UC Proposes Push to Ready Disadvantaged for College

The University of California on Tuesday recommended a major expansion of its college-prep programs in high schools--and extending them deeper into middle and elementary schools--to enlarge the pool of disadvantaged students qualified to enter the prestigious university.

The proposed program, which is expected to cost “tens of millions of dollars,” according to UC officials, would not directly use racial criteria to select schools. It would focus, instead, on those schools that have significant educational disadvantages, such as limited college preparatory courses and a poor record of sending students to the university. But officials clearly hope the expanded program will shore up the number of black and Latino students applying to UC campuses.

Admissions statistics released last week showed a dramatic drop in the number of blacks and Latinos accepted by UC law schools--the first class of students admitted since the abolition of UC’s affirmative action programs.

The ban on affirmative action will extend to undergraduate admissions next year, and officials expect “shortfalls” of black and Latino students at least at UCLA and UC Berkeley, the two most competitive schools in the system, according to Dennis Galligani, UC vice president for student academic affairs.

The UC system already spends $100 million a year on various “outreach” efforts. The new plan, more than a year in the drafting, would expand some of those programs. It also calls on each of the system’s nine campuses to adopt a collection of low-performing schools and help them double the number of students eligible for the university within five years.

C. Judson King, UC’s provost and co-chairman of its Outreach Task Force, said “a gap clearly continues to exist” between the system’s high standards for admission and the test scores and grades of African American and Latino students.

“We believe this plan will narrow that gap significantly,” King said, “and make outreach the university’s primary tool for recruiting a diverse student body.”

Using race, gender or ethnicity to target schools for outreach would have been at least technically permissible under the UC Board of Regents’ affirmative action ban. But UC officials were concerned about launching a program that could be jeopardized by a federal court’s interpretation of Proposition 209, the statewide ballot initiative passed in November that prohibits preferences for race or gender. That measure is under review by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

The task force’s 50-page report does not put a price tag on what UC outreach director Margaret Heisel calls “a rather dramatic and daring increase in the size and complexity of our program.”

But UC officials agreed it would cost in the “tens of millions of dollars.” The first $4 million or so is already set aside by UC President Richard C. Atkinson and by the Legislature as part of the university’s budget.

UC officials are also backing a budget request by Assemblywoman Carole Migden (D-San Francisco) for an additional $20 million for outreach programs.

Richard A. Clarke, task force co-chairman and retired chairman of Pacific Gas & Electric, also predicted that federal dollars would be available as well as donations from California’s major corporations that want to invest in a well-educated, highly skilled work force from all races and ethnic backgrounds.

“Most of us jumped in and helped fund MESA when it was started,” Clarke said, referring to the Mathematics, Engineering and Science Achievement program that helps disadvantaged students in 242 public schools statewide.

The new plan proposes that all nine UC campuses target select high schools in their surrounding areas--roughly 50 schools around the state. Each UC campus would then team up with local community colleges and California State University campuses to reach into these “partner” high schools, and even into their feeder junior highs and elementary schools, to get students on track for college with special tutoring, counseling and academic enrichment programs.

Many of the details would be left to the chancellor of each UC campus to work out with school principals and teachers. But the task force holds up as a model a holistic approach in El Paso, which has developed “a culture of high academic expectations” that has inspired students, teachers and parents.

“As far as I’m concerned we are already pursing that strategy,” said UCLA Vice Chancellor Theodore R. Mitchell, citing concentrated efforts in a handful of high schools in Los Angeles and Santa Monica.

But he said UCLA and other campuses struggle with where to focus their efforts.

“We have an ongoing relationship with a huge number of schools in the Los Angeles Basin,” Mitchell said. “I cannot ever see us forsaking our broad responsibilities to concentrate all our work in a limited number of schools.”

In addition to the partner schools, the task force recommends expansion of efforts such as Berkeley’s Break the Cycle Program, which dispatches university students to give individual math instruction to neighboring poor and minority students.

The report sets a statewide goal of doubling the number of students who become eligible for UC enrollment through academic enrichment programs, such as the Early Academic Outreach Program that now operates in 452 public schools, or the Puente Project, which helps students at 39 community colleges continue their studies at a four-year college or university.

The task force also calls for a threefold increase in UC “contacts” with low-income students and their parents--holding workshops, tutoring and counseling sessions to help with college plans.

These proposals would give UC measurable goals for holding the system accountable in its efforts to achieve a diverse student body, said Galligani.

Although a decline of black and Latino students is likely in the short run at some UC campuses, he said, “this is an important long-range strategy, so that 20 years from now things will be very different.”

The task force, which has circulated its report among educators for their comment, will make one final review of its recommendations in July before forwarding them to the UC Board of Regents for formal adoption.