SOURCE: UCLA Campus Profile, 2000 U.S. Census, President
Atkinson Report to the Assembly of the Academic Senate, Oct. 31
Original graphic by MAGGIE WOO/Daily Bruin Web adaptation by
CHRISTINE TAN/Daily Bruin Senior Staff Lindsey is a professor in
the School of Public Policy and Social Research. He is vice chair
of the Academic Senate. This submission is his opinion and does not
reflect an official Academic Senate position. Bachman is professor
and chair of the Department of Applied Linguistics & TESL.
By Duncan Lindsey and Lyle
Bachman
In a recent Viewpoint commentary, (“Campus
diversity starts with admissions process,” Daily Bruin,
Oct. 30) Patricia Greenfield writes: “The UCLA admissions
committee and the UCLA admissions office have found a way to
increase the number of underrepresented minorities at UCLA ““
by taking into account life challenges. But when we use this tool,
we apply it equally to all groups.” Examination of the record
shows this is simply not the case.
UCLA used two major measures to make admissions decisions in the
most recent admissions cycle. The first was Academic Rank ““ a
composite of SAT scores, GPA and other academic indicators.
Academic Rank was used to select the first tier of students. The
Life Challenge measure was not applied in selecting the first
tier.
As can be seen in Figure 1, Life Challenge was not considered in
selecting the first tier ““ 4,928 of 8,828 or 56% of admits.
Rather, after the first tier was selected, Life Challenge was then
applied to the remaining students in order “to increase the
number of underrepresented minorities at UCLA.”
What is Life Challenge and how was it used in making admissions
decisions? Conceptually, taking life challenges into consideration
makes sense. We would expect that applicants who have overcome
significant life challenges to reach a high level of academic
achievement and, thus, would have a great deal to offer as UCLA
students. However, as used by the admissions office at UCLA, the
Life Challenge measure was constructed with the purpose of
identifying attributes that are most highly correlated with
underrepresented students. Thus, the measure that is labeled Life
Challenge has little relationship to the concept of life challenge
as it is conventionally understood. As used by UCLA’s
admissions office, the Life Challenge measure was calculated using
the score sheet depicted in Figure 2.
The components for this measure were selected based in large
part on research by Patricia Greenfield, which identified these
components as providing the highest yield of underrepresented
students.
Aside from problems with technical measurement qualities ““
reliability and validity ““ of the Life Challenge measure, the
major conceptual limitation with this approach is that it is based
on a profile of underrepresented minorities that highlights low
income, limited parental education and single parenthood.
Underrepresented students who are from working class or middle
class families are systematically excluded with this approach. This
measure called Life Challenge was built from components that
Patricia Greenfield’s research demonstrated are most highly
correlated with underrepresented students. But the measures are not
highly correlated with all underrepresented students. Rather, they
are correlated with students from lower economic backgrounds,
whether they are from underrepresented minorities or not. Further,
they are not most highly correlated with the attributes of
underrepresented students that indicate either potential for
success at UCLA or merit.
Nevertheless, based on Greenfield’s findings, the
admissions office used the Life Challenge measure to select
students in the second tier.
The conventional understanding of Life Challenge presumes that
some young people have encountered challenges in life and through
their effort and hard work have engaged and overcome these
challenges. In this sense, there is a component of merit associated
with concept of life challenge. However, the measure of Life
Challenge used by UCLA’s admissions office is not based on
merit. Rather, it is essentially a measure of socio-economic
status. It is used in the admissions decision-making process as a
means test.
If the applicant comes from a sufficiently poor and deprived
environment, then the applicant will be granted admission in
preference to other underrepresented applicants who may have much
higher grades, have completed more rigorous course patterns, and
who may truly have engaged life challenges, but who are not
sufficiently socio-economically deprived to trigger this threshold
measure, Life Challenge.
The result is an admitted class with one group, primarily
selected in tier one on the basis of Academic Rank, with high
scores on academic indicators and another group, primarily selected
on the basis of Life Challenge score, with substantially lower
scores on academic indicators. This bifurcation of the admitted
class is the unintended consequence of the Life Challenge measure
(Figure 3).
It is argued that the “Life Challenges” measure is
used by UCLA’s admissions office to ensure diversity. This is
true. If the Life Challenge measure were not used, the limited
diversity that characterizes the UCLA freshman class would be
sharply reduced.
At the same time, another, equally plausible explanation is that
UCLA’s admissions office uses the Life Challenge measure to
“game” the “U.S. News and World Report”
rankings. By using the measure of Academic Rank, UCLA’s
admissions office was able to admit a group of students with the
highest possible SAT scores based on Academic Rank.
However, after admitting this group, UCLA was confronted with a
freshman class of less than seven percent underrepresented
students, which is considered too out of balance with the
population demographics of California and Los Angeles. Thus, after
the first tier of students was selected, UCLA’s admissions
office used the Life Challenge measure to identify as best it
could, without explicitly using race and ethnicity, a group of
students with the highest possible proportion of underrepresented
students. This is exactly what Patricia Greenfield demonstrated
with her own research while serving on the admissions
committee.
Thus, UCLA’s admissions office was able to maximize
institutionally reported SAT scores by selecting the first tier on
the basis of Academic Rank and then to correct the limited
diversity found in this group, by applying a different standard
““ namely the so called Life Challenge measure ““ to the
second group. The result was a percentage of underrepresented
students in the second tier that was several times that found in
the first tier.
In a minority report we wrote on admissions, and as reported in
the Bruin (“Comprehensive review is more efficient,”
Viewpoint, Oct. 22), this approach effectively denies access to
more than half of the underrepresented applicants ““ those
from working and middle class families ““ many of whom have
academic records substantially higher than those who were
admitted.
It is essential we ensure equal access to UCLA to all eligible
applicants. The admitted freshman class at UCLA does not reflect
the population demographics of 18-year-olds in Los Angeles County
(Figure 4).
Recent changes in UC admissions policies demonstrate that
substantial changes in diversity can result from policy changes.
The newly implemented Eligibility in the Local Context (ELC) is a
case in point. According to this policy, the top four percent of
all California high school graduates are guaranteed admission to
the University of California if they have completed the UC course
requirements. This ELC program recognizes the achievements of top
students irrespective of race and ethnicity. The results thus far
have been impressive:
As can be seen by comparing the percentages of African
American/Black and Hispanic students admitted according to our
present two-tier system (Figure 4) and those admitted through ELC
(Figure5), innovative and fair admissions policies and approaches
can achieve a level of diversity and broad excellence that our
present system cannot. Our main concern with the Life Challenge
measure is that it will be used to preserve a formulaic system that
is fundamentally flawed and restricts access.
UCLA needs to develop admissions policies and procedures that
reward merit, that are fair and that assure equal access and
opportunity to every eligible applicant. In our view, the present
system falls far short of this.