How to Interject Fairness Into UC Admissions

In the film “Rushmore,” Max Fischer, a working-class kid who attends an elite prep on scholarship, distinguishes himself by seizing every extracurricular opportunity in sight while flunking his regular classes. Therein lies a lesson for education reformers.

Recent proposals to improve the academic performance and college-admission prospects of students from economically disadvantaged high schools overlook the important role that extracurricular academic activities play in the education equation. Currently, such activities as debate, model United Nations, mock trial, Academic Decathlon and Mathletes, regarded by many public-school administrators as expensive extras, contribute to the unfairness problem, because they mainly serve to bolster the academic muscle and college-admission chances of students from wealthy schools. But with a boost from college and university officials, extracurricular activities can become a powerful means to multiply opportunities for students from poorer public high schools to impress admissions officials.

Most of the debate about unfairness in college admissions has focused on SAT scores and advanced-placement courses. As highlighted in a lawsuit eight students filed last month against UC Berkeley, students at private schools and in wealthy suburban school districts receive more pretest coaching and enjoy many more opportunities to take AP courses than their counterparts in inner-city and rural schools. Because of the added weight awarded to AP grades, this imbalance means that students from less affluent schools are at a severe disadvantage in achieving the magic numbers required to enter UC. Add to this the ban on race- and gender-based affirmative action, and one can readily see the impediments to more inclusive admissions policies.

Although their importance is hard to measure, academic extracurricular activities already are a factor in college admissions. Even at UC campuses, where numbers mostly determine who gets in, outstanding achievement in, say, debate, can make the difference between acceptance and rejection for some students. Furthermore, because many high-school competitions are held on university campuses, and college students often serve as coaches and advisors to the teams, extracurricular activities provide students with contacts that may encourage them to apply to colleges.

More important, extracurricular activities can offer a life-changing alternative for nontraditional learners like “Rushmore” ’s Max. For example, Dave Arnett, the debate coach at UC Berkeley, notes that a high percentage of debaters seem to have attention-deficit syndrome, a prime factor in extremely bright and talented kids getting poor grades. Activities like debate give these students the opportunity to develop and polish skills--research, writing and oral communication--that are crucial for success in college.

California used to be a national leader in extracurricular offerings. In the late 1960s and early ‘70s, many Southern California high schools--South Torrance, Tustin, San Gabriel, La Mirada and Excelsior--had outstanding debate programs. Today, virtually all of them have died. Only one public high school in the state, El Cerrito High School in the San Francisco area, has a nationally competitive team-debate program.

There are many reasons for the decline in public support for extracurricular activities. According to William Southworth, debate coach at the University of Redlands, Proposition 13 deserves most of the credit for “decimating what was once the largest and strongest debate region in the country.” To compete successfully today, students need to attend expensive summer institutes, access costly research services such as Lexis-Nexis and travel to tournaments across the country. Not surprisingly, it is mostly students from private schools who can afford to compete at this level. Other factors include a shortage of high-school teachers with the skills and interest necessary to coach extracurricular activities and credential requirements that make it nearly impossible for otherwise qualified individuals to teach regular classes in debate, journalism and other specialized areas.

If UC and other colleges and universities focused their attention and resources on this issue, it would be a relatively easy step toward interjecting more fairness into their admission practices. UC can do little to improve SAT scores or grow AP courses in high schools. But it could substantially expand extracurricular activities by enlisting UC students to assist existing high-school programs, by giving students engaged in debate, model U.N. and mock trial greater access to university libraries and by creating programs, possibly through extension courses, at schools that lack them.

Because it would focus on expanding individual opportunities, a UC initiative to nourish and sustain extracurricular academic activities in public high schools should attract the support of education reformers at both ends of the ideological spectrum. It could start with a review of the ways in which UC campuses currently aid extracurricular activities--hosting competitions and summer camps, providing coaches and resources to high-school programs--to make sure that these efforts are not unintentionally increasing the gap between rich and poor students. By doing so, UC can demonstrate in a real and meaningful way that it is prepared to become more involved in reversing the unfairness at the root of many of the controversies over its admission policies.*