Though there have been new policy initiatives working toward
educational equity in California, disparities still remain among
students of different ethnic groups, according to a report released
last week by the Public Policy Institute of California
The report found that while four-year college completion rates
increased for all ethnic groups from 1990 to 2000 in California,
white and Asian students experienced a much higher increase than
other underrepresented groups.
“It is really disappointing but it’s not
surprising,” said Mitchell Chang, associate professor in
UCLA’s Graduate School for Education and Information Studies.
“I think everybody already knew that was the case.”
The report found that black and Latino students are also more
likely to enroll in the California State University system and
two-year colleges rather than the University of California system.
Less than 7 percent of black and Latino students were eligible for
the UC in 2003 compared to over 30 percent of Asians and over 16
percent of whites, according to the report.
“The report does show that if we leave it to chance things
aren’t going to improve. If we want more equity, then the
state has to be more intentional about improving schooling, access
and graduation rates once the student goes to get into
college,” Chang said.
Chang said the distribution of underrepresented students in the
state’s different higher education systems in the future will
largely depend on how active the state becomes in helping students
from underserved communities to become eligible and competitive for
the UC system.
Third-year biology student Stephy Brown is one of the many
minority students who transferred to a UC from a community college.
Brown, who is black, said though she was fortunate enough to
transfer to a four-year university, many students from her
community college were not able to transfer.
“There needs to be more emphasis on helping minority
students to obtain four-year degrees. There is too much reliance on
two-year colleges in California. The fact is that many students are
unable to transfer once they enroll at a community college,”
Brown said.
Chang said though UC admission policies such as Eligibility in
the Local Context and comprehensive review should improve
enrollment for underrepresented student groups in the UC system as
a whole, whether these policies will affect more selective campuses
such as UC Berkeley and UCLA remains to be seen.
The report attributes the differences in college completion
rates to a variety of factors, including early childhood education,
the family’s socioeconomic class and the quality of the
primary schools the student attended.
The author of the report, Deborah Reed, said a combination of
socioeconomic reforms and K-12 educational reforms are needed to
narrow the educational gap between students.
“There is no evidence of a single factor, no silver bullet
that would solve this problem,” Reed said. “We
can’t solve it entirely through education reform or entirely
through giving families more money.”
“When we look at low-income families, they are also
families that tend to go to low-quality schools. When we think
about poor families not doing as well, part of it is because of the
school system, not just the family,” Reed said.
Recent legislation such as the Public School Accountability Act
of 1999 and the Bush administration’s No Child Left Behind
program have been implemented to improve K-12 schools nationwide,
but Reed said it is too early to tell how effective they will be in
helping underrepresented students obtain college degrees.
As the gap grows between educational opportunities for students
of different ethnic groups, one of the biggest issues for students
unable to obtain a college degree is the growing value of a college
education in the job market, Reed said.
“Young people who are not able to access college for a
variety of reasons will be left behind as the economy grows,”
Reed said.