school, then recruiting them for faculty,” Justus pointed out.

“As we move into the 21st Century, the student population will become majority non-white. We need the kind of educational system so that all students can live in a multicultural society. If 50% of the students are non-white, we need to target them and train them or it will be more difficult to find teachers.”

Erylene Piper-Mandy, research coordinator for the Task Force on Black Student Eligibility, a panel set up by UC President David Gardner to address issues concerning black enrollment, said the university’s priorities are not in line with its stated policies regarding blacks.

She said the university is reaching only 3.5% of the blacks in high school graduating classes in California, and only a third of those who enter the university graduate in four years.

A major problem, according to Piper-Mandy, is that about half of the black students admitted to the university are underqualified. She said the university encourages this in order to make quotas needed to maintain state and federal funding.

“Forty-five percent of the (black) students are brought in under special action . . . which means they wouldn’t be here if the university were not trying to achieve parity. That student is not prepared for classes at UC, and you place that child next to a 3.5 (grade-point average) student . . . whose father is a chemist . . . and we wonder why we can’t keep that student. It’s a Catch-22 situation, and it’s been to the extreme detriment of black students,” she said.

“The overall effort has been to bring in students who are under-qualified and doing nothing to help them make the adjustment. If you don’t supplement them and help bring them up to the level of other students, there is no way that student can make it.”

Piper-Mandy said she does not propose that these students be denied admission to UC, but she suggested that the university offer them needed support services. She said UC must make it more attractive for blacks to attend its campuses by increasing the number of black faculty and staff, providing cultural and social events, and by developing programs that target black students in grade school and prepare them for college.