Wednesday, February 17, 1999
Community college offers alternative
UNIVERSITY: Minorities should take advantage of transfer
programs
By Amateo Seno
This letter is in response to the "Head to Head" debate between
Angel Walters and Matthew Gever that dealt with the university’s
current admission policy (Viewpoint, Feb. 11).
Walters ("Politics of American capitalism, social structure
limit education") contends that the current policy is highly
discriminatory toward the disadvantaged, while Gever ("Privilege of
higher learning not open to underachievers") takes the position
that university’s prestige derives from its elitism. I believe that
both of them seem to possess a narrow view of higher education that
most students at this campus suffer from and need to be made aware
of.
To begin with, Walters contends that "the university should be a
vehicle for social change" and offer courses that "seek to produce
revolutionaries and radicals." Her stance conveys a fundamental
misunderstanding of the role that universities have played in
Western Civilization for centuries.
During the Middle Ages, the intellectual heritage of antiquity
was preserved by monasteries, which enabled scholars in later years
to apply this heritage to their own time. Many universities, such
as Oxford and Cambridge, arose from these monasteries. Thus,
universities have acted as conservatories of knowledge that have
allowed the West to steadily progress by giving each generation of
students a firm foundation.
In addition, Walters’ view of higher education runs counter to
what Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. considered to be its goal.
While attending Morehouse College, Dr. King wrote "The Purpose of
Education" in which he states, "To my mind, education has a
two-fold function in society. On the one hand it should discipline
the mind for sustained and persistent speculation."
Walters is frustrated by students who "speak philosophically of
what could be done, but never do it" and blames the curriculum for
this. But is it reasonable to expect a university to produce such
active students when considering its historic role?
Perhaps Walters’ expectations arise from a role that the
university played during the 1960s. Well, the ’60s were an
aberration. It has been romanticized, but for the most part it was
"much ado about nothing." The vast majority of all the radicals of
that time with their so-called Marxist tendencies have become
today’s bourgeois.
Dr. King went on to write that education "should integrate human
life around central, focusing ideals," and he considers it tragic
that this is often neglected by education.
Well, my response to this is that Dr. King was what John Henry
Cardinal Newman, a Victorian philosopher, would call a "miracle of
nature." Dr. King had high expectations for others because he had
the same for himself. Anyone familiar with Dr. King’s biography
will agree that he was no ordinary person, and I suspect that
Walters would agree as well.
As for Newman, he wrote in "The Idea of a University" over a
century ago that a university "aims at raising the intellectual
tone of society, at cultivating the public mind … at facilitating
the exercise of political power, and refining the intercourse of
private life …though it is less tangible, less certain, less
complete in its result."
What Ms. Walters condemns, as "philosophical speculation" is the
crowning glory of today’s university, which culminates from
centuries of development.
Walters also argues that the university’s admissions policy is
"designed to be exclusive in order to maintain existing classes of
privilege" which seek to exclude minorities. She feels that such
actions are criminal because they violate a person’s human rights
to prosper in our society.
Then she declares, "The truth be told, no one has earned their
admission here" because no one’s admission here has been determined
by achievement, but by racially biased SAT scores and an inflated
high school GPA.
Well if the truth be told, anyone committed to attending to UCLA
may do so. Yes, anyone can do this regardless of how they performed
in high school or on the SAT, regardless of their racial or ethnic
background, and regardless of what area of the city they were
raised in. Walters would lead us to believe that this cannot be
possible, but it is. And I am living proof of it.
I did not perform well in school because pesky family problems
such as child abuse, domestic violence, drug use, poverty and being
homeless distracted me from my studies. Never mind the fact that I
was raised in some of the poorest parts of Los Angeles.
By the way, I never took the SAT. And no, I am not an error that
an admissions officer has made. I have taken the road less
traveled; I transferred to UCLA.
Yes, I am a transfer student, that rare savage beast at UCLA,
which is part Bruin and part "other." I attended a community
college for two years, as anyone can, I enrolled in to the Transfer
Alliance Program (TAP), which anyone can do with a GPA of at least
3.0. TAP guarantees priority consideration to UCLA and other
universities.
For example, I attended Los Angeles Valley College whose TAP
students have a 98 percent acceptance rate at UCLA (and such
success rates are not uncommon).
Walters’ and Gever’s failure to mention community colleges in
their articles demonstrates a narrow-minded view of higher
education that is all too prevalent in our society.
If Walters truly believes that institutions of higher education
should be committed to providing opportunity to anyone and
empowering them through a college education, then by their very
design, community colleges are the most noble of all institutions
of academia.
Community colleges are the "Purgatory of Academia" where any
determined person has the opportunity to redeem himself or herself
with the assured expectation that they will be able to graduate
from a four-year college at a fraction of the cost.
Walters would have UCLA take over the role of community
colleges. This, I believe, would be a mistake. UCLA is not capable
of delivering the services of a good community college with the
same level of success and at the same price, $13 a unit, no matter
how hard it tries.
If minority groups desire to increase their numbers at UCLA,
they should encourage more minority students to attend community
colleges.
Chancellor Carnesale could also help them in their efforts, but
I suppose that many students also suffer from a narrow view of
higher education. As a result, they waste time lamenting
Proposition 209 when there is a more pragmatic alternative.
As for Gever, he desires to maintain UCLA as an elitist
institution because he believes to "open a university to all
cheapens the value of college education, rendering the experience
futile." His position follows the rules of supply and demand, but
does this really work when applied to education?
By this line of reasoning, literacy is "worthless" and "futile,"
and so are primary and secondary education because they are too
common. But can anyone deny the importance of these things?
Simply because education has become more universal does not mean
it is no longer valuable. In fact, we should see this as a sign of
progress. The more people who are educated, the better off society
is (as my reference to John Henry Cardinal Newman explained
earlier).
Gever also writes that he considers, as most people do, UCLA to
be superior to CSUN, but such a comparison is fundamentally unfair.
Gever is obviously unaware that by state law Cal State schools are
intended to be inferior. They are not permitted to perform many of
functions from which UC schools derive their prestige and
superiority so that they are not in direct competition with UC
schools.
Furthermore, the UC Board of Regents has lobbied to maintain
this arrangement to preserve their elitism.
Then Gever concludes, "If you want to go to a school that is
open to all, head down to CSUN." This is simply untrue; only
community colleges will take in anyone. All Cal State schools have
a GPA and SAT score requirement that must be met prior to
admission. Moreover, they must be more lax in their admission
policy because they are intended to serve the top third of all high
school students.
Both Walters and Gever suffer from a narrow view of higher
education, which the vast majority of students on this campus
suffer from. Like most students at UCLA, they are part of an
intellectual elite and a middle class value system that encourages
going from high school directly to a university. And though there
is nothing inherently wrong with this, there is something
inherently wrong with precluding any other alternative.
Comments, feedback, problems?
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