UCLA Funding and Admissions

Your recent articles about UCLA admissions raise serious concerns beyond those they emphasize. More appalling than admission gyrations for a wealthy few or a politically influential gaggle is their primary cause: UCLA desperately needs money and political influence. Why? Because state support has declined from nearly 60% of the university’s budget in the early 1960s to 25% now.

Shortchanged, UCLA must increasingly adopt tactics of a private university. It must rely on federal and private funds--income from corporations, foundations, student fees, medical services and individual donors. And the fact that the latter are crucial to UCLA’s quality sparks a problem: Some donors and politicians seek reciprocal generosity. How should an admissions officer react?

This issue is mired with others. “Bruin wannabes” (March 24) may feel blue because wealth or connections promote the prospects of less qualified applicants. Far outnumbering the enrollment of such applicants, however, is UCLA’s enrollment of academically marginal athletes and multitudes who belong to certain ethnic groups. For all the virtues of sports and social goals, the displacement of more qualified students by these choices is ethically murky, and the murkiness grows as the numbers grow.

Special admissions of any sort can be a can of worms as they undercut meritorious applicants. Yet before state Sen. Tom Hayden (D-Santa Monica) swings his scimitar at this lemon on UCLA’s tree (March 23), he should tend to funding priorities for higher education in the house he shares with his colleagues. The house is made of glass and its priorities are rotting.

CHARLES BERST

Westwood

The writer is a former chair of the UCLA faculty senate and the College of Letters and Science faculty.

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* Thank you for your investigative reports, which expose the admissions nepotism and favoritism shown to the children and friends of UC regents.

It is outrageous that, while voting to eliminate affirmative action for women and minorities, allegedly on the basis of “merit,” some of the regents were requesting special admission favors for their friends and relatives.

It is this kind of backdoor dealing and hypocrisy that has shut out many minorities and women from such institutions for years, and is part of the reason why affirmative action is still needed.

REP. MAXINE WATERS

D-Los Angeles

* Now that The Times has exposed the graft in the UCLA admissions process, how about a little perspective? By your own figures, UCLA has admitted over 56,000 undergraduate students since 1980. Of these, only 200 received special consideration. The vast majority of these were qualified. That is less than one-half of 1% of admissions over the last two decades.

When over 20,000 highly qualified students apply for 3,500 openings annually, there are going to be unhappy results for some. That is not an indictment of UCLA, but rather a testament to its greatness.

GREGORY E. BAKER

Fresno