Under recent barefaced scrutiny, the University of California’s leaders are being forced to oversee a strange union between their admissions system and California’s populace. The latter is a racial melange where the white demographic is near to being matched by the minority population. But the state’s racial makeup finds no mirror in state colleges. It’s one of the many problems heaved onto the back of UC admissions, branded recently by a panel of professors as too faulty to accurately represent California’s population.
The largest leak in university admissions, the panel said, was its eligibility rate system, a rigid and formulaic setup. The route to solve this problem seems obvious: Replace this system with one more pliable and personal than its calculating predecessor.
That’s the pitch UC leaders are using to stave off a raucous public. UCLA acting Chancellor Norman Abrams this year faced public protests after the college admitted its lowest number of black students in three decades.
Abrams is championing the school’s incoming “”holistic”” approach as a solution, but the plan will never wholly succeed: Applicants facing predetermined social constraints will find little help from a changed admissions ethos by itself. They also need more effective outreach efforts in inner-city high schools, comprehensive counseling about college, and the breadth and quality of classes offered at higher-income schools. Social problems like gang violence, drug abuse, and domestic violence must also be tackled before any real changes will be seen.
A similar holistic system is in place at UC Berkeley, but the school is still far from accurate racial representation. In fact, as total enrollment continues to rise at the campus, the number of underrepresented enrollees — blacks and Latinos — has dropped over the past five years. There is no cure-all that both softens UC admissions and respects the institution’s standards; a singular solution, such as the holistic admissions, ignores the complexity of achieving equity in its student population.
