Brown weighs bill challenging ban on affirmative action

The Los Angeles Times
By Nicholas Riccardi and Larry Gordon, Los Angeles Times
September 30, 2011

Reporting from Sacramento and Los Angeles -- In the next 10 days, Gov. Jerry Brown must decide whether to sign a bill that could put race and gender back into the admissions process at California's public universities 15 years after the state's voters banned affirmative action.The proposed law would allow the University of California and California State University systems to "consider" applicants' race, gender and household income to diversify student bodies. The author says he crafted it to avoid conflict with Proposition 209, the ballot measure voters passed in 1996 that prohibited preferential treatment of minority groups by the state.

Full Story: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-prop209-20110930,0,3072044,full.story

California Jury Convicts 10 Muslim Students of Interrupting Campus Speech

The Chronicle of Higher Education
September 25, 2011
By Josh Keller

(Updated: 8:30 p.m. EDT, September 25, 2011)
In an unusually harsh verdict for a student protest, 10 Muslim college students who interrupted a speech by an Israeli diplomat last year at the University of California at Irvine were found guilty of misdemeanors on Friday.
The Orange County district attorney's decision to prosecute the case prompted a national debate over the nature of free-speech rights on college campuses. Protests that interrupt a speaker are not uncommon at University of California campuses, but nonviolent protesters are rarely charged with crimes.

Full Story: http://chronicle.com/article/California-Jury-Convicts-10/129159/?sid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

Almost No Progress in Number of Black Students Admitted to the Most Prestigious Campuses of the University of California

Journal of Blacks in Higher Education
May 6, 2010

Prior to the enactment of Proposition 209 in 1996, blacks routinely made up more than 7 percent of the students in the entering class at the University of California at Berkeley. When voters approved Proposition 209, Berkeley and the other campuses of the University of California were prohibited from considering race in admissions decisions. Black enrollments plummeted, particularly at UCLA and Berkeley, the two most prestigious campuses of the University of California system.

Full Story: http://www.jbhe.com/latest/index050610.html#cal

Federal suit planned against UC over ban on affirmative action

Los Angeles Times
Activists challenge Proposition 209, charging that the 1996 law on university admissions violates right to equal protection under the Constitution.
By Larry Gordon
February 16, 2010

Seeking to increase the ranks of black, Latino and Native American students at the University of California, civil rights activists said they will file a federal lawsuit Tuesday challenging the state law that bans affirmative action in admissions.The suit contends that Proposition 209, which was passed by California voters in 1996, violates equal protections guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution and says it has limited the numbers of non-Asian minority students at UC's most selective campuses. The suit also criticizes the university system for relying too heavily on high school grades and test scores in admissions, saying that the practice discriminates against students from schools without strong honors classes and counseling.

Full Story: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-affirm16-2010feb16,0,6120034.story

New admission policy at UC system angers Asian-Americans

baltimoresun.com
Associated Press
May 3, 2009

SAN FRANCISCO - A new admissions policy set to take effect at the University of California system in three years is raising fears among Asian-Americans that it will reduce their numbers on campus, where they account for 40 percent of all undergraduates.University officials say the new standards - the biggest change in UC admissions since 1960 - are intended to widen the pool of applicants and make the process more fair.But Asian-American advocates, parents and lawmakers are angrily calling on the university to rescind the policy, which will apply at all nine of the system's undergraduate campuses.They point to a UC projection that the new standards would sharply reduce Asian-American admissions while resulting in little change for blacks and Hispanics, and a big gain for white students.
"I like to call it affirmative action for whites," said Ling-chi Wang, a retired professor at UC Berkeley. "I think it's extremely unfair to Asian-Americans on the one hand and underrepresented minorities on the other."Asian-Americans are the single largest ethnic group among UC's 173,000 undergraduates. In 2008, they accounted for 40 percent at UCLA and 43 percent at UC Berkeley - the two most selective campuses in the UC system - as well as 50 percent at UC San Diego and 54 percent at UC Irvine.Asian-Americans are about 12 percent of California's population and 4 percent of the U.S. population overall.

Full Story: http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nation/bal-te.asian03may03,0,3230843.story

New eligibility requirements could mean fewer Asians at UC

The California Aggie
Change could be "detrimental" to Asian American population at UC, critics say
Written by PATRICK McCARTNEY
Published April 7, 2009

The new UC eligibility requirements have sparked an uproar with some Asian American community leaders, who say the change will cause a decline in the university's Asian American population.
Chinese for Affirmative Action is among several national advocacy organizations that have expressed concern over the eligibility changes. The organization has suggested that the new eligibility requirements could cause "unintentional whitening" of UC.
"There's almost a swapping out of Asian students for white students. Let's not rush this thing," said Vincent Pan, executive director of Chinese for Affirmative Action, in a press release.
"The concern is that this policy change hasn't been well studied and hasn't determined how it will affect the diversity of the student body at UC," said Susan Hseih, spokesperson for Chinese for Affirmative Action.
Beginning with the fall class of 2012, students will no longer have to take the SAT Subject Tests, also known as SAT II, in order to have their application considered by UC.
The new admissions policy could change the demographics of admitted UC students.
According to a California Postsecondary Education Commission study that examined 2007 applicants, the new requirements would have hypothetically caused a 4 to 7 percent decline in the proportion of admitted Asian American students in 2007-2008. African American students would have seen at most a 1 percent increase, Latinos a 3 percent increase, and white students as much as a 10 percent increase.
The admitted fall 2007 class was 36 percent Asian American, 34 percent white, 19 percent Chicano/Latino, 4 percent African American, 1 percent Native American and 6 percent other or unknown.

Full Story: http://www.theaggie.org/article/3434

Unintentional Whitening of U. of California?

Inside Higher Ed
Feb. 5

For several years now, the University of California has been debating plans to drop the SAT Subject Tests (formerly called the SAT II or achievement tests) and to find ways to consider more minority applicants. The debate has focused on the relative merits (or lack thereof) of the SAT and how to promote diversity while not violating the state’s ban on affirmative action.
In the past few days, however, a new issue has started to attract attention: concerns that the admissions policy changes that are expected to be approved by the Board of Regents today could lead to a significant drop in the numbers of Asian-American applicants who are admitted — with the major gains going to white applicants.
According to data prepared by the university and just starting to receive attention, 36 percent of those admitted to the university system in 2007-8 were Asian Americans. Applying the new admissions standards, that percentage would drop to 29-32 percent. In contrast, white applicants made up 34 percent of those admitted in 2007-8. Under the proposed reforms, they would have made up 41 to 44 percent of the entering class. The bottom line is that Asian Americans would shift from being the largest group gaining admission to the University of California to the second.
Some Asian American groups are calling on the Board of Regents to hold off on any vote today, raising questions about the fairness and wisdom of the changes being considered. (A board subcommittee approved the plan Wednesday, unanimously.)
“All of us share the goal of trying to preserve excellence as well as to promote diversity. But the gains for Latinos and African Americans in these projections are very small, while the decreases for Asian Americans and the gains for whites are quite large,” said Vincent Pan, president of Chinese for Affirmative Action, a national group based in California. “There’s almost a swapping out of Asian students for white students. Let’s not rush this thing.”
But university leaders are playing down the demographic projections and defending the admissions plan, which emerged from the Academic Senate, a system-wide faculty group. Mark G. Yudof, president of the university, said in a statement of the proposal: “It also sends a clear message to California high school students that if they work hard, take challenging courses and do well, they will get to make their case for admission to UC.” The university system has been praised by faculty and student groups for the planned shift.

Full Story: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/02/05/uc

UC releases 2008 freshman admissions data

Date: 2008-04-14
Contact: Ricardo VázquezPhone: (510) 287-3301
Email: ricardo.vazquez@ucop.edu

This year, the University of California's freshman admission cycle took place under a challenging context that included the largest number of applicants in the university's history, budgetary constraints in light of proposed state funding cuts, and over-enrollment the previous year at several campuses.
Amid these challenges, UC admitted a record number of freshman students for the fall 2008 term. A total of 60,008 California high school seniors were offered admission, a 4.7 percent increase of admitted students (+2,690) over the fall 2007 term (57,318). Overall, 75.3 percent of fall 2008 California freshman applicants have been offered admission to the university, compared with 77.4 percent for fall 2007. The decline in the admissions rate is attributed to the fact that the growth in the number of applicants outpaced the growth in the number of admissions offers. The university will offer a space to every California resident applicant who is UC-eligible.
In addition to students who have already been offered admission, another 8,450 UC-eligible applicants who were not offered admission to a campus to which they originally applied will be offered admission to UC Merced and UC Riverside through a process known as referral. Nearly 3,000 applicants have been offered admission to the winter or spring term at UC Berkeley and UC San Diego.
Approximately 820 California resident freshman applicants to UC Berkeley, UC Irvine, UCLA and UC San Diego will receive offers to participate in the UC Merced "Shared Experience" program. Now in its second year, this program offers students the opportunity to begin their UC education at UC Merced, with the option of remaining at Merced or transferring to another UC campus in their junior year.
Nearly 9 out of 10 admitted students are California residents. Admissions offers to out-of-state and international students numbered 7,545, an increase of over fall 2007 (6,283), and bringing the total number of applicants offered admission to the fall term to 67,553 students.
A brief summary of the admissions data follows:
• Universitywide, the admission of Chicano/Latino students increased by 16 percent, followed by African-American students (11.3 percent), white students (1.2 percent) and Asian-American students (0.7 percent) compared with fall 2007 outcomes. The increase in admissions offers closely track the increases of each group in the applicant pool. The percent of American Indian students decline slightly (-2.6 percent), or 11 fewer admits than fall 2007. The percentage of students who declined to state their ethnicity increased 12.3 percent from the previous year.
• Underrepresented students -- African Americans, American Indians and Chicano/Latinos make up 25.1 percent of UC admits, up from 22.9 percent for fall 2007. All campuses registered gains in the proportion of underrepresented students in their admitted class.
• Representation by gender. The admitted class is 56.7 percent female and 43.1 percent male. The relative proportion of admitted students by gender has remained stable over the last decade.
• Geographic representation through California continues to improve. Since its inception, the University of California has striven to attract, admit and enroll students from throughout of California. Although the majority of admitted students call Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay Area, and Orange and San Diego/Imperial counties home, nearly all other regions of the state experienced greater increases in the number of applicants offered admission compared with fall 2007. The Riverside/San Bernardino area experienced a 10 percent increase in percent of applicants offered admission -- an increase that was foreshadowed by a nearly 11 percent increase in applicants from this region.
• Universitywide, UC continues to excel at offering opportunity and access to students from families that have traditionally not enjoyed the benefits of higher education. Just over 39 percent of freshman admits come from families where neither parent has a four-year degree, 36.8 percent come from low-income families, and 1 out of 5 admitted students is enrolled in a high school that is in the lower 40 percent of California high schools, as ranked by the Academic Performance Index (API) score.
Note: The admissions outcomes are preliminary and focus entirely on admission of freshman applicants. Transfer admissions data will be available mid-May. These data reflect admission as of March 31, 2008, and except as noted, are for California resident students only. Some campuses will continue to admit small numbers of applicants. Unless otherwise noted, the universitywide totals are "unduplicated," meaning that each student is counted only once. Data provided for individual campuses typically reflect multiple admissions offers; on average, fall 2008 freshman applicants applied to 3.6 UC campuses. In making year-to-year comparisons, note that the fall 2004 cycle was anomalous because state budget difficulties resulted in a reduction in the number of students UC was able to admit.
For more information and tables about 2008 freshman admissions to UC: www.ucop.edu/news/factsheets/fall2008adm.html

University of California Tries to Better Understand Asian Students

From Diverse Online
By Diverse staff
Nov 18, 2007, 22:07

The University of California is expanding the categories undergraduate applicants use to self-report their ethnicity as part of an effort to collect and better report the “complexities” of its Asian American and Pacific Islander students. It will become the first public institution of higher education in California to collect and report data specifically on Hmong, Filipino and other Asian subgroups.

“The data UC collects are a reflection of how well we are serving the diverse people of California,” said Dr. Judy Sakaki, UC’s vice president for student affairs. “My goal is for improved data reporting to spur greater accountability regarding overlooked populations in our student body.”

Next year’s undergraduate application will include 23 Asian American and Pacific Islander categories, up from the eight that are currently recorded.

The “Count Me In” campaign, a student-led crusade to get the University of California system and the state to disaggregate data so that the needs and challenges of the various Asian subgroups aren’t overlooked, played a role in UC’s decision as did calls from UC faculty for richer research data and state legislative interest.

Through aggregated data, Asians are often portrayed as academically, socially and economically successful. But in a report released last summer, the federal Government Accountability Office warned that the “Asian” umbrella masks the underperformance of some Asian subgroups, like Vietnamese and Native Hawaiians. As UC noted in its announcement Friday, a closer look at the Hmong community in California shows that 66 percent have less than a high school degree, compared to 23 percent of all California adults.

“The prevalent model minority myth can make many disadvanteged members of our community invisible to policymakers,” said Candice Shikai, a UCLA student and director of the Asian Pacific Coalition, which initiated the “Count Me In” campaign.

“Collecting data on more Asian American and Pacific Islander groups will result in a more accurate picture of how students are doing,” she added.

The ethnic data collected by UC is used in evaluating graduation and retention rates. Next year’s applications for admissions will include separate categories for Chinese, Taiwanese, Asian Indian, Pakistani, Japanese, Korean, Filipino, Vietnamese, Hmong, Thai, Cambodian, Laotian, Bangladeshi, Indonesian, Malaysian, Sri Lankan and “other” Asian. [To read the entire article, go to: http://diverseeducation.com/artman/publish/article_10217.shtml ]