Associate professor at UCLA's Graduate School of Education & Information Studies Mitchell J. Chang looks forward to the days when "diversity" returns to UC, now that the bad ol' Ward Connerly is gone:
...Prop. 209...has had an alarming impact on University of California enrollments. Yet the change -- a sharp reduction in the proportion of African American and Latino students admitted and enrolled in the UC system, with the sharpest drops at UC Berkeley and UCLA -- has gone largely unnoticed by California voters...
By having an immediate and sharp negative effect on the flow of African American and Latino students into higher education, Connerly's efforts also dramatically interrupt the educational benefits of diversity that were endorsed by the Supreme Court.
I'm confused. Other documents claim that minority enrollment in the UC system overall is back to where is was the last year AA was in place:
Through outreach efforts, UC officials have worked hard since then to boost the number of such students, which dropped sharply in the first years after the ban. UC regents later voted to remove the prohibition, but the move was mainly symbolic. A statewide initiative, Proposition 209, had been passed in 1996 that bars the use of race, ethnicity and gender in admission or hiring by any public institution. This year, the proportion of underrepresented minorities systemwide stood at 19.8%, up from 19.1% last year, and above the 18.8% recorded in 1997, when race and ethnicity were last considered as a factor.
Across the eight campuses, Latinos represent 15.8% of California students admitted this year, African Americans make up 3.4%, and Native Americans 0.6%. About 37% of admitted freshmen are white and nearly 33% are Asian.
Granted, at UC Berkeley and UCLA, minority numbers are down. But those are the two most popular schools in the system, and turn away three out of every four who apply. Isn't it possible that those who don't attend those two schools do indeed go to other UC campuses? And isn't it possible that they might be making their college choices based on factors other than providing diversity for the college environment?
And of course, there's the obligatory bashing of tests:
Imperfect though affirmative action might be, finding effective solutions to compensate for its absence are not within easy reach. Some common changes are to de-emphasize standardized test scores when judging applicants, to guarantee admissions to students who graduate in a designated top percentage of their high school class and to evaluate more carefully an applicant's personal essay...
Because we wouldn't want to demand that someone attending UCLA on the state's dime be able to handle the SAT, even after the exam has been modified at the request of a former UC president.
This smarmy paragraph from Dr. Chang takes the cake, though:
After the important first step of enrolling larger numbers of underrepresented students, educators must make a commitment to maximize the benefits associated with diversity. This can be achieved by addressing past and present discrimination on campus, developing a more inclusive curriculum, nurturing the academic potential of underrepresented students and providing meaningful co-curricular activities that engage more students on campus so that they can learn to interact freely, wisely and responsibly with one another.
Is it possible to insert more multi-culti eduspeak into one paragraph? These are adults we're talking about here, not childlike robots for a social engineering program. Whatever happened to, "Admit those who can do the work, treat them like adults, challenge them constantly, and get the hell out of their way?" Especially the ones who have more important things to think about than constantly worrying about whether or not they're being discriminated against?
Posted by kswygert at February 14, 2005 05:00 PM