The University of California Board of Regents is considering a
change in UC eligibility criteria that would increase the minimum
GPA from 2.8 to 3.1 for undergraduate applicants. This generally
would reduce student eligibility to the UC system to 12.5 percent
of high school students, a statistic that the 1960 Master Plan for
Higher Education in California ““ the long-term guidelines for
our state’s public schools ““ has suggested the UC try
to meet.
These changes are happening for one reason: Last year the UC was
unable to accept all eligible students, and the regents now figure
it should. Toughening eligibility standards seems like a practical
way to allow all those who are eligible to become students.
But a whole segment of the UC population sees in this proposal
not a practical plan but rather an evil, conniving scheme to reduce
minority enrollment at the University of California.
And, as the students define it, minority enrollment will
decrease. If the proposal is accepted, the UC Office of Strategic
Communication expects the eligibility rate of blacks to fall by 1.6
percent, the eligibility of Latinos by a whole 1.0 percent and the
eligibility of Asians by 3.6 percent.
But this is all obvious. The eligibility rate of every group
would decrease if those in each group who had between a 2.8 and a
3.1 GPA no longer would be eligible. In fact, the overall
eligibility rates of all students would decrease by 1.9 percent.
Should minorities be exempt from this change?
But I digress slightly because what the objectors really claim
is that minority enrollment (not eligibility) would drop.
The Daily Bruin story “Regents consider GPA
increase,” (News, July 19) stated, “Many of the
students who will be cut if the proposed changes are passed by the
regents will be students from underrepresented groups.”
I will go out on the limb and continue: Many of the students who
will be cut if the proposed changes are passed by the regents will
be students from groups that are overrepresented, too. Members of
every group will be cut.
It is obvious that the rates and enrollment of all groups would
decrease. I will assume that what the objectors really mean is
that, if passed, the proposal significantly would drop the
percentage of minorities enrolled at the UC and increase the
percentage of, say, whites. (I will leave aside the fact whites are
an underrepresented group when you compare the percentage of whites
at the UC to the percentage within the entire state.)
This could mean several things. First, there may be no white
high school students who have a GPA between 2.8 and 3.1, so whites
have an unfair advantage. This idea obviously is absurd.
A second possibility is far more telling and far more
interesting. It is the theory that eligible white students have
been for so many years disproportionately rejected by the UC while
eligible minority students have been disproportionately accepted by
the UC.
This theory accounts much better for the projected drop in
minority enrollment percentages. If all ethnic groups currently
were treated objectively and with the same standards and performed
equally, their percentages should remain virtually the same after
the plan is in place. This is basic mathematics.
But the objectors claim the percentages of underrepresented
students will drop. In doing so, without knowing, they admit some
minorities may have it easier than whites in terms of admission to
the UC.
In other words, affirmative action is still in full force in
California.
To summarize, the eligibility rates and, by extension,
enrollment numbers of every ethnic group will drop. The only reason
the numbers of some groups would drop proportionally more than
others is that those groups have had an unfair advantage in the
past.
But the objectors have not thought so deeply into the matter.
Their objection is not really a practical one but a moral one.
They believe in a certain brand of morality that can be
classified as “ends” morality. In other words, morality
will be achieved and applied when society (or the UC) reaches a
certain desirable end state.
Those who find no fault in the GPA increase subscribe to a
different brand of morality. We’ll call this
“means” morality. In other words, if the UC admissions
process treats everyone equally and with no racial, religious or
intellectual discrimination, then, regardless of rates and
enrollment numbers, the end result is fair.
Hovannisian is a second-year history and philosophy student.
E-mail him at ghovannisian@media.ucla.edu. Send general comments to
viewpoint@media.ucla.edu.