UC to Probe Drop in Medical Schools’ Minorities

In 1993, 103 black and Mexican American students enrolled at University of California medical schools. This fall, the total was 59.

That is a 43% drop, something that UC officials want explained--and reversed. UC President Richard C. Atkinson has appointed a task force to investigate why enrollment dropped although offers to underrepresented minorities increased. The panel will recommend ways to reverse the trend.

“The continuing decline in enrollment of underrepresented students is particularly disturbing in view of the increasing diversity of the state and the university’s prior record in this area,” task force Chairman Cornelius Hopper said in a statement.

The university’s five medical schools enrolled 569 first-year students this fall. A total of 196 offers of admission were made to underrepresented minority students, a 30% increase over the 151 such offers made last year. However, acceptances dropped to 63 from last year’s 72, a decline of 12.5%.

UC considers blacks, Mexican Americans, American Indians and Puerto Ricans as underrepresented minorities. The breakdown for this year’s class is 36 Mexican Americans, 23 blacks, three Puerto Ricans and one American Indian.

UC officials say data prepared by the American Assn. of Medical Colleges show that as recently as the early 1990s, four of UC’s five medical schools ranked within the top eight medical schools nationally in terms of underrepresented minority graduates.

The decrease comes three years after affirmative action was repealed in UC graduate admissions, but the decline stretches back to 1992.

Kevin Nguyen of the American Civil Rights Institute, founded by Proposition 209 champion Ward Connerly, said the affirmative action repeal “surely had some effect because, logically, when you take away the crutch of race preferences, which propped up these medical admissions figures, you’ll see to what extent race was a controlling factor in admissions.”