UC Chief Offers Plan to Boost Minority Enrollment

The University of California would extend provisional offers of admission to as many as 12,700 additional students--many of them from low-income families--under a plan to boost minority enrollment unveiled Wednesday by UC President Richard C. Atkinson.

Students given the provisional offers would be required to successfully complete two years of course work at a community college before enrolling at one of UC’s nine campuses.

The plan would mark one of the biggest changes in years in the admissions policies at the nation’s premier public university system. Taken together with the state’s decision this year to expand the Cal-Grant program of financial aid, it could substantially increase university attendance from California’s poorest communities, Atkinson hopes.

The idea is “to inject them with a dream that they can make it, that the university wants them and we can put together financial aid packages to make it happen,” Atkinson said in an interview.

“This new pool of kids is very rich in underrepresented minorities,” he said. “Hopefully this is going to send a message to the minority community that we are going to make their path to a UC degree possible.”

The plan would not displace any students who would now be eligible for UC admission, he said.

Before Atkinson’s “dual admissions plan” can take place, it must be approved by the UC faculty and Board of Regents.

The proposal was “very warmly received” Wednesday when Atkinson presented it before the systemwide faculty’s umbrella organization--the Academic Council--a university spokesman said.

Atkinson’s proposal tackles two of the university’s thorniest admissions problems: reversing the decline in the number of minority students at the university’s most prestigious campuses and increasing the overall number of transfer students from community colleges.

Minority admissions to UCLA, Berkeley and other highly selective UC campuses have declined since the university ended affirmative action programs three years ago.

UC now offers admission to students who are among the top 12.5% of high school graduates statewide. In practice, that means a very large percentage of students at affluent high schools are admitted, but far fewer at schools that serve low-income communities where grades and test scores tend to be lower.

Under the new plan, students who are not in the top tier statewide but who are in the top 12.5% at each high school would be granted provisional UC admission subject to completion of basic introductory college courses at a community college.

Many of those students already could go to community college and then apply to UC as transfers. But despite a promise by UC officials to increase transfer admissions, relatively few students follow that route--in large part because the very idea of university attendance is foreign to many.

“This is a way of giving them a clear agenda,” Atkinson said.

University officials would work with community colleges to track each of the students, making sure that they take courses accepted by the university as transfer credits.

Perhaps more important, UC would help set up a “Baccalaureate Financial Aid Package” for each student, cobbling together available federal aid with Cal Grants.

By contrast, students now often look at the maze required to get to the university and give up altogether, said Christopher Cabaldon, vice chancellor of the 108-campus California Community College system.

The new plan “is a fantastic idea,” he said. “It’s a major step forward in eliminating the risk and uncertainty that often discourages students from pursuing a bachelor’s degree.”

UC has a goal of increasing transfers from 10,100 this year to 15,300 by the year 2005. Atkinson’s “dual admissions plan” would bring in between 1,500 and 3,500 additional transfers, according to a preliminary analysis by UC officials. Each UC campus would be required to take some of the transfer students.

Two years ago, the UC faculty declined to accept a proposal by state Sen. Teresa Hughes (D-Inglewood) to guarantee UC admission to the top 12.5% of each high school in the state.

Instead, fearing a decline in academic standards, the faculty opted for guaranteeing admission to the top 4% of each high school--a plan that phases in this year and is expected to affect about 3,600 students.

By making admissions provisional, Atkinson hopes to allay faculty worries about standards.

UC Regent Ward Connerly, who led the fight to ban affirmative action at UC and then statewide by passing Proposition 209, said he worries about the motivation behind Atkinson’s proposal.

“As one administrator told me, that top 12.5% of high schools is rich with minorities,” Connerly said. “Under the law, we cannot give preferential treatment through explicit measures or through measures that have the intent of achieving the same result.”

But based on Atkinson’s representation of his plan, Connerly said he might not have any basis to oppose the idea--provided that students being offered admission are required to fulfill the same requirements and meet the same standards as any community college transfer student.

Opposition from Connerly--a controversial figure--would improve the proposal’s chances before the faculty, said Regent William T. Bagley. On the Board of Regents, Bagley said, Connerly and allies who were appointed by Republican governors are reaching the end of their terms and being replaced by Gov. Gray Davis.

Bagley, who has sought to find ways to expand minority enrollment at the university, immediately embraced Atkinson’s proposal. “Within the confines of Proposition 209, he is trying to repair the damage this Board of Regents did five years ago by banning affirmative action,” Bagley said.

Atkinson’s idea also won immediate support from Charles B. Reed, chancellor of the California State University.

“The transfer rate in this state is one of the poorest in the nation,” said Reed. “Anything we can do to improve it, we ought to do.”

Reed said he isn’t worried that UC’s proposal will siphon off the best students who might otherwise end up on one of his 22 campuses.

“There is not going to be any shortage of students,” he said, pointing out that a tidal wave of students is now working its way through the public school system and will hit the state’s colleges and universities in the next half a dozen years.