Regents Must Deal With Preferential UC Admissions : The numbers are small but the policy is nonetheless unfair

A majority of the 26 University of California regents are digging themselves deeper and deeper into a hole on the issue of admissions policy. Last July, the regents made the shocking, and we think dead wrong, decision to toss out the policy of affirmative action on admissions. Now the board is jumping around on how to deal with disclosures of high-level influence on student admissions at the nation’s most prestigious public campuses. The best that can be said about the situation is that it demonstrates the popularity and quality of a UC education, which is certainly a bargain. The worst is that politics, both electoral and financial, appear to have nosed into the most competitive UC campuses.

On Thursday, UC Provost C. Judson King told the board that the admissions-influence issue had created what he gingerly called “a dichotomy.” Prospective students are specifically discouraged from including letters of recommendation with their applications. But, King disclosed, if letters are included they will be considered. What’s an applicant to do?

The proof of the pudding lies in King’s acknowledgment that letters or inquiries from regents, legislators and other big shots, including, of course, major donors to the UC campuses, do make a difference. A Times investigation uncovered this problem. The numbers may be small, but each case raises the issue of fairness. Over the past five years, King said, about 215 letters from prominent people supporting individual admissions have been received annually. About 12 of those “received some positive consideration,” he explained, “only 0.03% of the 40,000 admissions typically granted each fall.”

Yes, it seems like peanuts, but consider that the competition for admission, particularly at UC Berkeley and UCLA, is tremendous, and each freshman who comes in with that added VIP boost may be denying a seat to some other applicant without it, including, perhaps, those who followed the instructions not to submit letters of recommendation.

But this is not a scientific process. Campus chancellors, eager to build new facilities, know the benefit of admissions--and alumni--politics. UCLA Chancellor Charles E. Young says that his academic senate has passed a resolution declaring it appropriate for admissions officers to consider “institutional need.” On the other hand, says Regents Chairman Clair Burgener, “I would be immensely relieved if they passed a rule that we couldn’t write any letters.” Lt. Gov. Gray Davis would regularize the process, making half of 1% of slots available to chancellors for what he called “leadership purposes.”

But in the wake of the affirmative action decision, which was said to undo special treatment for applicants, the continuation of high-level influence on admissions seems strange and unfair. The board will have to dig its way out of this one.