By Robert Salonga
Daily Bruin Staff
The UC Board of Regents took steps during its meeting Thursday
to increase the number of transfer students the UC receives,
turning to the California Community College system for
assistance.
Under the Dual Admissions Plan, which passed by a 14-3 vote,
students in the top 4 to 12.5 percent of their high school class
will be granted admission to the UC upon completion of two years of
lower division courses at a community college. The plan goes into
effect for the incoming class Fall 2003.
Students who will likely benefit from this plan, university
officials say, are high-achieving students who attend the poorer
schools in the state, which lack the resources needed to prepare
their students for a university education.
UC Board of Admissions and Relations with Schools Chair Dorothy
Perry presented the plan to the board, saying it provides a better
path to the UC for certain students.
“This puts the UC within their grasp,” Perry
said.
Additionally, officials said they hope the plan will increase
the number of African American, Latino and Native American students
in the system. Enrollment numbers for those groups have declined
since the Regents’ policies SP-1 and 2 passed in 1995 and
banned the use of affirmative action in admissions and hiring
throughout the UC. The Regents rescinded those policies at their
May meeting this year.
BOARS predicts that the new plan will eventually add 3,500
transfer students to the UC, with an estimate of 1,000 added
transfers in its first year.
The system presently serves more than 130,000 undergraduate
students.
The UC currently strives for 40 percent of its class to be
transfer students, which many UC campuses find difficult to meet.
But UCLA consistently meets this proportion, receiving more than
11,000 transfer applications this year.
Chancellor Albert Carnesale said the plan will have a nominal
effect on UCLA, but is good for the system as a whole.
“Overall, you would get more students through this path
than otherwise,” Carnesale said. “We cannot look at
(the UC) as homogeneous.”
Regents’ Chair S. Sue Johnson, who cast one of the three
opposing votes, cited the costs to employ the plan as a reason for
her disapproval.
“We’re moving too rapidly,” Johnson said.
“We do not have enough resources. This would require massive
inputs of money.”
According to UC President Richard Atkinson, $2.5 million would
be needed to put the plan into effect. Atkinson, a proponent of the
plan, assured the board that enough funds are available for its
implementation.
Johnson instead stated her support for Eligibility in the Local
Context plan, which considers students in the top 4 percent of
their high schools eligible for admission to the UC.
Regents David S. Lee and Peter Preuss, who casted the other
dissenting votes, gave similar reasons for their decisions.
In addition, Lee said he feared that the disparity in
performance between high schools in the state could diminish the
overall caliber of students in the UC.
“There’s a quality issue involved,” Lee said,
explaining that under the plan, less-qualified students from
lower-achieving schools would be accepted to the system.
The plan’s passage creates a fourth path to attending a UC
campus. The first is statewide eligibility, which provides
admission for students in the top 12.5 percent of the total
state’s graduating high school class. This was established in
the Master Plan for Higher Education, written by the state
legislature in the 1960s.
The second path is the Eligibility in the Local Context plan,
and third is the traditional transfer programs UC campuses
presently have with selected community colleges.
Under regular transfer programs, students complete a community
college course load and then apply for admissions to a UC school.
But admission is not guaranteed.
The Dual Admissions Plan differs from the current transfer
program because a student participating in the plan is guaranteed
admission, provided they complete the required courses with a
minimum GPA dictated by their intended major. The plan also
provides counseling services for students, which Atkinson said
accounts for most of the program’s $2.5 million initial
budget.
However, Regent Ward Connerly said the plan would need more than
this amount to adequately train targeted students for the rigors of
a UC education.
“Many of these students are coming from very poor
community colleges that never sent a student to the UC,”
Connerly said. “It’s going to require some really
intense preparation, and that’s going to cost a lot more than
$2.5 million.”
Student Regent Tracy Davis, a UCLA doctoral student, said one of
the most important goals of the plan is to provide an opportunity
to students who otherwise wouldn’t apply to the UC because of
their high school’s lack of resources and counseling.
“There are still students in this state who need someone
to lead them, who need a glimmer of opportunity to create
motivation inside them to go to college,” Davis said.
“They will still need to complete all of the necessary
requirements, but now someone will be there to prove to them that
we believe that they are good enough to be at this
university.”