SAN FRANCISCO “”mdash; The University of California Academic
Senate presented its review of the university’s one-year-old
controversial admissions policy to the UC Board of Regents on
Thursday.
The report, first released last week, gave high marks to UC
admissions policies as implemented during the first year of
comprehensive review. The report study found that academic criteria
continued to dominate admissions decisions and that all campuses
using comprehensive reviewed selected students fairly.
Many regents said the senate’s analysis answered many of
the questions that have been asked about the policy.
“I think anyone “¦ would conclude the system
works,” said Regents Chairman John Moores.
Comprehensive review, approved by the regents in November 2001,
changed university admissions to give greater weight to life
experiences and personal hardships in the selection of applicants
to attend individual campuses.
Grades and standardized test scores remained the standards for
admission to the UC system as a whole. UC Riverside and UC Santa
Cruz did not employ the policy because they have enough capacity to
admit all qualified applicants without needing to be selective.
The report was conducted by Board of Admissions and Relations
with Schools, a committee of the Academic Senate. Faculty from
across the UC system worked on the study.
The policy has come under public scrutiny in recent months after
national publications published articles and columns that alleged
the UC adopted comprehensive review to hide usage of racial
preferences, forbidden by the California constitution, when
selecting students for highly competitive campuses like UCLA and UC
Berkeley.
At the September regents meeting, Regent Ward Connerly proposed
that an outside agency examine comprehensive review in order to
convince the public the process was fair, or to determine if
printed allegations were correct.
The idea was sharply criticized by both UC President Richard
Atkinson and Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante, a regent by virtue of his
position.
Thursday’s presentation, however, was free of such heated
controversy. Though he suggested the senate perform additional
studies, Connerly himself said the report would go a long way to
reassuring those suspicious of comprehensive review.
He suggested though, that the faculty compare students who were
selected to those who were not to further examine if any
considerations of race have been made.
Gayle Binion, chairwoman of the Academic Senate, said that she
was sure that the faculty would be willing to take further steps to
check if admissions decisions were “reasoned, consistent and
defensible.”
Connerly did not say if he still thought an external analysis
was in the UC’s interest. Alumni regent Alfredo Terrazas said
the study had the potential to show that comprehensive review does
not lower academic standards.
“That myth now has the data to be automatically and
unequivocally dispelled,” Terrazas said.
The BOARS report shows the average high school GPAs for 2002
admits, the first class to be evaluated under comprehensive review,
were very close to 2001 levels on each campus. The largest change
was a 0.03 grade point decline at UC Berkeley.
The senate report is far from a final verdict on the
effectiveness of comprehensive review . BOARS will continue to
monitor the progress of students admitted under comprehensive
review, and many at the meeting said the policy’s true
measure of success will be whether UC students do well in school
and in their careers, not by comparing the academic records of
incoming students.