It’s that time of year again when colleges across America release admission statistics to boast the competency of their incoming class. What do we find out from these numbers? More students are applying, applicants are getting more competitive, and admission rates are lower than ever.

Applicants are failing to gain admission to certain University of California campuses, not because they are lacking high GPAs or extracurriculars, but because schools are unable to accommodate a larger freshman class. Students are being denied access to educational opportunities that their aptitudes merit.

To counter this, at least in the UC system, endowment allocations must be substantially adjusted. This would foster the growth of underfunded institutions and close the gap in academic opportunity among schools.

UCLA received 55,676 applicants for the fall 2009 freshman class. Of these applicants, 21.7 percent were admitted, compared to 22.8 percent in the previous year. This rate is the lowest in UCLA history despite 26,314 applicants having GPAs of 4.0 or above and higher SAT scores than previous freshman applicant pools. Why isn’t UCLA acting to accept more qualified students?

Schools are not at fault for failing to take in more students. They cannot be expected to increase their quotas just to meet a competitive pool. Doing so would cause numerous issues with student-instructor ratios, lecture sizes and campus housing, among other things.

Enrollment caps, after all, exist to maintain the quality of education provided to students. Expanding institutions like UCLA would do little to aid the admission problem. Instead, we should improve the quality of supposed “fallback schools” to challenge the academic opportunities provided at “top-tier” institutions.

The endowment figures within the UC system are greatly skewed. As of June 2008, UC Berkeley has the highest total endowment, with $2.89 billion, while UC Merced has the lowest, with $24.7 million.

Of course, the disparity isn’t without reason. UC Berkeley is an established research university, while UC Merced just opened in 2005. In terms of operation, departments and ongoing projects, UC Berkeley has more expenses than UC Merced. The student population at UC Berkeley also far exceeds that of UC Merced, which would justify greater spending.

Logically, UC Berkeley should possess a greater endowment than UC Merced ““ no question about it. The argument is not that UC Merced should have a greater endowment than that of UC Berkeley, but that the new campus should have greater endowment than what it currently has.

This funding could be used to develop facilities, hire competitive professors, support research, provide scholarships and so on. Greater endowment would enable a developing school like UC Merced to follow in the footsteps of the successful Berkeley campus and become a prestigious institution in its own right.

The Merced campus is not the only one that needs greater endowment. The UC campuses at Santa Cruz and Riverside also occupy the bottom end of the spectrum, with endowments of roughly $110 million to $120 million. Campuses such as UC Berkeley and UC San Francisco possessing billions in endowment suggests that the UC system is more concerned about preserving certain standout campuses rather than developing the UC system as a whole.

Campuses such as UC Berkeley and UC San Francisco could afford reductions, considering their reputations and well-established operations. A minor decrease in their funding would not substantially affect their status as top institutions. However, campuses with comparatively diminutive endowments will fail to mature properly.

As a consequence, these campuses would lack funds to cater to the educational needs of qualified students, many of which are carried over from the supposed prestige campuses. In light of the UC Board of Regents’ recent decision to increase student fees by 9.3 percent, the UC system must make sure to have funds allocated to foster these burgeoning institutions.

The UC system is often viewed as the exemplar of public school systems. With that designation comes the responsibility to reach out to a large population of students, as opposed to fostering a handful of elite scholars. This can be done by focusing on the development of the system as a whole, rather than maintaining the academic monopoly held by a few.

E-mail Ong at rong@media.ucla.edu. Send general comments to viewpoint@media.ucla.edu

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