UC Outreach Programs

* In their March 1 commentary arguing that the University of California regents should reinstate race-sensitive factors in UC admissions, former Regent Ralph Carmona and former UC Berkeley Chancellor Chang-Lin Tien ignore UC’s enormous efforts to prepare more students from all backgrounds for admission to the university.

Under UC’s outreach programs, all nine UC campuses are working intensively with more than 50 high schools and the middle and elementary schools that feed into them to improve the quality of student academic preparation. Programs such as the Puente Project, the Mathematics, Science, Engineering Achievement Program and the Early Academic Outreach Program are helping more and more of California’s young people gain the preparation they need. The University of California, in fact, is spending $144 million per year to improve college preparation through its outreach efforts.

Part of the outreach effort has been an aggressive campaign to encourage underrepresented students to apply to UC. For fall 1999 there has been a systemwide increase of nearly 8% in freshman applications, including increases in all ethnic groups. While applications do not equate directly to admissions, the students who will be admitted to UC this fall can be proud of the fact that it was their own merits as individuals, and not their race or ethnicity, that opened the doors to a UC education.

Finally, it is important to remember that the challenge of achieving diversity at UC will not be met overnight. The regents’ policy of working to make real improvements must be given a chance to work.

JOHN G. DAVIES

Chairman, UC Board of Regents

San Diego