Los Angeles Times Interview : Richard Atkinson : Maintaining a Diverse UC in a Post Affirmative-Action World

Last year, Richard C. Atkinson remembers thinking that he fully understood the University of California. In his 15 years as chancellor of UC San Diego, the experimental psychologist had increased enrollment at the southern-most of UC’s nine campuses by two-thirds, enlarged the faculty by almost half and more than doubled the campus’ facilities. He was a veteran administrator.

But when he became UC president in October, 1995, Atkinson says it all changed. Veteran that he was, the enormity of the $11-billion institution filled him with awe. “I thought that I really understood it,” he recalled as he reflected recently on his first year in the $253,300-a-year job. “But when you see it from the perspective of the president, it is a really amazing enterprise.”

Atkinson’s first 12 months as president have tested that enthusiasm. The 67-year-old grandfather inherited one of the most thorny tasks to face any educator: implementation of the UC Regents’ decision to ban race and gender preferences in UC’s admissions, contracting and hiring. Just four months into his tenure, Atkinson was at odds with Gov. Pete Wilson, who felt Atkinson had exceeded his authority by announcing a one-year delay in UC’s implementation of the ban as it applied to undergraduate admissions. At one point, Wilson and nine other regents threatened a formal review of Atkinson’s performance--though that meeting was ultimately canceled. But even after the crisis was resolved, Atkinson remained troubled by the possibility that the ban will erode ethnic diversity at UC’s campuses.

There have been other challenges. UC’s academic medical centers are struggling to compete in the new world of managed care, with a few in dire financial straits. There has been talk that federal research funding to universities may soon be cut, and cut deeply. And Atkinson is determined to upgrade UC’s technological infrastructure, despite budget constraints.

Sitting in his 22nd-floor office overlooking Oakland’s Lake Merritt, Atkinson talked about these and other issues, as he discussed his first year on the job. Already, he said, “I feel like I’ve been here forever.”

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Question: Recently UCLA and UC Berkeley released reports that indicated elimination of race and gender preferences in admissions will cut the number of underrepresented students at those campuses by 50%-70%. What do you make of those predictions?

Answer: Losing affirmative action as a mechanism for ensuring diversity surely is a problem for us. But there are other avenues we can pursue that could maintain the diversity at the university: I’m talking about outreach, the ability to focus on particular geographic areas [to better prepare students to be eligible for UC]. In one of the school districts in Los Angeles, for example, only about 1% of the students ever apply to UC. It’s outrageously low. We can really focus on a school district of that sort through our outreach programs.

Through that process--and by focusing on students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds--we have the ability to increase our diversity, even though it’s not done in the name of affirmative action.

Q: Some of UC’s earlier studies indicated that if you considered socioeconomic background instead of race in admissions, you would still see a surge in Asian-American and white students and a decrease in blacks and Latinos.

A: I would not place too much weight on any one of those models. Clearly, with the mechanism of affirmative action no longer available to us, if we did nothing to replace it, we would have a great reduction in diversity. But we can do other things and I think there is some optimism that they can be successful.

Q: It sounds like you’re already preparing to stop targeting your outreach programs by focusing on particular ethnic groups--though you have not yet been prohibited from doing so. Couldn’t you still target black and Latino high schools?

A: Well, if you target high schools that have low numbers of students going to UC, you’ll find that they basically are Latino or black schools.

Q: But you seem to have already made that decision--that you’re not going to target your outreach programs by race.

A: No, we’re not going to target by race. But we will target by geographic distribution and by income level.

Q. Outreach isn’t cheap. The university currently spends about $75 million on such programs. Are you going to be lobbying for increases in funding?

A: If Proposition 209 passes, I think you will find both on the Republican and the Democratic side of the house a real concern with outreach programs that can deal with some of these issues without being race-based. . . . There are a lot of things we can do, new approaches that, in time, could be very productive--though there may be an impact on [diversity] in the short term.

I was talking to some faculty last night about a program called UC Links--UC-run, after-school programs in which our students work with young children in the early grades and we also recruit high-school students . . . . UC Links is an example that will make a big difference. I really believe that the world we’re moving into, with the kind of computer-based backup that’s going to be available in schools, can really turn the educational process around. A project like UC Links is just one of many things we can do to facilitate that.

Q: But it doesn’t matter how effective UC’s outreach programs are, if there is a public perception that underrepresented minorities are no longer welcome there.

A: That was one of the real worries: that we’d be sending out a message that would be read by teachers and students that UC was not a place that really valued diversity. In a certain sense, that’s our job this year and in future years--to make sure that [the affirmative-action rollback] is not read as that. You know, we had the highest application pool in our history this year.. . .

Q: But the surge was overwhelmingly in applications from whites and Asian Americans. Blacks were up only a tiny bit and Latinos were down.

A: These are pretty tiny fluctuations. And to place strong interpretations on them is a mistake. On the other hand, if the trend continued for some time, that would really be something to worry about.

Q: So you’ll really be watching this next batch of applications--due on Nov. 30, just a few weeks after voters approve or reject Prop 209.

A: Not only will we be watching, I think the world will be watching.

Q: Just four months into your tenure, you had a very public skirmish with Gov. Pete Wilson and UC’s Board of Regents over your decision to delay the implementation of their ban on affirmative action in admissions. Did the problem arise in part because you were still growing into the job?

A: What happened on that occasion was really a factor of poor communications . . . . That kind of miscommunication could have happened at any time in the presidency. It wasn’t that I was naive about how to deal with matters. . . . That was my fault. I caught the governor by surprise. I did not anticipate catching him by surprise. . . .

Q: The situation was resolved after you sent the regents and the governor a letter acknowledging that you had both the legal and the moral obligation to follow their policy directives. UC President Emeritus Clark Kerr has publicly questioned your wording in that letter, worrying that you put the regents above the university’s other constituencies in a divisive way.

A: Look, this followed a very tense interchange with the regents, where there was the view that I had . . . overridden the regents, ignoring their action. I had an obligation to communicate clearly to the regents that I did regard it as my duty and responsibility to follow the policies [they] set forth. If I’m not prepared, or if any president is not prepared, to follow the policy set forth by the board of regents, they should resign. I don’t know if the word “moral” is quite the right term, but I did have a legal obligation . . . . I felt it was important for me to clarify to the board that I thought I did the right thing--and I still think I did the right thing, but that I did not have the flexibility to decide on my own whether a policy should or should not be followed.

Q: Changing course a bit: Have you gotten advance word on whether this year’s 10% fee hike--required under your four-year compact with the governor--will again be bought out by the Legislature, as it was last year?

A: We certainly will urge the governor and the legislature to do that, but it’s just too early. If the state could afford it, there would be real merit to taking it off the table earlier.

Q: If the state doesn’t buy it out, will UC have to raise fees 10%?

A: I think that is the situation. We must maintain the quality of our programs. To simply have a University of California in place where the quality of the degree or the quality of the experience the students receive is not top quality would do the state a disservice . . . . It’s true that our fees have gone up significantly over the past five years. But we [also] have the highest percentage of low-income students attending UC than ever before in our history--about 26%.

Q: Officials at the private University of Southern California often point out that the average family income of a UCLA student is actually higher now than that of a USC student.

A: I don’t know the USC numbers. All I can say is, we do have a wide range of incomes. We have a lot of students who come from extremely wealthy families. But we have a very large proportion of students from lower incomes. . . . [And still, a UC education] is certainly a bargain compared to other state universities. On the other hand, the tradition that California has had of keeping fees very low so that they are in no way an obstacle is a great tradition. I’d hate to see the state move away from that tradition.

Q: Why are so many of UC’s academic medical centers--UC San Diego and UC Irvine in particular--losing so much money?

A: In California, our university medical centers treat the overwhelming number of indigent patients. And the level of support that we once received for those patients is no longer available. With the development of HMOS, competition in the medical area is incredibly severe. In an earlier period, we received substantial funds from the state to support our medical programs. Today, we receive a pittance.

Q: And as teaching hospitals you can’t deliver care as swiftly as some HMOs because you’re stopping to train students along the way.

A: In the past, the state recognized the costs of that training. For the last 15 to 20 years, the state has been pulling back from that. Our medical centers have been able [to survive] by treating--bluntly put--a significant portion of well-to-do people and applying the profits from that to the indigent sector. But now we have a smaller portion of our medical patients coming from that sector because of competition with HMOs and so our ability to fund our activities has been compromised. We’re in trouble now. . . . We have not yet worked out a budget agreement with the state that keeps us whole.

Q: Aren’t you also facing potentially significant cuts to federal research funding for universities?

A: Yes, but you might note that we were told it would happen this year and it didn’t. The fact is, if this country is going to deal with all of the problems we have ahead, it [needs] a growing economy. And the overriding factors in a growing economy are the quality of the work force in terms of it’s educational background and the level of society’s investment in research and development. Those two factors are what UC is all about . . . . If we want to become a third world country, the way to do that is to cut back on the education we offer and the investments that society makes in research.